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.
Zdravo, ja sam Majkl Šermer, direktor Društva Skeptičnih, izdavač časopisa Skeptik. Istražujemo tvrdnje paranormalne, kvazi-nauke, i nakićene grupe i kultove i tvrdnje svih stvari između-- nauke i kvazi-nauke i ne-nauke i otpad od nauke, vudu nauke, patološke nauke, loše nauke, ne-nauke i dobre stare besmislenosti. I osim ako ste skoro bili na Marsu, znate da toga ima dosta.
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 misle da pobijamo teorije, što je kao negativan izraz. Ali pogledajmo--postoje puno koještarija, i mi smo tamo kao tim za koještarije policijske uprave, koji čiste. Pa, mi smo kao Ralf Neders loših ideja--
(Laughter)
(Smeh)
trying to replace bad ideas with good ideas.
--koji pokušavaju da zamene loše ideje sa 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.
Pokazaću vam primer jedne loše ideje. Poneo sam ovo sa mnom. Ovo nam je dala emisija NBC Dejtlajn da testiramo. To je-- to je proizvela Kvadro Korporacija iz Zapadne Virdzinije. Zove se Kvadro 2000 Dauzer Rod.
(Laughter)
(Smeh)
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 upravnicima srednjih škola za 900 dolara po komadu. To je parče plastike sa klasničnom antenom koja je prikačena za njega. Možete da detektujete sve moguće stvari, ali baš ovaj je napravljen da detektuje marihuanu u ormarićima učenika.
(Laughter)
(Smeh)
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.
Znači ovako radi, idete kroz hodnik i vidite ako skreće u pravcu nekog ormarića, i onda otvorite ormarić. Izgleda ovako. Pokazaću vam.
(Laughter)
(Smeh)
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--pa, skreće malo desno. Pokazaću vam--dakle, ovo je nauka, uradićemo kontrolisani eksperiment. Sigurno će ići u ovom pravcu.
(Laughter)
(Smeh)
Sir, do you want to empty your pockets, please, sir?
Gospodine, hoćete da ispraznite vaše džepove. Molim vas, gospodine?
(Laughter)
(Smeh)
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 stvarno da nađe maruhuanu u učeničkim ormarićima? I odgovor je, Ako dovoljno njih otvorite onda da.
(Laughter)
(Smeh)
(Applause)
(Aplauz)
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 nauci, moramo da pratimo promašaje, ne samo pogotke. I to je verovatno ključna lekcija u ovom mom kratkom govoru, je da ovako rade vidovnjaci, astrolozi, i oni koji gledaju u tarot karte, i tako dalje. Ljudi pamte pogotke;oni zaboravljaju promašaje. U nauci moramo da čuvamo celu bazu podataka, i da vidimo ako se broj pogotka nekako izdvaja od ukupnog broja koji biste slučajno očekivali.
In this case, we tested it.
U ovom slučaju smo 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 dve neprozirne kutije, jednu sa THC marihuanom odobrenom od strane vlasti,i jednu praznu. I pogodio sam u 50 posto slučajeva--
(Laughter)
--što biste isto očekivali sa 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 zanimljiv primer 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.
Skeptik izlazi na svaka 3 meseca. Svaki od njih ima određenu temu,kao ovaj koji je o budućnosti inteligencije. Da li ljudi postaju pametniji ili gluplji? I ja sam imam mišljenje o ovome zbog posla kojim se bavim. Ali,u principu,ljudi,ispada,postaju pametniji. 3 IQ poena za 10 godina,raste. 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 naukom,ne zamišljajte skepticizam kao stvar čak ni nauku kao stvar. Da li su nauka i religija kompatibilne? To je kao,da li su nauka i vodoinstalicija kompatibilne? Ovo--ovo su samo dve različite stvari. Nauka nije stvar.To je glagol. To 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,šta je verovatnije-- da vanzemaljci ili višedimenzionalna stvorenja putuju preko ogromnih daljina međuzvezdanog svemira da ostave krug u žitu u polju Farmera Boba u Pukerbušu,Kanzasu da promoviše skeptic.com,našu web stranicu? Ili je verovatnije da je neki čitalac Skeptika uradio ovo Photoshop-om? I u svim slučajevima moram da pitam-- (Smeh)
(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 verovatnije objašnjenje? I pre nego što kažemo da nešto potiče van ovog sveta, trebalo bi prvo da budemo sigurni da nije na ovom svetu. Šta je verovatnije-- da je Arnold imao malu pomoć vanzemaljaca u izboru za guvernera? Ili da World Weekly News (nedeljna novina) izmišlja stvari?
(Laughter)
(Smeh)
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 deo toga--ista tema je izražena lepo ovde u ovom stripu Sidneja Harisa. Za vas nazad,ovde piše 'A onda se dogodi čudo. Milsim da moraš da budeš određeniji u drugom koraku.' Ovaj slajd totalno razbija argumente inteligentnog dizajna. Nema ništa više od toga.
(Applause)
(Aplauz)
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 da kažete da se događa čudo. Samo to ne objašnjava ništa. Ne nudi ništa.Ne postoji ništa da se testira. Ovo je kraj razgovora za one koji stvaraju inteligentni dizajn.
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?
Gde se--i tačno je, naučnici razbacuju ponekad terminima da popune mesta u rečenici--tamna energija ili tamna materija ili tako nešto. Dok ne shvatimo šta je to,samo ćemo ga zvati tako. Ovo je početak uzročnog lanca za nauku. Za one koji stvaraju inteligentni dizajn,ovo je kraj lanca. I opet,možemo da pitamo ovo--šta je verovatnije-- da li su NLO-i vanzemaljski svemirski brodovi ili perceptivno-kognitivne greške,ili 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 Atladeni,Kalifornija, nadgledajući Pasadenu. I ako dosta izgleda kao felna Bjuika,to je zato što to i jeste. Ne treba vam ni Photoshop,ne treba vam oprema visoke tehnologije, ne trebaju vam kompjuteri. Ovo je snimak sa Kodak Instamatik kamerom za jednokratnu upotrebu. Jednostavno imate nekog sa strane sa felnom spreman da krene. Kamera spremna--to je to.
(Laughter)
(Smeh)
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.
Ali,iako je moguće da su većine ovih stvari lažne ili iluzije i tako dalje i da su neki pravi, verovatnije je da su svi lažni,kao 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.
Ako budemo ozblijniji,u celoj nauci tražimo ravnotežu između podataka i teorije. U Galilejevom slučaju,on je imao 2 problema kada je okrenuo svoj teleskop prema Saturnu. Prvo,nije postojala teorija o planetarnim prstenovima. I drugo,njegovi podaci su bili razbacani i izmešani, i nije baš mogao shvati šta je tačno gledao. I onda je on napisao da je video-- ' Spazio sam da najdalja planeta ima 3 tela.' I on je na kraju zaključio da je to video. Dakle bez teorije o planetarnim prstenovima i sa razbacanim podacima, ne možete da imate dobru teoriju. I ovo nije bilo rešeno 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 Kristijana Hojgensa u kojoj je nabrojao sve greške koje su ljudi pravili pokušavajući da shvate šta se događa sa Saturnom. I nisu dok Hojgens nije imao dve stvari. Imao je dobru teoriju o planetarnim prstenovima i kako solarni sistem radi. I onda,imao je bolji teleskop,više sređenih podataka sa kojima je shvatio da Zemlja kruži brže-- po Keplerovim zakonima--od Saturna,onda smo shvatili. I vidimo sve uglove prstenova pod različitim uglovima,ovde. I to se ispostavilo da je bilo tačno.
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.
Problem sa teorijom je da je vaša teorija možda prepunjena kognitivnim predubeđenjima. Dakle,jedan od problema što se tiče objašnjavanja zašto ljudi veruju u čudne stvari je da imamo stvari na jednostavnijem nivou. A onda ću preći na ozbiljnije. Na primer,težimo da vidimo 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. godine,kada je postojao pokret koji je hteo da NASA fotografiše tu regiju jer su ljudi mislili da je ovo monumentalna arhitektura koju su napravili Marsovci. Ipak,kako se ispostavlja-- evo ga njegov bliži snimak iz 2001. Ako žmirkate,i dalje možete da vidite lice. I kada žmirkate,ono što radite je da ga pretvarate iz lepo definisanog u grubo definisanog. I tako,smanjujete kvalitet svojih podataka. I da vam nisam rekao šta da tražite,opet biste videli 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,srećna lica. Lica svih vrsta je lako videti. (Smeh)
(Laughter)
Možete videti srećno lice na Marsu,ovde.
If astronomers were frogs, perhaps they'd see Kermit the Frog. Do you see him there? Little froggy legs. Or if geologists were elephants?
Da su astronomi žabe možda bi videli Kermita Žapca. Vidite li ga tu? Male žablje noge.
Religious iconography.
Ili da su geolozi slonovi?
(Laughter)
Religijska ikonografija. (Smeh)
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 Tenesija 1996. Naplaćivao je 5 dolara po osobi koje su mogle da vide kaluđericu-zemičku dok ga advokati Majke Tereze nisu naterali da prestane. Ovo je Naša Gospa od Gvadalupe i Naša Gospa od Vatsonvil,dole niz ulicu. Ili to uz ulicu odavde? Stablo je naročito dobro jer je lepo i hrapavo,granato, izmrljano crno-belom bojom i možete da tražite 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 Devica Marija na prozoru u Sao Paulu. Sad,ovde se Devica Marija pojavila na sandviču od sira-- koji sam držao u kazinu u Las Vegasu, naravno,jer to je Amerika.
(Laughter)
(Smeh)
This casino paid $28,500 on eBay for the cheese sandwich.
Ovaj kazino je platio 28,500 dolara na eBay-u za ovaj sendvič.
(Laughter)
(Smeh)
But who does it really look like? The Virgin Mary?
Ali na koga stvarno liči,Devicu Mariju?
(Laughter)
(Smeh)
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.
Devica Marija u Klirvateru,Floridi. Išao sam da vidim ovo. Bilo je puno ljudi tamo--vernici su došli u svojim-- kolicima i štakama,i tako dalje. I otišli smo dole,da istražimo. Da vam dam predstavu o veličini--to je Dokins,ja i Neverovatni Rendi, pored ove slike veličine 2 i po sprata. Sve ove sveće,toliko hiljade sveća su ljudi upalili u čast ovome. Onda smo otišli iza,da vidimo šta se tamo događa, kad se ispostavilo da ako imate prskalicu i palmu, dobijate taj efekat. Evo je Devica Marija od iza,koju su počeli da brišu. Pretpostavljam da možete da imate samo jedno čudo po zgradi.
(Laughter)
(Smeh)
So is it really a miracle of Mary, or is it a miracle of Marge?
Onda da li je to stvarno čudo Marije ili Mardž?
(Laughter)
(Smeh)
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 onda ću završiti sa još jednim primerom sa zvukom--zvučnim iluzijama. Postoji jedan film,'Beli Zvuk', sa Majklom Kitonom o razgovaranju s mrtvima. I ovaj ceo biznis pričanja s mrtvima,nije neka velika stvar. Kako izgleda,svako to može da radi. Naterati mrtve da odgovaraju je ustvari težak deo.
(Laughter)
(Smeh)
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 ove poruke su sakrivene u elektronskom fenomenu. Postoji web stranica ReverseSpeech.com (reverse speech=obrnuti govor) sa koje sam skinuo ovu stvar. Evo ga od napred--ovo je najpoznatiji od svih. Evo je verzija od napred veoma poznate pesme.
(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)
Uf,da li ne biste slušali ovo po ceo dan?
Couldn't you just listen to that all day?
(Smeh)
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 nazad, i vidite ako možete da nađete skrivene poruke koje su navodno tu.
(Music with unintelligible lyrics)
(Lyrics) Satan!
(Unintelligible lyrics continue)
What did you get? Audience: Satan!
Šta 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:Sotona.) Sotona?Ok,onda,bar imamo Sotonu. Sada,nateraću vaš auditorni deo mozga da vam kaže šta biste trebalo da čujete,i onda da ga čujete opet.
(Music with lyrics)
(Music ends)
(Smeh)
(Laughter)
(Applause)
(Aplauz)
You can't miss it when I tell you what's there.
Ne može vam promaći kada vam kažem šta je tu.
(Laughter)
(Smeh)
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,završiću sa jednom pozitivnom,lepom,malom pričom o--Skeptici je neprofitna obrazovna organizacija. Uvek 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 pevačica. Veoma--jedna od najpopularnijih pevačica današnjice u Engleskoj,Kejti Melua. I napisala je prelepu pesmu. Bila je u prvih pet 2005-e,koja se zove 'Devet miliona bicikala u Pekingu.' To je ljubavna priča--ona je kao Nora Džons Velike Britanije-- o tome kako ona mnogo voli svog dečka, i upoređuje sa 9 miliona bicikala,i tako dalje. I ima ovaj pasus ovde.
(Music)
♫ Mi smo 12 milijarde svetlosnih godina od ivice♫
(Lyrics) We are 12 billion light-years from the edge
♫ To se pretpostavlja♫
That's a guess,
♫ Niko ne može da ikada kaže da je to istina♫
No one can ever say it's true,
♫ Ali znam da ću uvek biti s tobom♫
But I know that I will always be with you.
Baš lepo.
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 svetlosnih godina od ivice.'
(Laughter)
(Smeh)
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,Sajmon Sin,koji se bavi fizikom elementarnih čestica,sada već naučnim obrazovanjem, i napisao je knjigu 'Veliki Prasak' i tako dalje. On koristi svaku priliku da promoviše dobru nauku. I tako,napisao je članak u Gardijanu o Kejtinoj pesmi, u kojoj je rekao da znamo tačno koliko staro,koliko daleko od ivice. Znate,to je 12--ima 13.7 milijarde svetlosnih godina, i to nije pretpostavka. Znamo tačno koliko i sa kojim intervalima greške je blizu. I tako,možemo reći,iako nije apsolutno tačno,da smo baš blizu.
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,Kejti ga je pozvala nakon što je njegov članak izašao. I rekla,'Veoma sam posramljena. Bila sam član kluba astronomije,i trebalo je da znam bolje.' I prepravila je pesmu. I završiću sa novom verzijom.
(Music with lyrics)
♫ Mi smo 13.7 milijardi svetlosnih 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 ivice posmatranog svemira♫ ♫ To je dobra procena sa dobro definisanim intervalima greške♫ ♫ I sa dostupnim informacijama♫ ♫ Prognoziram da ću uvek biti s tobom♫ (Aplauz)
(Laughter)
Koliko je ovo kul?
How cool is that?
(Aplauz)
(Applause)