I'm Michael Shermer, director of the Skeptics Society, publisher of "Skeptic" magazine. We investigate claims of the paranormal, pseudo-science, fringe groups and cults, and claims of all kinds between, science and pseudo-science and non-science and junk science, voodoo science, pathological science, bad science, non-science, and plain old non-sense. And unless you've been on Mars recently, you know there's a lot of that out there.
Ej, ja sam Michael Shermer, direktor Društva skeptičnih, izdavač magazina Skeptik. Istražujemo tvrdnje o paranormalnom, kvazi-znanosti, i marginalnih grupa i kultova te svih vrsta rubnih tvrdnji -- znanosti i kvazi-znanosti i ne-znanosti i otpada od znanosti, vudu znanosti, patološkoj znanosti, lošoj znanosti, ne-znanosti i obične stare besmislenosti. I osim ako niste skoro bili na Marsu, znate da toga ima dosta vani.
Some people call us debunkers, which is kind of a negative term. But let's face it, there's a lot of bunk. We are like the bunko squads of the police departments out there -- well, we're sort of like the Ralph Naders of bad ideas,
Neki ljudi nas zovu razotkrivačima, što je neka vrsta negativnog naziva. Ali budimo realni -- puno je toga pokrivenoga, i mi kao odred policijske uprave za tajnovito, ispiremo. Dakle, mi smo kao Ralph Naders loših ideja --
(Laughter)
(Smijeh)
trying to replace bad ideas with good ideas.
-- pokušavajći zamijeniti loše ideje s dobrim idejama.
I'll show you an example of a bad idea. I brought this with me, this was given to us by NBC Dateline to test. It's produced by the Quadro Corporation of West Virginia. It's called the Quadro 2000 Dowser Rod.
Pokazati ću vam primjer loše ideje. Donio sam ovo sa sobom. Ovo su nam dali s programa NBC Dateline na testiranje. To je -- to je proizvela Quadro Corporation iz Zapadne Virginia-e. Zove se Quadro 2000 Dowser Rod.
(Laughter)
(Smijeh)
This was being sold to high-school administrators for $900 apiece. It's a piece of plastic with a Radio Shack antenna attached to it. You could dowse for all sorts of things, but this particular one was built to dowse for marijuana in students' lockers.
Ovo se prodavalo ravnateljima srednjih škola za 900 dolara po komadu. To je komad plastike s običnom antenom dodanom na nju. Možete otkrivati sve moguće stvari, ali ovaj je napravljen za otkrivanje marihuane u ormarićima učenika.
(Laughter)
(Smijeh)
So the way it works is you go down the hallway, and you see if it tilts toward a particular locker, and then you open the locker. So it looks something like this. I'll show you.
Dakle način na koji to radi je, idete kroz hodnik i vidite ako skreće prema nekom ormariću, i onda otvorite ormarić. Dakle to izgleda otprilike ovako. Pokazat ću vam.
(Laughter)
(Smijeh)
Well, it has kind of a right-leaning bias. Well, this is science, so we'll do a controlled experiment. It'll go this way for sure.
Ne, to -- u redu, ima nekako naginjanje na desno. Dakle, pokazat ću vam -- u redu, ovo je znanost, provest ćemo kontrolirani eksperiment. Ići će sigurno u ovom smjeru.
(Laughter)
(Smijeh)
Sir, do you want to empty your pockets, please, sir?
Gospodine, hoćete isprazniti vaše džepove. Molim vas, gospodine?
(Laughter)
(Smijeh)
So the question was, can it actually find marijuana in students' lockers? And the answer is, if you open enough of them, yes.
Znači pitanje je bilo, može li to stvarno naći marihuanu u učeničkim ormarićima? I odgovor je, ako ih dovoljno otvorite -- da.
(Laughter)
(Smijeh)
(Applause)
(Pljesak)
But in science, we have to keep track of the misses, not just the hits. And that's probably the key lesson to my short talk here: This is how psychics work, astrologers, tarot card readers and so on. People remember the hits and forget the misses. In science, we keep the whole database, and look to see if the number of hits somehow stands out from the total number you'd expect by chance.
Ali u znanosti, moramo pratiti promašaje, ne samo pogotke. A to je vjerovatno ključna lekcija mog kratkog govora ovdje, je da tako rade vidovnjaci, astrolozi, i čitači tarot karata i tako dalje. Ljudi pamte pogotke; oni zaboravljaju promašaje. U znanosti moramo čuvati cijelu bazu podataka, i gledati ako se broj pogodaka nekako ističe od ukupnog broja koji biste očekivali slučajno.
In this case, we tested it.
U ovom slučaju smo to testirali.
We had two opaque boxes: one with government-approved THC marijuana, and one with nothing. And it got it 50 percent of the time --
Imali smo dvije neprozirne kutije, jednu s THC marihuanom odobrenom od vlasti, i jednu praznu. I pogodilo je u 50 posto slučajeva --
(Laughter)
-- što je točno koliko bi očekivali s modelom bacanja novčića.
which is exactly what you'd expect with a coin-flip model. So that's just a fun little example here of the sorts of things we do.
Dakle to je samo mali zabavni primjer vrste onog čime se mi bavimo.
"Skeptic" is the quarterly publication. Each one has a particular theme. This one is on the future of intelligence. Are people getting smarter or dumber? I have an opinion of this myself because of the business I'm in, but in fact, people, it turns out, are getting smarter. Three IQ points per 10 years, going up. Sort of an interesting thing.
Skeptic izlazi jednom u kvartalu. Svaki ima određenu temu, poput ovoga koji je o budućnosti inteligencije. Postaju li ljudi pametniji ili gluplji? Ja imam mišljenje o ovome osobno zbog posla kojim se bavim. Ali, uistinu, ljudi, ispada, postaju pametniji. Tri IQ boda za 10 godina, idemo gore. Na neki način zanimljiva stvar.
With science, don't think of skepticism as a thing, or science as a thing. Are science and religion compatible? It's like, are science and plumbing compatible? They're just two different things. Science is not a thing. It's a verb. It's a way of thinking about things. It's a way of looking for natural explanations for all phenomena.
Sa znanosti, ne mislite o skepticizmu kao stvari čak ili čak o znanosti kao stvari. Jesu li znanost i religija kompatibilne? To je kao, jesu li znanost i vodoinstalerstvo kompatibilni? One -- to su samo dvije različite stvari. Znanost nije stvar. To je glagol. To je način razmišljanja o stvarima. To je način traženja prirodnih objašnjenja za sve fenomene.
I mean, what's more likely: that extraterrestrial intelligences or multi-dimensional beings travel across vast distances of interstellar space to leave a crop circle in Farmer Bob's field in Puckerbrush, Kansas to promote skeptic.com, our web page? Or is it more likely that a reader of "Skeptic" did this with Photoshop? And in all cases we have to ask --
Mislim, što je vjerojatnije -- da vanzemaljci ili višedimenzionalna stvorenja putuju preko ogromnih udaljnosti međuzvjezdanog svemira da ostave krug u žitu u polju Farmera Boba u Puckerbrushu, Kansasa da promovira skeptic.com, naše web stranice? Ili je vjerojatnije da je neki čitatelj Skeptica uradio to Photoshopom? I u svim slučajevima moramo se pitati -- (Smijeh)
(Laughter)
What's the more likely explanation? Before we say something is out of this world, we should first make sure that it's not in this world. What's more likely: that Arnold had extraterrestrial help in his run for the governorship, or that the "World Weekly News" makes stuff up?
-- koje je vjerojatnije objašnjenje? I prije nego što kažemo da nešto potječe izvan ovog svijeta, trebali bi prvo biti sigurnim da to nije na ovom svetu. Što je vjerojatnije -- da je Arnold imao malu vanzemaljsku pomoć u izboru za guvernera? Ili da World Weekly News izmišlja stvari?
(Laughter)
(Smijeh)
The same theme is expressed nicely here in this Sidney Harris cartoon. For those of you in the back, it says here: "Then a miracle occurs. I think you need to be more explicit here in step two." This single slide completely dismantles the intelligent design arguments. There's nothing more to it than that.
I dio toga -- ista tema je izražena lijepo ovdje u ovoj karikaturi Sidney Harrisa. Za vas otraga, ovdje piše "I onda se dogodi čudo. Mislim kako moraš biti određeniji ovdje u koraku dva." Ovaj jedan slajd kompletno uništava argumente inteligentnog dizajna. Nema u tome ništa više osim toga.
(Applause)
(Pljesak)
You can say a miracle occurs, it's just that it doesn't explain anything or offer anything. There's nothing to test. It's the end of the conversation for intelligent design creationists.
Možete reći da se čuda događaju. Samo to ne objašnjava ništa. Ne nudi ništa. Nema ničega za testiranje. Ovo je kraj razgovora za kreatore inteligentnog dizajna.
And it's true, scientists sometimes throw terms out as linguistic place fillers -- dark energy or dark matter, something like that -- until we figure out what it is, we'll call it this. It's the beginning of the causal chain for science. For intelligent design creationists, it's the end of the chain. So again, we can ask this: what's more likely? Are UFOs alien spaceships, or perceptual cognitive mistakes, or even fakes?
Gdje se -- i točno je, znanstvenici ponekad izbace termine da popune mjesta u rečenici -- tamna energija ili tamna materija ili tako nešto. Dok ne shvatimo što je to, samo ćemo ju zvati tako. Ovo je početak uzročnog lanca za znanost. Za kreatore inteligentnog dizajna, ovo je kraj lanca. I opet, možemo se pitati ovo -- što je verovatnije -- jesu li NLO-i vanzemaljski svemirski brodovi ili perceptivne kognitivne greške, ili čak lažnjaci?
This is a UFO shot from my house in Altadena, California, looking down over Pasadena. And if it looks a lot like a Buick hubcap, it's because it is. You don't even need Photoshop or high-tech equipment, you don't need computers. This was shot with a throwaway Kodak Instamatic camera. You just have somebody off on the side with a hubcap ready to go. Camera's ready -- that's it.
Ovo je NLO snimak iz moje kuće u Atladenai, California, nadgledajući Pasadenau. I ako dosta izgleda kao ratkapa Buicka, to je zato što je. Ne treba vam ni Photoshop, ne treba vam oprema visoke tehnologije, ne trebaju vam računala. Ovo je snimak s jednokratnom Kodak Instamatik kamerom. Jednostavno imate nekog sa strane spremnog da krene s ratkapom. Kamera spremna -- to je to.
(Laughter)
(Smijeh)
So, although it's possible that most of these things are fake or illusions or so on, and that some of them are real, it's more likely that all of them are fake, like the crop circles.
Dakle, iako je moguće da je većina ovih stvari lažna ili iluzije i tako dalje i da su neke od njih stvarne, vjerojatnije je da su sve lažne, kao i krugovi u polju.
On a more serious note, in all of science we're looking for a balance between data and theory. In the case of Galileo, he had two problems when he turned his telescope to Saturn. First of all, there was no theory of planetary rings. Second of all, his data was grainy and fuzzy, and he couldn't quite make out what he was looking at. So he wrote that he had seen -- "I have observed that the furthest planet has three bodies." And this is what he ended up concluding that he saw. So without a theory of planetary rings and with only grainy data, you can't have a good theory. It wasn't solved until 1655.
S puno ozbiljnije strane, u cijeloj znanosti tražimo ravnotežu između podataka i teorije. U Galilejevom slučaju, on je imao dva problema kada je okrenuo svoj teleskop prema Saturnu. Najprije, nije postojala teorija o planetarnim prstenovima. I napokon, njegovi podaci su bili zrnati i zbrkani, i nije baš mogao shvati što je on to točno gledao. I onda je on napisao da je vidio -- "Opazio sam kako najudaljeniji planet ima tri tijela." I to je što je on na kraju zaključio da je vidio. Dakle bez teorije o planetarnim prstenovima i sa zrnatim podacima, ne možete imati dobru teoriju. I ovo nije bilo riješeno do 1655.
This is Christiaan Huygens's book that catalogs all the mistakes people made trying to figure out what was going on with Saturn. It wasn't till Huygens had two things: He had a good theory of planetary rings and how the solar system operated, and he had better telescopic, more fine-grain data in which he could figure out that as the Earth is going around faster -- according to Kepler's Laws -- than Saturn, then we catch up with it. And we see the angles of the rings at different angles, there. And that, in fact, turns out to be true.
Ovo je knjiga Christiaan Huygensa u kojoj je katalogizirao sve greške koje su ljudi pravili pokušavajući da shvate šta se događa sa Saturnom. I nije sve dok -- Hojgens nije imao dvije stvari. Imao je dobru teoriju o planetarnim prstenovima i kako solarni sustav radi. I onda, imao je bolji teleskop, više sitnozrnih podataka u kojima je shvatio da dok Zemlja kruži brže -- po Keplerovim zakonima -- od Saturna, onda se mi uhvatimo s njim. I vidimo kutove prstenova pod različitim kutovima, ovdje. I to se, zapravo, ispostavilo kao istinito.
The problem with having a theory is that it may be loaded with cognitive biases. So one of the problems of explaining why people believe weird things is that we have things, on a simple level, and then I'll go to more serious ones. Like, we have a tendency to see faces.
Problemi s teorijom koju imamo je da vaša teorija može biti prepuna kognitivnih predrasuda. Dakle, jedan od problema objašnjavanja zašto ljudi vjeruju u čudne stvari je da mi imamo stvari na jednostavnoj razini. A onda ću preći na ozbiljnije. Na primjer, mi smo skloni vidjeti lica.
This is the face on Mars. In 1976, where there was a whole movement to get NASA to photograph that area because people thought this was monumental architecture made by Martians. Here's the close-up of it from 2001. If you squint, you can still see the face. And when you're squinting, you're turning that from fine-grain to coarse-grain, so you're reducing the quality of your data. And if I didn't tell you what to look for, you'd still see the face, because we're programmed by evolution to see faces.
Ovo je lice na Marsu koje je bilo -- 1976., kada je postojao cijeli pokret koji je htio da NASA fotografira to područje jer su ljudi mislili da je to monumentalna arhitektura koju su napravili Marsijanci. Ipak, kako se ispostavlja -- evo ga bliža snimka iz 2001. Ako žmirkate, i dalje možete vidjeti lice. I kada žmirkate, ono što radite je da ga pretvarate iz fino zrnatog u grubo zrnato. I tako, smanjujete kvalitetu svojih podataka. I da vam ja nisam rekao šta da tražite, opet biste vidjeli lice, jer smo isprogramirani evolucijom da vidimo lica.
Faces are important for us socially. And of course, happy faces, faces of all kinds are easy to see. You see the happy face on Mars, there.
Lica su nam socijalno bitna. I naravno, sretna lica. Lica svih vrsta je lako vidjeti. (Smijeh)
(Laughter)
Možete vidjeti sretno lice na Marsu, ovdje.
If astronomers were frogs, perhaps they'd see Kermit the Frog. Do you see him there? Little froggy legs. Or if geologists were elephants?
Kada bi astronomi bili žabe možda bi vidjeli žapca Kermita . Vidite li ga tu? Male žablje noge.
Religious iconography.
Ili da su geolozi slonovi?
(Laughter)
Religijska ikonografija. (Smijeh)
Discovered by a Tennessee baker in 1996. He charged five bucks a head to come see the nun bun till he got a cease-and-desist from Mother Teresa's lawyer. Here's Our Lady of Guadalupe and Our Lady of Watsonville, just down the street, or is it up the street from here? Tree bark is particularly good because it's nice and grainy, branchy, black-and-white splotchy and you can get the pattern-seeking -- humans are pattern-seeking animals.
Otkriveno od strane pekara is Tennesseea 1996. Naplaćivao je pet dolara po osobi da vide časnu sestru žemlju dok ga odvjetnici Majke Tereze nisu natjerali da prestane. Ovo je Naša Gospa od Guadalupe i Naša Gospa od Vatsonvilla, odmah niz ulicu. Ili je to uz ulicu odavde? Stablo je naročito dobro jer je lijepo i hrapavo, granato, izmrljano crno-bijelom bojom gdje možete tražiti oblike -- ljudi su životinje koje traže oblike.
Here's the Virgin Mary on the side of a glass window in Sao Paulo. Here's when the Virgin Mary made her appearance on a cheese sandwich -- which I got to actually hold in a Las Vegas casino -- of course, this being America.
Evo je Djevica Marija na prozoru u Sao Paulou. Sad, ovdje se Djevica Marija pojavila na sandviču od sira -- koji sam zapravo držao u kasinu u Las Vegasu, naravno, jer to ovo Amerika.
(Laughter)
(Smijeh)
This casino paid $28,500 on eBay for the cheese sandwich.
Ovaj kasino je platio 28,500 dolara na eBayu za ovaj sendvič.
(Laughter)
(Smijeh)
But who does it really look like? The Virgin Mary?
Ali na koga stvarno sliči, Djevicu Mariju?
(Laughter)
(Smijeh)
It has that sort of puckered lips, 1940s-era look.
Ima napućene usne, izgled 1940-ih.
Virgin Mary in Clearwater, Florida. I actually went to see this one. There was a lot of people there. The faithful come in their wheelchairs and crutches, and so on. We went down and investigated. Just to give you a size, that's Dawkins, me and The Amazing Randi, next to this two, two and a half story-sized image. All these candles, thousands of candles people had lit in tribute to this. So we walked around the backside, to see what was going on. It turns out wherever there's a sprinkler head and a palm tree, you get the effect. Here's the Virgin Mary on the backside, which they started to wipe off. I guess you can only have one miracle per building.
Djevica Marija u Clearwater, Floridi. Išao sam zapravo vidjeti ovo. Bilo je puno ljudi tamo -- vjernici su došli da budu u svojim -- kolicima i štakama, i tako dalje. I otišli smo dolje, istražiti. Da vam dam predstavu o veličini -- to je Dawkins, ja i Nevjerojatni Randi, pored ove slike veličine dva, dva i pol kata. Sve te svijeće, tolike tisuće svijeća koje su ljudi upalili u čast tome. Onda smo otišli iza, samo da vidimo šta se tamo događa, kad se ispostavilo da ako imate prskalicu i palmu, dobijate taj efekt. Tu je Devica Marija od iza, koju su počeli brisati. Pretpostavljam da možete imati samo jedno čudo po zgradi.
(Laughter)
(Smijeh)
So is it really a miracle of Mary, or is it a miracle of Marge?
Onda je li to stvarno čudo Marije ili Marge?
(Laughter)
(Smijeh)
And now I'm going to finish up with another example of this, with auditory illusions. There's this film, "White Noise," with Michael Keaton, about the dead talking back to us. By the way, the whole business of talking to the dead is not that big a deal. Anybody can do it, turns out. It's getting the dead to talk back that's the really hard part.
I završiti ću s još jednim primjerom sa zvukom -- zvučnim iluzijama. Postoji jedan film, "Bijeli zvuk", s Michaelom Keatonom o mrtvima koji nam govore. Usput, taj cijeli posao pričanja s mrtvima, nije neka velika stvar. Kako izgleda, svatko to može raditi. Natjerati mrtve da odgovaraju je ustvari teški dio.
(Laughter)
(Smijeh)
In this case, supposedly, these messages are hidden in electronic phenomena. There's a ReverseSpeech.com web page where I downloaded this stuff. This is the most famous one of all of these. Here's the forward version of the very famous song.
Naime, u ovom slučaju te poruke su sakrivene u elektronskom fenomenu. Postoji web stranica ReverseSpeech.com (obrnuti govor) s koje sam skinuo ovu stvar. Evo ga od naprijed -- ovo je najpoznatiji od svih. Evo verzija od naprijed jako poznate pjesme.
(Music with lyrics)
If there's a bustle in your hedgerow don't be alarmed now. It's just a spring clean for the May Queen. Yes, there are two paths you can go by, but in the long run, There's still time to change the road you're on.
(Music ends)
Ooo, ne biste li slušali ovo po cijeli dan?
Couldn't you just listen to that all day?
(Smijeh)
All right, here it is backwards, and see if you can hear the hidden messages that are supposedly in there.
U redu, evo ga od unazad, i vidite možete li naći skrivene poruke koje su navodno tu.
(Music with unintelligible lyrics)
(Lyrics) Satan!
(Unintelligible lyrics continue)
What did you get? Audience: Satan!
Što ste čuli?
Satan. OK, at least we got "Satan". Now, I'll prime the auditory part of your brain to tell you what you're supposed to hear, and then hear it again.
(Publika: Sotonu.) Sotona? U redu, onda, barem imamo Sotonu. Sada, pripremit ću vaš auditorni dio mozga da vam kaže što biste trebali čuti, i onda to poslušajte opet.
(Music with lyrics)
(Music ends)
(Smijeh)
(Laughter)
(Applause)
(Pljesak)
You can't miss it when I tell you what's there.
Ne može vam promaći kada vam kažem što je tu.
(Laughter)
(Smijeh)
I'm going to just end with a positive, nice little story. The Skeptics is a nonprofit educational organization. We're always looking for little good things that people do.
U redu, završit ću s jednom pozitivnom, lijepom, malom pričom o -- Skeptics je neprofitna obrazovna organizacija. Uvijek tražimo male, dobre stvari koje ljudi rade.
And in England, there's a pop singer. One of the top popular singers in England today, Katie Melua. And she wrote a beautiful song. It was in the top five in 2005, called, "Nine Million Bicycles in Beijing." It's a love story -- she's sort of the Norah Jones of the UK -- about how she much loves her guy, and compared to nine million bicycles, and so forth. And she has this one passage here.
I u Engleskoj, postoji jedna pop pjevačica. Vrlo -- jedna od najpopularnijih pjevačica današnjice u Engleskoj, Katie Melua. I ona je napisala prekrasnu pjesmu. Bila je u prvih pet 2005., nazvana, "Devet milijuna bicikla u Pekingu." To je ljubavna priča -- ona je kao Norah Jones Velike Britanije -- o tome kako ona jako voli svog dečka, i upoređuje ga s devet milijuna bicikla, i tako dalje. I ima ovaj pasus ovdje.
(Music)
♫ Mi smo 12 milijardi svjetlosnih godina od ruba ♫
(Lyrics) We are 12 billion light-years from the edge
♫ To je pretpostavka ♫
That's a guess,
♫ Nitko ne može ikada reći kako je to istina ♫
No one can ever say it's true,
♫ Ali ja znam da ću uvijek biti s tobom ♫
But I know that I will always be with you.
Dakle, to je lijepo.
Michael Shermer: Well, that's nice. At least she got it close. In America it'd be, "We're 6,000 light years from the edge."
Bar je bila blizu. U Americi bi bilo, "Mi smo 6.000 svjetlosnih godina od ruba."
(Laughter)
(Smijeh)
But my friend, Simon Singh, the particle physicist now turned science educator, who wrote the book "The Big Bang," and so on, uses every chance he gets to promote good science. And so he wrote an op-ed piece in "The Guardian" about Katie's song, in which he said, well, we know exactly how far from the edge. You know, it's 13.7 billion light years, and it's not a guess. We know within precise error bars how close it is. So we can say, although not absolutely true, it's pretty close to being true.
Ali moj prijatelj, Simon Singh, koji se bavi fizikom elementarnih čestica, sada je postao nastavnik znanosti, i on je napisao knjigu "Veliki prasak" i tako dalje. On koristi svaku priliku koju ima za promociju dobre znanosti. I tako, on je napisao članak u Guardianu o Katienoj pesmi, u kojoj je rekao, dakle, da mi znamo točno koliko staro, koliko daleko od ruba. Znate, to je 12 -- ima 13,7 milijardi svjetlosnih godina, i to nije pretpostavka. Znamo tačno koliko unutar intervala greške koliko je blizu. I tako, mi možemo reći, iako ne apsolutno točno, da smo vrlo blizu istini.
And, to his credit, Katie called him up after this op-ed piece came out, and said, "I'm so embarrassed. I was in the astronomy club. I should've known better." And she re-cut the song. So I will end with the new version.
I, njegovom zaslugom, Katie ga je pozvala nakon što je njegov članak izašao. I rekla, "Vrlo sam posramljena. Bila sam članica astronomskog kluba, i trebalo sam znati bolje." I prepravila je pjesmu. I ja ću završiti s novom verzijom.
(Music with lyrics)
♫ Mi smo 13.7 milijardi svjetlosnih godina ♫
We are 13.7 billion light years from the edge of the observable universe. That's a good estimate with well-defined error bars. And with the available information, I predict that I will always be with you.
♫ od ruba promotrivog svemira ♫ ♫ To je dobra procjena s dobro definiranim intervalima greške ♫ ♫ I s dostupnim informacijama ♫ ♫ Predviđam da ću uvijek biti s tobom ♫ (Pljesak)
(Laughter)
Kako je ovo fora?
How cool is that?
(Pljesak)
(Applause)