The Media Literacy Crisis Is Crisis-ing

Dr. Dakotah Tyler and Justin Shaifer talk through media literacy, scientific literacy, and why people can watch the same piece of content and walk away with completely different interpretations.

They discuss misunderstood clips, fluoride and the naturalistic fallacy, AI water usage, statistics without context, confirmation bias, AI-generated media, satire, comment sections, and why curiosity has to include the ability to slow down and ask what is actually being said.

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Hosted by Dr. Dakotah Tyler and Justin Shaifer

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Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:00

We are in a literacy epidemic and not just like reading words on a page but media literacy. Most people engage with forms of media that are not written, but like videos, movies, podcasts, whatever. And you also need to be literate in media to understand what's going on. People will watch a video and come away with very, very, very different interpretations of what was said. When I posted that video, the comments on my video demonstrated a lack of media literacy. It's complete illiteracy. They don't know what I'm saying. Media literacy is the only tool that you have. That's our only defense. I am Dr. Dakota Tyler, aka Dr. Star Kid. I am straight and to the point.

SPEAKER_00 1:15

All right. Well, this time he is. But we're going to be talking about some interesting points that may not be so straightforward in a special episode about media literacy.

SPEAKER_03 1:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:29

We're going to be diving into a special episode.

SPEAKER_03 1:31

This is a normal, this is a normal episode. Every episode is actually special.

SPEAKER_00 1:35

Yeah, that's what I was thinking. That's what I was thinking. Yeah. But we're going to be diving into some different topics around things that people can do to perhaps enhance their comprehension of media content online, uh, thinking through uh critiquing things online, analyzing things online with a critical lens, and uh perhaps tools that us as science communicators can incorporate to make sure that we are minimizing ambiguity.

SPEAKER_03 2:01

Yeah. Is that what this episode's about?

SPEAKER_00 2:04

Yeah, we definitely did talk about that.

SPEAKER_03 2:06

We definitely talked about media literacy. I don't know if we covered tools that we could use. Oh, yeah. We we talked about a lot though. And you're gonna enjoy this one. This is a special episode that's coming at you right now.

SPEAKER_00 2:18

All right.

SPEAKER_03 2:19

Ignore the shirt changes.

SPEAKER_00 2:21

We are uh back in Los Angeles. This will be one of our last couple of episodes in the year 2025. I said that. You said that before. Yeah, and then we ended up filming some more stuff somehow.

SPEAKER_03 2:34

Yeah. However, these will not be posted until who knows when.

SPEAKER_00 2:38

Yeah, so maybe we won't even let people know that it's our last 2025. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 2:42

Maybe we do. But it's today's the 29th, right? Actually, let's not say that. Yeah, today's what it is. Days are made up. Days are days are a social construct. Literally are literally a social construct. Literally a social construct. But they're rooted in a fundamental reality, which is that the earth is spinning.

SPEAKER_00 3:01

Right. But I mean, we could call a day what we call a week, but we decide to call it a day.

SPEAKER_03 3:06

Oh, well, yeah. I mean, we could call yeah, I mean, words are just sounds.

SPEAKER_00 3:10

Yeah, yeah. We socially constructed all of this stuff, man. Yeah. We did. Words even are a social construct. Yeah. Yeah. A socially constructed thing that we all agree on. And that because we agree on the meaning of the words, we can have a functioning society.

SPEAKER_03 3:23

Yeah. Which is actually a really good point because that only works if people are fluent and literate in what those words mean. That's a reason. The phrases mean. And a problem that is that we're in an epidemic, I would say, right now, is in literacy. We are in a literacy epidemic, and not just like reading words on a page, but media literacy. I would say that most people engage with forms of media that are not written, but like videos, movies, podcasts, whatever. And you also need to be literate in media to understand what's going on. And I, you know, as somebody who posts stuff on the line all the time, online all the time, on the line On the line? What am I trying to say? Post stuff online all the time.

SPEAKER_00 4:21

That sounds like one of those old school terms. On the line. Yeah, but I think what you meant was you post videos online. Online, yeah. Um and and so but you're you're getting the experience of expanding people. Yeah. What do you mean by that?

SPEAKER_03 4:35

Is uh so you know traditionally when you think about literacy, if you think about like the literacy rates in America, you're thinking about kids, maybe. You're specifically talking about usually it's like can kids read and write? Like if you look at these little symbols on a page, do you know what they say? And that's literacy, but really it goes deeper than that because you need to understand the context of all the words together, right? And then you maybe need to understand the context of the book as a whole, right? And you need to understand how that works in society at a time, because then you may realize that oh, this book is really a commentary on this deeper social issue. So like comprehension meta-analysis. Right? Yes, it's like it's this huge, expansive thing that's far more than can you look and phonetically sound out the way that these markings should sound. And the same thing is true with videos, you know. Some people will watch a video and come away with very, very, very different interpretations of what was said. And I think that that's just natural, right? We all have our own unique perspectives, but a huge piece of that is that people are like functionally media illiterate.

SPEAKER_00 5:52

Hmm. And so you're suggesting that part of it is just a failure to actually comprehend the intention of the video.

SPEAKER_03 6:00

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 6:00

But I mean, I guess that's that's all that's sometimes hard to pinpoint because, like you said, there's a spectrum of interpretations that could bleed over into a lack of comprehension.

SPEAKER_03 6:10

I agree. I agree with that. So I'll give a uh I'll give a good example, and I also I totally agree with you that also like as science communicators, a huge part of the front-end work that we have to do when we're making a video is try to um limit the ways that the our work can be misinterpreted. Yeah, so that also felt and one of the things that I think that I struggle with is knowing where the right level of like pedantic spoon feeding should stop. Because I don't want to be talked to like you're taking me from a first principal's language, you know what I mean? Yeah, like I have a I can connect some dots as well. Shout out to first principles, shout out shout out to the first principles, our homies at first principles, which which is different. Like a first principle's physics understanding is is different than like this is what a word means. Yeah, right. And it's like because you can't you you you limit the complexity of what you can communicate if you are starting with a preschool level like sentence.

SPEAKER_00 7:15

Yeah, yeah, I I would agree with that. I think that um it's incumbent on us to break things down simply, but try not to assume people's lack of intelligence. And there's a delicate balance there. Uh, one of the things that I like to do as best as I can, and sometimes this is harder when it's improvisational, is precision of language. A lot of times, yeah, like you said, the more words, like a lot of words have ambiguous meaning. But if you can use, and I always think the sign of someone having an excellent vocabulary in my mind is them using the most precise word, the most appropriate word for the time, not necessarily the biggest or the one with the most syllables, you know. Um, and I think those are the kind of things that limit, those are those are things that we can do as science communicators and communicators in general to limit the ambiguity of things that we're that we're saying.

SPEAKER_03 8:01

That that's a that's a great point. And I think that that's something personally that I want to work on is um be trying to find that precision more so to eliminate some ambiguity. But uh for somebody that is media illiterate, I don't think I'm not so sure that that matters at all. So I have a couple examples that are just off the top of my mind. A while ago, so I had a um a video that I posted on Reels that it got like a million views, and I would I had clipped one of these Jubilee conversations where it's like one doctor versus 20 anti-vaxxers. Like, what the fuck are we talking about here? Like, what is this? What is or it's like what like one racist versus 20 black people, or what you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_00 8:47

One Nazi versus 20 Jews. I mean, the Jubilee knows what they're doing with that premise. Yeah, you know, they're they're trying to hook you in.

SPEAKER_03 8:54

So uh it so it's a doctor, there's a bunch of anti-vaxxers. Um, the conversation for this specific topic was about fluoride in the water, which um, you know, is something that's used. It like helps with the dental health, uh dental hygiene of a of a population.

SPEAKER_02 9:10

Also it closes your third eye.

SPEAKER_03 9:12

Well, that's what I think those were the art. Yeah. Allegedly, whatever the whatever, whatever that means. There's this video. They were talking about whether or not there should be fluoride in the water. I don't want to get into a deep conversation about that because it's not very interesting to me. To me, it's just look up look up some studies and you'll see that you know, there's nothing that indicates that this is like causing autism or anything like that. But that you know, that's not where I want to take the conversation. In my video, I wasn't commenting on fluoride at all. Um, this woman was saying, I just want pure water. Why would I want extra stuff in my water? Now, what she meant in that moment was she wants water that doesn't have a chemical added like fluoride. But, you know, that argument is one that you oftentimes hear people say that is, in my opinion, completely reliant upon this naturalistic fallacy or like a purity fallacy. Things that are natural are good and healthy, things that are organic are good and healthy, things that are man-made are not because they're not natural. It's a can it's a fallacy. Yeah, poison ivy is natural. You shouldn't eat a poison ivy salad, right? You we can synthetically create things that are perfectly healthy. Like it's just because something is man-made, genetically, genetic modification, like um, you know, fruit that we eat now are enormous compared to what their wild counterparts are. Those are all genetically modified by humans. That doesn't make them like they are unnatural, that's true, but that doesn't make it unhealthy. That's a fallacy.

SPEAKER_00 10:45

Selective breeding is also a form of genetic modification. Yeah. You know, like just choosing the ideal aspects, even with like cats and dogs. That's genetically modifying the organism.

SPEAKER_03 10:55

Yeah. So it's so it's a fallacy to think that something that's natural or pure or whatever is is healthy. And a perfect example that I brought up, because what I was saying was not, I was making no commentary on fluoride at all. I'm saying that relying on a naturalistic fallacy will oftentimes lead you to the wrong place. And you could think about pure water, which was what she said in the video was pure water. And if you think about what actual, you know, what is water, H2O. But when we drink a glass of water, there's a lot of stuff in there. There's a bunch of different salts and minerals that just occur in any water. You know, you go into a stream, pick up some water. It's not pure water, it's not pure H2O. You can make pure H2O, it's very difficult.

SPEAKER_01 11:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 11:37

Uh, you can do it and it's oftentimes used. Distillation. Distillation purifies water, but it's not, even that water is not 100% H2O. So you shouldn't, you know, you you don't want to drink a bunch of distilled water because there isn't enough of the salts in it that our body needs, which is bad for our cells.

SPEAKER_01 11:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 11:56

And if you get 100% pure H2O, I mean, this is the type of thing that like dissolves metal. Like, you don't want to submerge your body in a pool. There are these neutrino detector pools that are underground and they are filled with, it's actually pretty cool to look at. They're filled with as close to pure H2O as you can get. And you like don't want to get you don't want to fall in there.

SPEAKER_00 12:21

Is it because it's mildly acidic?

SPEAKER_03 12:23

Um, yeah, it's it's pure H2O. So what water is a polar solvent. It's like that's like why it's so helpful for us because it can like wedge into things and it's like um uh it's polar. So it's like you know, you've got your your atom, your oxygen atom, and then there are like these hydrogen that are kind of pushed around. And so there's like a slight negative charge on one side and a slight positive charge on one side. Uh, and anyways, our bodies need a bunch of minerals and and salts, but pure H2O, if you drank a glass of pure H2O, this would be bad for you. If you drink too much, you would die from water intoxication. You can die from water intoxication if you just drink a bunch of water out the sink, but the nut the amount is so much higher.

SPEAKER_00 13:06

Yeah, so okay, let's zoom out a little bit here because it also feels like what you're describing may not be just media illiteracy. It may be just a failure to understand certain concepts, like this fallacy around things that are natural being healthier. But it leads to a lack of comprehension of certain media content.

SPEAKER_03 13:27

So agree with you that when I made that video, what I was addressing was not media literacy, it was scientific illiteracy around that specific issue. When I posted that video, the comments on my video demonstrated a lack of media literacy. How so? People were commenting that that's not what she meant, she didn't mean 100% pure H2O. She didn't, and they tried to bring the conversation back to fluoride. I wasn't making a video about fluoride. In the video, I specifically said if you took everybody in the United States and you asked them if they would prefer to drink a gallon of 100% pure H2O or a gallon of tap water, there would be a significant fraction of people, I think, you know, this is just my opinion, that would take the 100% pure H2O thinking that they were getting something that was very healthy. But that's not not, you know, 100% pure H2O is not healthy. You would die if you drank a gallon of it.

SPEAKER_00 14:30

So, I mean, in the context of media illiteracy, um, how could the bandwagoners in the comments have perhaps approached this in a more literate or savvy way? Like perhaps done their own research, applied, applied our wise framework. Like what are you suggesting here?

SPEAKER_03 14:46

There's no con there is it's a complete there, it's complete illiteracy. They don't know what I'm saying. My point in the video is the naturalistic fallacy that is oftentimes relied on in these health conversations will lead you can lead you to die. That's not a good way of gauging whether or not something is good for you. Yeah, saying, oh, well, I don't want this added chemical. Well, like that, adding a chemical that doesn't tell you anything. Like, what is it? What's the research on it, right? Like what if if you think that something 100% pure is healthy for you, but you drink 100% pure water and you drink a relatively small amount, you will die. You'll die from it. That's what the video was about. It's about the naturalistic fallacy. But many people are commenting and saying, Oh, well, no, that's not what she meant. I took what she meant out of context. But that was not my point in my video at all. And I think that it's clear when I watch it, and I mean there's a lot of people that agree with me and saw exactly the point I was making, but there was a lot of people that are like, no, nobody's saying that. You're twisting her words, you're being a grifter, you're being and it's like, you're that's illiteracy. They don't understand what I'm saying. I'm not saying that she was sitting there arguing that drinking 100% pure H2O was healthier. I was just saying that to me, that's an extension from the naturalistic fallacy that she was making in that video. Yeah, and so the illiteracy to me comes from the way that people are watching that video, like they missed the point entirely. And I thought the point was clear.

SPEAKER_00 16:21

What do you think they're doing when they're watching the video that's demonstrating this illiteracy? Um could you ask that in a different way? So, what I'm saying is they're watching the same video that we're watching, that you know, the the subject of it is this, you know, bias against things that are natural, right? You feel like that came across pretty clearly. They're watching the video and they're having a different reaction to it. What do you think they're processing differently from the other people that reacted to it the way that you wanted them to? Oh, these are just people who think that fluoride shouldn't be in water. So they have a pre uh they're predisposed to, you know, reacting to a specific like piece of the video that you have because they already have a certain belief that something is correct and they, you know, that they're trying to basically confirm it.

SPEAKER_03 17:04

Yeah, I guess so. I guess so.

SPEAKER_00 17:06

But and you know confirmation bias.

SPEAKER_03 17:08

Right. But I and that's the thing. I don't know if that's I mean, I definitely think that that's a part of it, but I also think that it's genuinely a lack of media literacy. They couldn't what they saw immediately was that I did change the conversation away from fluoride because that's not what I was talking. I did do that. That's not in that's not inaccurate. That is what I did because I was making a different point.

SPEAKER_00 17:31

That's what you're saying.

SPEAKER_03 17:32

And the point was missed as though you looked at a as though you open up your uh phone, look at a text, and it's hieroglyphics. And you're like, well, why are you talking about this? I'm talking about I'm saying something different, and that you and people are unable to get that. Some people, you know. And I'm finding this like more and more as I specifically as we broach topics that people um tend to be emotionally or maybe even like politically aligned with, it really becomes clear on who is and isn't understanding something. Right. I think it also happens when when we talk about science things, because it's like, you know, we start talking about like photons and stars and this sort of thing. It's easy for um for like maybe it not to be super clear from somebody who doesn't have a background talking about those things. Right. But I think it becomes just like glaringly clear when it's a topic like that. Another one that uh came up recently, we had a clip where we were talking about AI water usage. And in that episode, we were talking about a lot of stuff.

SPEAKER_01 18:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 18:38

And I was pointing out that AI's water usage isn't a problem. I'm not saying that there's not ethical concerns with AI. I'm not saying that there's not environmental concerns with AI. I'm saying that if we look at the numbers, the AI water usage isn't like a problem that we're running into the head of.

SPEAKER_00 18:58

Right. And then I guess the way the video was cut together, it was like right after that, you're like, well, let's look at golf courses and like how much water golf courses I'm consuming. And then the commenters, I think, would were coming at you like, well, this is what about like I saw one of them, one of them said this is whataboutism. Yeah. Right? Like this idea that uh, well, you're saying that's not bad, what about this other bad thing? And it's like, well, they're both bad, is like I guess a lot of people's takeaway from that.

SPEAKER_03 19:21

And so to me, this is illiteracy. You don't know what whataboutism is. That's not what happens. If you say that two plus two equals five, and I say, okay, wait, that's not a good one. Here we go. If if if I say that two plus two is four, and like that's that's true, that's a number, and then you say that three plus three is six, and six is higher than four, like, is that whataboutism? Is you that's really not a good example. That doesn't really work. That doesn't really work. So if um if you say that something is uh is a huge issue that's facing the country, and then you like label a statistic that shows that it's an issue, and it's a tiny percentage, and I want to demonstrate that while that may seem like an issue, um, here's this other thing that you've never thought of before that is an even higher percentage, but also tiny, then that's not whatabout ism, right? Like that to me, that's not whatabout ism at all. The my point was not, hey, look at what golf courses are doing. If you don't have a problem with this, you shouldn't have a problem with that.

SPEAKER_01 20:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 20:33

I wasn't making an argument for golf courses, and that's what a lot of the comments are saying. Oh, so you're arguing for this other thing that should also be abolished. That's not what I was doing. I wasn't making that argument at all. I'm not even making an argument.

SPEAKER_00 20:45

Yeah, I think I think the delicate dance of cutting together clips from a long-form piece of content is that we're your people are always gonna lose context. Yeah, you know, and so they just it's it's almost impossible to convey the full conversation that we had in this like short clip.

SPEAKER_03 21:00

It would end it would end up being like a 15-minute clip and nobody will watch it.

SPEAKER_00 21:04

Nobody's gonna watch it, right? And so I think, you know, I was actually Maynard and I were having a conversation about this literally yesterday about that this video and how it's probably one of our most commented on videos. I don't definitely not one of our most viewed ones, but people were really in the comments. Yeah. And I even saw after, you know, a lot of the dust had settled in the comments, people were coming up to the comments again and saying, Man, I love this comment section because it's kind of starting a conversation about this. And I think the general net positive outcome in an interaction like that is increased overall literacy about the subject. Like, sure, there's gonna be some dissenters. Do you think that that's what happened? I don't know if that's what happened. I think that what happens is when you when we broach a uh a conversation topic, right? There's there's two different levels of education that are happening. So, on one level, there's the real itself, where it you know it serves as a piece of educational content. And then some people will be like, uh, I don't know about this. Click on the comments, and then they see these dissenting opinions and the Discourse that's happening between you or other people, and you know, it's just even more educational. And again, for for someone that even desired, and this may be where media literacy is absent a lot of times, but for someone that's really curious and like wants to form their own opinions, they may do further research, they may be more compelled to do further research on that as a result of seeing all this discourse and be like, well, I want to kind of think for myself about this. Yeah. You know, what actually does the data say? You know, like I saw this video, I see these comments, but like what's what's reality, you know? I think that can compel people in a direction of education, in addition to being an educational piece of content.

SPEAKER_03 22:33

I definitely agree with that. I question, you know, I don't really know the the stats there. I question if that ever actually happens.

SPEAKER_00 22:41

Like whether people go offline and then try to do their own research for you.

SPEAKER_03 22:45

I think that a media illiterate person, I mean, and we're uh these things are now conflated, like media literacy, scientific literacy, like sometimes you and I talk about things and they are our opinions. Completely, you know, we get into like sci-fi, or if it's like how we feel about something. Certainly, these are our opinions. But if we're talking about something with with data, that's not really an opinion. It's not my opinion that AI's water usage is not a problem. I don't feel one way or another. I'm not pro-tech, I'm not pro-AI. It's not my opinion. Right. It doesn't use that much water if you compare it to all the other things that we do with water. It just doesn't. That's a fact. Not my opinion. What if this if that like triggers somebody? This is not me being like open like saying it how it is and not being afraid to trigger people. I'm not doing this is like me saying that seven is higher than six. If you believe that six is higher than seven, and you're pissed that I'm saying that seven is higher than six, I'm not being a contrarian, I'm not trying to rage bait for clicks, you know, I'm not being a grifter. Seven is just a higher, it's a larger number than six. It just is. Not my opinion. Yeah. And but you know, the I think just there's a there's such a problem. So one of the things I think we talked about this before, one of the things that I realized early on when I started getting into science, maybe like 10 years ago, and um, I had like a new group of friends. My whole life I had kind of just hung out with athletes. You know, we didn't, I don't think that there was always a lot of uh intellectual conversations. I wasn't like digging into data and science. I wasn't interested in that sort of thing. And one thing that I started to realize, I also became like more socially and politically aware, was that it became super obvious to me that conservatives they lacked scientific literacy, they ignored data that um disputed what they thought and felt. They just wrote it away like it didn't exist. They called it like leftist propaganda or communist, whatever, socialist propaganda. And it just became so so clear to me that they were scientifically illiterate, they just didn't understand things. And then as time went on more and more, I realized that that's not something that's exclusive to conservatives. That's just a person thing. Yeah, that's a human thing. Everybody ignores the data that says what they don't like. Everybody does that. Yeah, and they get pissed off when they see it.

SPEAKER_00 25:10

Yeah. And but it's it's like a hard piece of human nature. I mean, we strive to not do that, but I think even we could be guilty of that at times. 100%, you know, and that's like a that's like a conscious effort that I think we both make to not do that because we know we try to be like, okay, because even I remember that conversation, I was like trying to call you out, and like I was like, I don't know, have to see what the data says. And you show me the data, I'm like, oh, there's the data, you know.

SPEAKER_03 25:34

And I love that. I love when I have recently looked up something and somebody's like, oh yeah, well, like show where's your source? And I'm like, all right, here we go, right here.

SPEAKER_00 25:42

And and I love when that happens too. You know, I think I'm not someone that whose ego is attached to, you know, like if that if that happens and now my claim that that wasn't correct or that might have been accurate is wrong. I'm like, oh great, now I've updated my lexicon and you know, my data set that I can refer to. So like that's that's a positive experience for me. Yeah, you know, I agree, man.

SPEAKER_03 26:03

And I I think we see that in just in our conversations on a daily basis, it's kind of like, hmm, well, like, is that true? Like, is that right? Do you think it's that? And like that's yeah, like that's how you learn. Like, if you want the thing, it's you know, it's not necessarily that I want to be right, but it's that I want to know what's right so that I can be operating on that, like on an objectively true to the extent that things can be objectively true data set.

SPEAKER_00 26:29

I like wonder if people could benefit from learning. I don't know, uh I mean I'm just spitballing here, but I'm wondering if people could benefit from learning how to disagree more effectively. You know, because it's like like how to constructively disagree with someone, yeah, you know, uh, and like for for in that conversation, like I'm not looking to put you down as the wrong guy and one up you as like I'm right. It's more so like I'm in search of the truth just like you are. Yeah. And uh, you know, I might disagree with that claim because I'm not sure. Yeah. And I think like if more people approached conversations online like that, perhaps we'd have a more generally literate society. I don't know.

SPEAKER_03 27:09

Yeah, that's a good point. And I agree with that because even in you know what we did in that clip, which maybe is like the way that it was cut up, is more important to focus on because that's what people were commenting too. You were, you know, I said you may you may hear that there's billions of waters wasted on AI, and then you're like, that's a lot, because you know a billion is a lot, and then you look up what else is comparable, and it's like underneath something like golf courses, which people don't like um think a lot about. And I'm not saying that golf courses aren't also a waste of of water, they are. I'm just saying that it's a very tiny percentage, you know, it's not, it's we're not like running out of water, right? It's not an issue. And we look up these numbers, and you pointed out that it was from like two early 2000s, 03, 05, or something, which is true, and that also could be a problem because that number may be significantly different from now. So that's like something to bring up, and people brought that up. Like, oh, um, there was somebody, um but uh Nick, he's a lawyer, uh mutual you you know Nick. I met him at um Maynard's uh he's one of Maynard's homies. Okay, and he commented that he would like to see more up-to-date numbers. I'm like, okay, so that's a that's a decent critique of using that those old numbers, and like I respect that. My you know, the point wasn't that this is okay because golf courses are more though. The point, like, I don't care about golf courses, the golf courses don't matter. The point is the number is small when you compare it to anything else, to any other textiles, um, food, agriculture, uh, it's something even like corn. You may think, well, what will we eat corn? So that's that's necessary. We don't eat most of the corn that we grow. That's not true. We don't. You can look that up as well.

SPEAKER_00 28:59

Yeah, we feed it to other animals, right?

SPEAKER_03 29:01

We feed it to and it gets you, yeah, it gets uh converted into like high fructose corn syrup, which is something that's horrible for us. We have a we have like a sugar epidemic, right? And so like the ethical, I don't know. It's like this huge, messy, there's all of these things, and I think that there's a lot of fear-mongering that goes on, and I think that that bothers me specifically, and I maybe take offense to um sensationalized as somebody who take who's like takes serious uh science seriously. I think that I may take personal offense when people sensationalize these things. And for me, it feels empowering to be able to look at it and to be able to myself, just using my skills, be like, okay, well, you made this claim, but this is really not supported by the data. Uh, but and then if I make a video like that, it sounds like I'm pro-AI.

SPEAKER_00 29:54

Right. But what skills are you referring to specifically? Like I think that's a good toolkit for people to have in their arsenal.

SPEAKER_03 30:00

I well, I guess a good a good one is anytime that you hear statistics, think about how the statistics are being portrayed. Um, or number just numbers in general, right? If you if you hear the number 20 billion, it sounds like a lot. If you realize that it's 20 billion out of a hundred trillion, 20 billion is actually not a lot. That's a tiny percentage. Uh, you could also it could also go the other way, right? Um, you may hear that there, you know, if it's like 0.001% of something is happening and it's a bad thing. But if the total number of instances is um, again, 100 trillion, then that's actually a lot. Like that's a lot of instances of a bad thing happening if the total number is a hundred trillion. And so to be able to go and like figure out what these numbers actually mean, figure out how to like construct the context around it. And this is what I'm talking about in like in cont like contextual literacy. What is what does the picture look like? Our nothing about our communication, short form media is designed to give you a good context contextual look, it's designed to make you pay attention to it. So you um, you know, a while ago there was that paper that came out that was saying that they did these EEG studies on people who are using chat GPT and they had diminished brain use. And it's like, bam, headline. That sounds scary. People who are using chat GPT are literally getting dumber. Well, what's what's the context there? And a lot of great neuroscientists and science communicators talked about this. Well, the context really is A, that we don't know a lot of what EEGs tell us. You can't look at an EEG of my brain and say that, oh, lighting up here or there maps to something concrete. You can say that there's more electrical activity, but you could also, you know, as I get better at a task, um less activity, right?

SPEAKER_00 32:03

There's less activity or more focused, right?

SPEAKER_03 32:05

And so that's not that's not necessarily me being dumber or my brain working less. You could argue that that's efficiency, you know. Contextually, if you write a paper in chat with chat GBT, and I write a paper from you know my the knowledge in my head, and then afterwards we're both quizzed on what we wrote, you're not gonna remember what you wrote because you didn't write it.

SPEAKER_00 32:28

Yeah, you prompted it, right?

SPEAKER_03 32:30

So saying that people can't even remember what they do after using chat GBT, it may sound like a um like a big aha moment, but if you think about it contextually, no shit. If you don't write a paper and the and the AI does it for you, you're not gonna remember what you wrote. Why would you?

SPEAKER_00 32:48

I mean, I I kind of think of it like if you were trying to do long division in a calculator, like you're not gonna think about the sequential steps and maybe even have less retention of the actual answer that you achieved by just typing a couple things into the calculator.

SPEAKER_03 33:00

Yeah. Now, it you know, could could you do more research into like is that better or worse? Is there are there uh uh like effects there, impacts there, or is it completely irrelevant? I would say it's irrelevant. If I have my phone on me all the time, do I need to know how to do long division or multiplication? No, I mean, you know, I learned my multiplication tables when I was a kid like everybody else did. But if you have that, you know, it's yeah, my I'm not using my brain as much as a fifth grader who's getting quizzed on doing um handwritten math if I'm just doing it on my calculator. Does that mean that I have less that my brain is decaying or something like that? I don't think you can say that.

SPEAKER_00 33:37

I think it's a scary premise for people though, when technology moves as fast as it does today. You know, like we were able to digest the idea of a calculator over multiple decades. You know, we only had a few years to see all of the things that we used to use, like all the faculties we used to use for writing essays, yeah, and coming up with articles and coming up with ideas for videos, drafting emails, like all of these things have now become in some ways obsolete, although I always feel a little irritated when I can tell someone has written something using AI. Yeah, you know. Um, but it's something that a lot of people can and do do.

SPEAKER_03 34:12

Yeah. Totally agree with you on that. So, and then so there you get at like why you we do need more research on this. Because maybe the study that was done does not prove that people's brains are decaying from this thing. Does that mean that there aren't negative impacts? It doesn't mean that. In fact, the claims that they made may actually be true, they just didn't prove it with their study. Yeah, it wasn't conclusive. It wasn't right, they did not construct an experimental setup that could demonstrate what they were saying was happening. They were making like um interpretations going off on limbs from correlations that they found, and the correlations are not strong, the EEG signals are not strong, just the conclusions are not supported, but that doesn't mean that they're not true. You can't like I'm 100% convinced that you know there's ish there's some issues that are that are coming from us relying on these things. I mean, and you talk about being annoyed by when you could tell something's uh generated, you know, somebody is using AI to generate something. Totally. Uh on TikTok now, I guess Reels too, I can always tell when somebody is reading from an a chat GPT script, or you know, it could be anything, an AI, uh a generative AI script. It's like there's a lot of this blocked talking, like a few short words in a sentence. They're like there's a there's a a template there. It's kind of like when some something something, it's not just this, it's this. It's not this, it's not this, it's this. And it's I mean, I think that something like this only goes to accelerate our um I think that it's a form of illiteracy for people to not be able to tell that somebody's reading from a script.

SPEAKER_00 35:57

Yeah, I but I do think AI is going to get increasingly better at tricking us. Um, I think that there's a little bit of hubris, in my opinion, in um thinking that we can always discern AI from human. Yeah. Um, specifically, I mean, I think we talked about this on a previous episode or a future episode uh about nano banana and uh how they it's like the first AI model that I've seen where I'm like a pixel peeper and I'm peeping the pixels and I'm like, I can't tell that this is not a not a real photo. Yeah. Or an AI generated photo rather.

SPEAKER_03 36:31

Yeah. Well, I definitely agree with that. It's gonna keep getting better. It's not going to, it's gonna keep getting better at everything.

SPEAKER_00 36:37

Yeah, but it's just like what is a like I feel like a new framework, a new template for media literacy is necessary in a time like this, you know? Like, because it's not just it's not just a failure to comprehend what people are saying, it's a failure to distinguish AI from reality. Uh, it's a failure to maybe take take stock of, you know, maybe talk about this in the wise framework, take stock of what the interests of the the party or person that's trying to communicate to you have. Like these are all things that I think people miss and are thereby mass manipulated by, right? This uh false perception of authenticity and media content that feels real to us. Like, oh man, this person's really being real with me. Yeah. But it's actually someone with an agenda that's pushing a product forward. Right.

SPEAKER_03 37:27

Yeah, I I I totally agree. And I guess if I think about sequentially what's happening, um I would say it starts with a literacy problem. If you are illiterate, if you have media literacy, which again is like this huge umbrella term that means all these things, there's like a contextual literacy, there's do I know what these words mean? Uh, can I like place this from who from who it's coming from and like what their agenda is like? All of it has to do with understanding what's being communicated. And I think that the the media, once you have enough people that are media illiterate, um, and then you insert something like AI, uh, generative AI, whatever, then you kind of just pour gasoline on on the problem, and it gets it just gets way worse. Yeah. And you know, you you bring up a good point. The AI stuff is gonna get better and better. The media literacy is not. And so, you know, what does that what does that future look like? I don't even know how you can yeah, like a wise framework. Why people there's not enough critical thinking, I think, taught in kids in the world.

SPEAKER_00 38:44

Definitely, I just I mean, we've talked about this a little bit before, an entire educational system has to be overhauled. I mean, yeah, media literacy is one of the most important things that a kid today can have. And I think it should be a full, fully dedicated class in every classroom.

SPEAKER_01 39:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 39:02

Because the your ability to be like steered in different directions, become addicted to these tools, you know, um, make entire life decisions, align yourself with groups that don't have your best interests in mind, all of these are hinged on you just being able to critically analyze a piece of information and be like, I don't know if I agree with this. Let me see if there's other supporting evidence. What do other experts say? Like that whole thought process is just devoid. And a young person by default, I think we all had to like figure that out as we went along. Science education and even I'd say journalism education to an extent helps with that more than most professions.

SPEAKER_03 39:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 39:37

Um, but I think every kid needs that.

SPEAKER_03 39:40

100%. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 39:41

Every like adult needs that.

SPEAKER_03 39:43

Yeah, everybody needs it because we live in a completely media-driven world. And so, yeah, it's it's it's very important. Yeah, man, it's a it's a huge problem. And I think that I have no idea. I think about like on my end, how do how do I as a communicator eliminate and I know I know like some people who have made videos, for example, with the AI water usage thing, who've made videos, you know, Hank Green actually has long form video on YouTube where he talks about this. Um, and he just he points out the same thing. Now, it's a lot easier to do it in long form. Um, I think that probably somebody who listens to like people who are listening to the podcast will come away with a different perception from somebody who sees the short clip. Uh we uh definitely um like under understand that. Uh and there's probably a way to do it, but it's it almost always involves, and maybe this is just like a communication one-on-one thing, it uh it like involves not offending, not like triggering people's defenses, uh, which I guess is just like it's a human, is more so like a human problem. Because if you think something and somebody says something that's the opposite of what you think, all of us get triggered, like you know, all of us get triggered to defend that. And that's something that you have to like, I guess, like try to train yourself away from or be more comfortable.

SPEAKER_00 41:07

Turn down a knob on it. I mean, I definitely had that experience as a science communicator. It's like, I mean, you know, whether that be people with you know various political agendas or religious beliefs, uh, that I want to educate, you know. I think part of the process of education uh is establishing a rapport with a person that says, like, you and I, we're not that different. And, you know, you know, we might be curious about some of the same things, right? But if I'm just like, well, actually, this thing that all of your beliefs are hinged on is dumb. So like, let's just start there first. And then after that, I'm gonna teach you a lesson about how AI and water usage aren't correlated. I feel like most people will be like, screw this guy. I don't want to hear the next thing he has, I don't want to hear the first thing he has to say. Yeah. You know, so it kind of I feel like man, that's funny. Yeah, I feel like it's kind of tough because um there is a bit of a almost political role that a science communicator often feels compelled to play if they want to actually educate people that don't fully align with them ideologically, politically, etc.

SPEAKER_03 42:11

Yeah, and that that makes it I hate that because you have to, you know, let's like forget everything that's kind of like been said so far. And if you're curious about something, you want to like explore this new science, this new field, this new space, like your business opportunities, your creative opportunities, explore like the dynamic that you have with your friend or your family or somebody that you're in a relationship with. If you can't be if you can't be freely curious, then you can't you can't do it. You can't do it properly. You can't you can't like chart this unknown territory if you can't do it freely. If you're if you're completely constrained with like, well, there we can't go over there and we can't go over here and we can't go over there, then you're you're like not able to be to get the most out of it. You're like that that that like bothers me that you that we shouldn't be able to like I was thinking about this earlier. There are just you shouldn't not be able to say certain things. Like I shouldn't be uh oh there are some things that you deserve to be like shit on totally for saying, right? Like if I'm saying if I'm sitting here saying some crazy things like that, like obviously that's the case, right?

SPEAKER_00 43:32

Well, I mean, I guess that that may not be so obvious to everybody, like everybody's gonna have different boundaries of what those things are, you know?

SPEAKER_03 43:38

Yeah, yeah. But if it's so, you know, we talked about this um before we uh had a convers. This was a while ago, many weeks ago. No matter when this is posted, this is gonna have been months ago that we talked about this, and we were talking about testosterone's um usage or role in dealing with challenges, and there were a Number there were a couple studies that we pulled up that, and maybe it'll be helpful to um to like revisit those or like post those or something if this is a clip. And it was like that uh people with relatively high, you know, hormones are about like relative levels. We all have estrogen and testosterone, but those relative levels are different for oftentimes in like males and females. And so, and it's obvious there's obviously a huge distribution. So there's some people who are probably a lot closer and some people who um are a lot a lot further away. And but there are these studies that were saying that uh, you know, positive feelings, which just to go neurochemistry one-on-one, since I'm not a neuroscientist, a positive feeling is like associated with some like dopamine or some serotonin or something like that. And that you that people may tend to feel more positive when it comes to challenges, overcoming challenges, dealing with that hardship if they have relatively higher levels of testosterone. That's super interesting. Questions that may branch off from that are like, well, what differences does that lead to in men and women in dealing with hardship? Right. You think about motivational content for men and women. For women, it tends to be much more of a um, I think, communal and supportive thing. For me, that isn't really what motivates me a lot of the time. For men, a lot of times the motivational content is like you need to like you need to man up, you're acting like a bitch, whatever. And it seems very harsh and it seems very like toxic, but there's something about like if there, if it's true that there is this relationship with relative testosterone levels, then maybe that sort of makes sense why um motivational content may tend to be different for men or women. Like, these are just questions that I feel like you should be able to explore and ask. But does that seem like I'm trying to uphold some patriarchal heteronormative thing about men, you know, having to be hard and not being able to be like soft and loving, and that I'm just I've been brainwashed. You see what I'm saying? Yeah, like it's like I can't we you should be able to explore that stuff, like something like that.

SPEAKER_00 46:10

You should be able to explore the validity of controversial ideas or be able to learn from people who ideologically differ from you, you know. Yeah, I like to be able to say that, and I don't think this is true about me, but like I aspire to being able to learn from anyone, right? Like the even people that are like, ah, this guy is this guy's dumb. He's not, there's nothing that he says as of substance or worth it. I'm like, wait, there's probably something that that person has to offer. Yeah. You know, and I like to be able to, when I think of the type of curiosity that I have, I like to be able to pull that out of anybody, you know? Uh because I, you know, interviewed scientists have interviewed people from all kinds of different walks of life. And it's like, yeah, I always want to be able to learn from people despite, you know, like, yeah, we would disagree on this thing. Okay, cool, but like, you know, how much what do you know about astronomy? Or you know?

SPEAKER_03 46:59

Yeah. There's this quote uh from Abraham Lincoln, I think, that goes something like, um, I don't like that man that much. I should get to know him better, or something like that. Uh, and yeah, like I I agree. It's like this it's a very you know, weirdly, I think that it stems from maybe like wanting to feel superior to other people. It's like, what can you teach me? Especially if you and I disagree on something that I have like morals or ethics attached to, and you disagree with me there, then it's like, oh, you're actually a worse person than me. Right. And there's nothing that I can learn from you.

SPEAKER_00 47:43

And yeah, and I I think this idea of one group of people or one individual take like having just by nature a moral high ground over the other, is a byproduct of the indoctrination that's occurred as a result of social media usage and media literacy. Yeah, because what's happening on social media platforms is we're receiving a feed, or many people are, I would say, of things that are designed to keep us engaged.

SPEAKER_02 48:07

All of us, like echo chambers, right?

SPEAKER_00 48:09

Echo chambers or things that will create outrage for us, right? Like this is so crazy. How could somebody think of this? I gotta click on it to learn more about it, because like how stupid are these people? Like, and that that's something that can draw you in and make you engaged uh and make you outraged, right? Um, and so you know, we're getting this curated feed of either the echoing chamber of things that we agree with and want to support, or the things that we think are so stupid that we couldn't ever possibly support them. Uh, and you know, if we just uh incorporate all that into our our general approach to interactions with people, I think that we're now becoming cogs in this wheel uh of social media and not allowing ourselves to learn from a person, grow from experiences in ways that I think we have the hardware and software to do as you know in our minds, but it's just like we're so attached to social media that we can't see the validity of another person's viewpoint or another person's perspective on something outside of this viewpoint that we disagree with them on.

SPEAKER_03 49:09

Yeah, that feels like that maybe that almost feels like the natural human thing to happen. Like when we talk about you talk about like your ability to hold this perspective where you can learn from somebody who thinks differently than you. That, yeah, I guess that's a part that's like a human trait. You're a human and you have it. Um, but I think it's also a human trait to like shun people who think differently than you. I think it's also a an a human trait to think that you're better than people who think differently than you. And the way that you do that in your mind is by making them bad. They're like a that's a bad person. That's a that opinion is different than the one that I hold. You're actually a wor like you're a worse human. You're bad, you're a bad person. And like all of these things are somehow all of these things are a part of being human, yeah. Which is kind of strange. But I guess it almost speaks to our sheer adaptability. Yeah, they're like all these ways that we can be, think, feel, um, interact, and a lot of them seem counterproductive in this space where there's like an infinite amount of information.

SPEAKER_00 50:26

Right. But if survival is at stake, if we're hunter-gatherer, small hunter-gatherer society, and you know, this guy likes to eat these and less nutritious berries, and we all prefer the more nutritious berries, yeah, this guy's an idiot. We gotta get this guy out of the group because the guy, people who like these berries, we're gonna survive and reproduce. You know, so like perhaps, you know, there's this evolutionary advantage to having these perspectives at some point in human history. But now it seems like a lot of these uh other like othering of people, group think, and like creating these out groups doesn't really help us as much in the context of media literacy. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 51:03

Well, I guess to maybe that's like the in this environment, maybe like an idea that's forming for me is that media literacy is the only tool that you have. You don't have any other tools except for your ability to like understand, assess, and filter that information somehow. And the term that I'll call that is media literacy, but in there is include is included scientific literacy. It's um, I guess like your understanding of logical fallacies, you know, like arguments when people are um like committing these fallacies that may make you think one thing or another and they may seem like they're convincing or uh persuasive. Logical and psychological fallacies. Yeah. Yeah. And that like that's that's the only tool, that's our only defense right now. And um even that I think is probably getting eroded when you consider um the, you know, we to we uh talked about that, we've talked about this many times, the idea that there are chatbots that most people are interacting with on a daily basis that based on what Sam Altman and Elon Musk think are going to influence how you your ability to even be media literate. It's gonna like they're like it's like skewing your own personal filter on, which is a little sort of a terrifying thing to think about, especially, I don't know, for maybe somebody like who us or you know, people who listen to the show who feel like that it's important to them to like be curious and build up this, you know, uh like a complex filtering system. And like you, you know, I don't want somebody tampering with that behind my back, which maybe what is happening when you're engaging with it's kind of scary with a large language model.

SPEAKER_00 52:49

Right. And because yeah, it's it's learning these things about you, it's kind of understanding your biases and what potential psychological fallacies you could have, and then it's making its own decision about what you should know based on your prompts. When you input this thing based on Dakota's preferences and biases, here's what he wants to see, and let me like let me complete that blank, let me fill in the blank.

SPEAKER_03 53:10

Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_00 53:10

Uh, and it's it it in that way could be manipulating us in a I mean, and I don't want to sound conspiratorial, I think it's it's it's less, it doesn't have to be so like uh, you know, big government, like big AI, right? It it literally is just when you have a small group of AI researchers that are fine-tuning this thing, and maybe some of the people that they outsource overseas to like, you know, comb through data sets and make sure that things are accurate. Um, you know, this is not like the represent this is not an representative sample of the entirety of humanity to the extent that we'll all feel comfortable with the decisions that these people are making with the tools that we you know confide in and receive counsel from. Again, as adults, we probably do a lot less of that than kids. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 53:55

Yeah, it's uh it's weird because I have more I had just have these like mixed feelings about it. Like everything agree with everything that you say, agree with all of the it almost makes me feel like we should just shouldn't, you know, I should just not be using that. But it's so helpful for so many things, right? It's like the uh, you know, we sort of like all have enough ropes to hang ourselves with when it when it comes to these things. Because these are, I mean, they're tools, right? Like in a tool, you can use it for a saw is a great tool. If you saw down every tree, you know, you're gonna screw the environment up, you're gonna end up, you're gonna end up hanging yourself from that. And there's a lot, there's this um Easter Island. You ever heard of Eastern Island Easter Island? Sounds familiar. The uh this island where there are these the giant heads, those giant head statues that are like sticking from the ground. And uh I think for a while it was a bit of a mystery, like what happened to the population here. And there's there's lots of anthropology that's been done to try and tease out exactly what that is. So there were like these different tribes on Easter Island, I'm gonna call them tribes, maybe there's a different, a different name. And they kind of like competed with each other and they would build these uh these stone heads. And um, what they would do when there was conflict after a group like one or lost a conflict, they would kind of like topple the heads of the the other tribe. And so, like on the island, there's a lot of heads that are knocked over, there's a lot of them that are still standing. Well, it's a small island, and they would cut down the trees on the island to do various things, um, like go fishing or whatever, and they eventually like cut down all of the trees on the island. So they like depleted their their resources altogether, and ultimately it led to population collapse. And as the population was collapsing, they were like warring with each other, and eventually they all just like the last person died, which is a it's like a which is crazy because you know on a small island, it seems like you would figure out faster, oh wait a second, we're going somewhere where we're going to lead to the end of everything. And on on a large-scale society, that also at all times is happening. Now it doesn't have to be the end of everything, but you can be headed into like an awful direction. And if people on a small island can not with you know cannot stop themselves from literally cutting down the last tree, uh what hope do we have to put the brakes on anything? We tried to do it with climate change, we like have blown past all the markers. Uh I think it was like 1.5 degrees warming over some number. We like blew past that. And then we and then Donald Trump and him just removed us from the agreement altogether. It's like there's no, I just we don't I just don't think that we have what it takes to like control ourselves.

SPEAKER_00 57:03

I think that we have and I go back to this argument that I presented before. I think that we have what it takes to save ourselves in a moment of crisis, and we will protect ourselves, we will self-organize and protect ourselves as a species in the face of a large-scale imminent existential threat.

SPEAKER_03 57:25

I guess on average, that has always happened.

SPEAKER_00 57:28

Historically, right. I think anything that's been an imminent existential threat to us, we've surmounted. True. And right now, I mean, and again, I I don't want this to be interpreted as, you know, there isn't a climate crisis happening, or there, you know, these aren't very serious problems that a lot of people all over the world are currently experiencing adverse effects from as imminent threats. Yeah. But I think what I'm referring to is something like uh, and you know, this was like the situation from don't look up was this immediate threat of an asteroid. Now they didn't, they weren't able to handle it appropriately. I don't know if you saw you saw Don't Look Up, right? Yeah, yeah. Great movie. They weren't it's great science fiction. Um they weren't able to handle the imminent threat of the asteroid, I think, because of uh I think that was like a hyperbolic uh reaction of humanity. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 58:16

Well, I I yeah, I think it was like an accurate read. We live in a time where nobody knows what's true or not.

SPEAKER_00 58:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 58:22

And nope, nobody had, yeah, there's very low levels of scientific literacy and very low levels of media literacy. So you don't know what is being communicated to you. You don't know like what to trust, why not trust what to believe, what not to believe.

SPEAKER_00 58:35

Yeah, and you know, I think in the case of the movie Don't Look Up, the people literally didn't trust the experts. Like it's actually, and and that's why things went the way they did, because people had economic interests, political interests, and ultimately there were like a bunch of oligarchs and billionaires that had their own interests above the rest of humanities that they tried to, you know, see play out.

SPEAKER_03 59:01

Yeah, and you know what's really interesting from the media literacy perspective is when you think about that movie, most people know that this is a commentary on well, I think most people assume that it's commentary on climate change. That could be, I think, and then there are a lot of people who just reject the movie as a whole because of that. Oh, this is just leftist, socialist, climate change propaganda. That this movie could be an allegory for anything. Yeah, this could be an allegory for the oncoming AI revolution. This could be an allegory for literally anything. I think so. Anything where there's something that's true that you have been convinced to mistrust the experts on, or that you don't that you just like people don't know. And so, like, media, like which is like weird, right? Because it's like, well, somebody who says that this is a a metaphor for um climate change is correct. They have have been media literate to like understand that at least in part this was like the messaging, you know, this was sort of like the thing behind the mask of the movie. I think that's accurate, but it can, you know, this can sort of like apply, apply anywhere.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:12

Yeah. You know what's interesting? I just had this thought while you were talking. The character, I guess the protagonist of the film, for at least for the most part of the film, was Leonardo DiCaprio's character. Yeah, he was a physicist, I believe. Uh he's an astronomer. He was an astronomer. I think at the University of Hawaii. He was like a very outspoken astronomer that like got a lot of fame and influence when he started to talk against. I think he was one of the early people to discover this phenomenon and become a good one.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:39

One of his grad students, pretty cool. One of his grad students discovered it.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:42

Yeah. And I actually, in one of the science communication workshops that I did for a university, I played the clip of him going into Twitter and going in the comments of people. I was like, wait a minute, this is funny. I think it actually was something that I think he was really passionate, like his character was specifically passionate about addressing these like, you know, these like these individual detractors against science. And I was like, man, that's fascinating in the context of our conversation. Because I think that that's a con that's a contrast between our approach to science communication. Like I feel like for you, it's more important to address a lot of these individual detractors. And I might weigh like a different set of values when I like see someone that maybe says something against, even if it's factually incorrect, I'm just I I feel like I'm weigh a different set of values. But what do you feel like is your thought process when you see someone that's like, you know, because I feel like you you respond to a lot of comments on on a lot of these kind of like videos.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:40

So what do you think your thought process is? What's your thought process as you're seeing the comment to be like, gotta respond to this one? I don't know.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:49

Maybe I shouldn't respond to comments anymore.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:51

I I mean, I I don't I wouldn't think that it's that straightforward. Like I I think we may have talked about this a little bit on the show. I don't I know we talked about it behind the scenes.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:59

I think maybe, okay. I I I I think maybe now, like as this is going on, and I'm realizing, okay, take this to the extreme, this media literacy thing to the extreme. Let's talk about something that doesn't matter at all. There's nothing that anybody could be politically. I want to say that you can't have any political opinions about it, but it's Harry Potter. And there was somebody who commented on the video, a joke video that I made that was like, can't believe you watched that. Harry Potter is racist, misogynistic, and transphobic. And I was like, Okay, so my so there can be like strong political and social uh opinions about this. So it was a joke video that I made. Um, I watched Harry Potter over the break, the first one. I had never seen any of them. There's like this ongoing thing I think that people know about me that I've never seen Star Wars, I've never seen Star Trek, I've never seen like all these things that a lot of nerds have seen. Super cool, by the way, that you haven't done those things. I think it's just not something that I brag about. People attack me for it. And there's so I made this video. I was like, okay, so I saw Harry Potter. Um, like, am I good enough to be accepted in the nerd community now? And for me, this is one of the most clever videos that I've ever made. And I'll explain why. I'll explain why. So this is a treat for everybody listening. Um, so it's called, and there's this thing with nerds where it's like there's like this gatekeepy thing where it's like you have they have to make sure that you got everything right and you understand the manga and they understand the lore, or you're not gonna be accepted. And I think that that's ridiculous. And so I make this video and I'm like, well, I saw Harry Potter, and there was a really good quote that I wanted to share with everybody. So it's the first Harry Potter. Um, uh, Harry Potter is looking for like a sword and a stone in this castle. Uh, and you know, it's it's called Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, but I called it Harry Potter and the Sword and the Stone. So I'm already mixing up Harry Potter with Arthur and the Sword and the Stone. And um he's like, so Harry Potter is looking in front of this mirror and he sees his parents because he wants parents, and the mirror shows you what you want. Harry Potter doesn't have parents, and I say it was because he was raised by wolves. And then Dumbledore walks up, who I call Merlin, who is the warlock in The Sword and the Stone. And then I like make up a bunch of stuff about Merlin. Sometimes I start calling him Gandalf.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:16

I'm just mixing up all this nerd shit. Which I believe Gandalf and Dumbledore were played by the same guy at one point. I'm pretty sure. You I have no idea. You would know that. I don't know. Freaking the dude with the helmet, Next-Men. Um the metal the metal guy, uh Magneto? Magneto, yeah. I'm pretty sure the same act, he's he's dead now. But he played Dumbledore, Magneto, and I believe. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:42

Um you're probably the exact type of person that got pissed off at that video that I made.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:47

Yeah, because I guess I'm already correcting things. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:49

Um, and you know, it starts off with something subtle, which is like, wait, it's Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. He said the sword and the stone. And immediately you're like, oh, okay, so this guy probably like we should correct him, that's wrong. Not even realizing that if I watched the movie, why would I be saying that he was looking for a sword and a stone? It's one thing to, it's one thing to be like, oh, sword and a stone, bro, it's the sorcerer's stone. Saw hundreds of comments like that. Uh, if you really, if I really watched it, I would know that he was not looking for a sword and a stone. I'm mixing up the guy's name and people leaving unironic comments, like correcting things that I say, like, bro, it's not this, it's this. Yeah. I don't understand how you could watch that video and not realize that it was a big joke. Yeah, I was completely joking. By the end, I'm saying that Gandalf and Yoda trained at the same uh boarding school for delinquent wizards with behavioral issues. Literally, in the video, I'm saying that. I do not understand how a person with any level of media literacy could see this and come away with any other opinion than this guy's clearly joking. It starts off with small mistakes, it ends up with things I'm Just completely making up. And so when I see something like that, I'm like, oh, these are the same people who are looking at other other videos that I make.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:10

Maybe it's not worth it when people say things that are way out of pocket, it's just not worth it to even engage at all. Because I'm talking to somebody who, you know, this comparable for me, this would be somebody who's looking at a newspaper and is seeing hieroglyphics. Like you don't there's just like the the literacy has gotten to a is gotten to a point that there are just some percentage, maybe like the dumbest 15% of comments I should just ignore. But I do think that you can be, you pointed this out, there is like construction that can happen. There's constructive conversation that can happen. And I think that I deep down, like that's what I want. I love when people comment like, oh, well, what about well, what about this? Or like, ah, you're thinking of this. And it's like there's a bit an opportunity to have some constructive conversations there.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:58

Yeah, I I think it, yeah, I think it's definitely both. I want to go back really quick to what you were saying about the kind of mixing and matching Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:06

Um you see how yes, you are, bro. You gotta go back.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:11

I think I'm I think I'm I think I'm understanding it a little better, like from their perspective. Uh-huh. I don't know if I don't I don't know if they're offended. I'm I can see how they might be triggered. So let me give you an example. So um, you know, I think we're both actually kind of like this. Like I have this quality where it's like I want things to like I want people to say the things that are correct. And like it's like I like almost robotically, if someone like says like, I don't know, I went to the I don't know, I went to the public storage unit to buy my groceries today. I'll be like, oh, you went to the store. Like it it's like not, it's like I'm like, I know that they know what I meant. I know what they meant. Yeah or I'm sorry, I know what they meant, they know what they meant, but like I have to like say, you know, it's almost a compulsion as opposed to like I'm so offended, I just compulsively want the accurate thing to be stated, right? Yeah. Um I could see, you know, certain like if if certain people have built their entire lives around certain lore, which, you know, not judging you for that decision, it's not a decision I would make. Um, but like if you're like a Harry Potter convention attendee, right? And your whole life is built around this lore, and then someone comes in jokingly butchering all these little details, you almost have this compulsion to like correct them.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:28

I I don't think I hear what you're saying, and I don't think that those people are offended by it. I think that I think that those people, and it's like hard to know, right? Because there's a lot of comments, and there's a lot of people who are like Harry Potter fans, and they're like, oh, like they're like jokingly saying that they're gonna beat me up. I think it's funny.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:44

I think it's funny, right?

SPEAKER_03 1:08:46

But and I don't think that a person with I don't think that it has anything to do with being locked into the Harry Potter universe. I think it has everything to do with being media illiterate. You don't know what you're watching, you don't understand that this is obviously a joke. I'm joking with you.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:03

I guess some people are like, just like I feel like there's, you know, let's say like there's some things that you know you wouldn't joke about with some people because you know what they've been through. And there's some things like you know what I mean? So I feel like you're like any joke has the potential to rub some subsect of the population the wrong way.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:20

Yes. If you're well, I mean, if you say anything, I has I think it has the potential to rub somebody the wrong way who's media illiterate because they don't know what you're saying. So you could say the sky is blue. If somebody is completely illiterate, they're not maybe in their yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:37

So thought experiment. Let me ask you, how would you feel about this, right? I'm a I'm a I just like took my first science class last week. I'm a I'm like a comedian, I'm a science journalist. Yeah, and I write an article, it's a joke article, and I'm like, look, new exoplanet discovered, you know, uh five feet away from, or sorry, new exoplanet discovered right in planet Earth's orbit. And, you know, like I talk about how uh, you know, man, like it's it's crazy because you know, Pluto is right next to us, so you know, and and and then like you know, we have like three moons and like just butchering all these details about astronomy, and it's like, oh, but it's just a joke, man. Like you can't like would you feel a compulsion to like I think that if you did it in a way that was funny, I would think it was hilarious. But that just depends on sense of humor then. I don't think so. Funny, like whether or not you perceive it as funny depends on your sense of humor.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:32

Okay, let's use let's use a slightly different, I want to pull away from your example. Let's use a slightly different, uh you are familiar with the onion, right? Mm-hmm. Yeah. It's a satire. It's a satirical. Right. It's all a joke, it's always a joke. Um, I don't, I disagree. Uh sure, are there some people who may see a video and be like, oh, it's not that funny? Well, you may not bust out laughing, but if you appreciate satire, if you have that level of media literacy to understand satire, then you know it's a joke. And it doesn't matter if you think it's funny or not. When if you watch an onion article, I see it all the time. Onion, an onion video come up on my feed on uh TikTok, and I'll look at the comments and people will be pit. They'll be correcting shit. Yeah, they don't, right? So it's not about do you think this is funny or not? It's about do you have the literacy to understand that this is satire and that it's not meant, it's a joke, it's not serious.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:27

I think another thing that adds to people's ability to discern satire with the onion is because they specifically built a brand around satire. And so you see this onion article, you're like, oh, wait a minute, this is the onion. I know what they're about. You know, and like, you know, I might even get fooled by a headline and be like, yo, that's crazy. But then I'll see, oh, this is the onion, right? Right. Whereas you've become a pillar of the industry. That's not media, that's not literacy. That's not media literacy, though. It's trusting a brand. But let me finish the point. So you become a pillar of literacy, like you become a pillar of astronomy, factual knowledge, right? For nerds. Like nerdy people like me, like look at yourself, I'm like, man, that's a cool thing that I can trust that Dakota knows about. He's not gonna lead me astray. And then you come in and then you start butchering Harry Potter facts. Yeah. As a nerd, look, I think it's funny, but as maybe a different subgenre of nerd, I might be like, how dare you? I feel betrayed. This is like, this is an astrophysicist that I thought I could trust. Now coming in here and messing up my favorite movie of all time.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:25

I don't, I hear what you're saying. I don't agree. I am in disbelief that such a person exists. There are people who made comments like, oh damn, now I think the earth is flat. Which is a riffing on the joke that you were just saying. Which is like, okay, this is an astronomer that was trusted. He's now saying all this bullshit. Now I don't believe anything he said about astronomy. And that person is making a joke. And I think that that's fine. I like understand, I understand that. I don't, I just, I do not believe I am in utter disbelief, and I'm convicted in that disbelief that there are people who feel that, who feel that way.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:04

If you're if you're listening this far and you're we we probably have thousands of people that hear us right now. If you're one of these nerds that Dakota has offended from that Harry Potter video, you can't speak out. Let him know you exist. I'm trying to stand up for you all. I'm not one of you, technically, but Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:24

You got a little pressed though about the I don't feel like I was pressed. No, you weren't.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:28

You weren't. I don't feel like I was pressed.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:30

But the reason the reason that I want to go back and look at that is because it's like that doesn't matter. It also is obviously a joke. There's it's I mean, it's just obvious, it's obviously not serious. Even if you didn't think it was funny, you're like, okay, you get this. Like, I'm not I don't even think that it's trolling. I guess you could can you can consider it trolling. If anything, I'm like, I'm not really trolling. Uh I just was just thought it was funny. I thought it was funny. I thought it was a joke, you know. I thought it was, I thought it was kind of funny.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:03

And um I've been there before though, man. I definitely had I definitely feel like I do that too. I'm more in person than online, but like just stepping on people's toes, and it's like, dude, I I was joking. I don't like I don't know. I was joking. Like, what what do you want me to do? Like, I was joking, we can't joke anymore.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:19

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:20

I've definitely had that feeling about stuff. Yeah. So I definitely get that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:24

And if you know, I I also agree with you that it's like you, you know, establishing yourself as like a communicator of facts. Um, but I just I think I just wholeheartedly feel like I'm always gonna be myself. Like a part, a huge on my platform I make jokes all the time. Even in a video where I'm talking about science stuff, I may make a joke, right? We joke a lot on the podcast. Um when I do my I do like these IG uh story Q ⁇ A's and I make jokes on there all the time. Like I'm gonna make jokes. If you're perhaps like um I just you you shouldn't follow like you shouldn't interact with my content if if you just don't like don't think that life is I don't know, I don't think everything's too serious. I think shit's funny. I think that I'm funny. And if you don't think that I'm funny, then you're just not gonna like me because I'll be trying to be following me.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:15

I'd be trying to be funny, and you're not gonna you're gonna just be gonna be pissed off because I'm think I'm fucking I think I'm funny.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:23

Well, I think you're funny too, man.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:25

So if you don't think I'm funny, then fuck you.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:28

Yeah, well, I think on that note that was a joke.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:33

If you don't think I'm funny, that's okay, please don't unfollow me. I don't have enough followers yet, so I can't isolate my audience. And I'm sorry to all the Harry Potter.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:41

And this is also a joke. This is also a joke. I'm not being serious, I'm not sorry for making that video. I do think that I'm funny though.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:49

Yeah, well, but not fuck you if you don't. I hope you all gain some tools uh for media literacy attention. Thanks for tuning in this week, y'all. And as always, stay curious, PCs.