Vsauce2
What Is Victimhood? (The Scapegoat Mechanism)
updated
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Genie Wiley was found in California in 1970, a feral child subjected to 13 years of horrors at the hands of her father -- and her tragic story blurs the line between research and true crime. It's part psychology, part biology, part linguistics... and all a chapter in the dark history of science.
Genie presented an incredible opportunity to study the limits of and potential for language acquisition at a time when Noam Chomsky's "Syntactic Structures" dominated linguistic debates. But was it even possible to help an abused girl and study her at the same time? That depends on who you ask -- but the result was limited scientific knowledge and a broken life.
FURTHER READING / VIEWING:
"Genie: A Scientific Tragedy" by Russ Rymer
NOVA: "Genie, The Secret of the Wild Child" (1994)
This video is for educational, artistic, and documentary purposes.
#psychology #weirdhistory #truecrimestories
Everyone knows Roald Dahl’s stories, and several generations have grown up on Willy Wonka, Matilda, and more. But lurking behind the Oompa Loompas and the giant peaches is the life of a scientist, an inventor, and a medical pioneer so important that his work has saved thousands of lives worldwide -- and Dahl did his best to make sure you didn’t know it.
The bizarre life of Roald Dahl is a true story full of twists, turns, and tragedies. He survived his own traumatic brain injury in a World War II plane crash, and it might have done him a bit of good as a creator. But years later when his infant son was hit by a taxi, Roald harnessed his surprisingly deep medical and scientific knowledge to help create a cerebral valve that would benefit generations of children… all while keeping his own involvement quiet.
His most significant contribution to medicine may have come after that when his wife Patricia Neal suffered a series of strokes. Roald Dahl wasn’t a neurology expert, and he had no special expertise in brain injury or stroke recovery. What he did have was a creative mind, and the regimen he invented to rehabilitate Pat’s brain and body became the standard for our treatment of strokes.
Was Roald Dahl a fantastic artist, or was he a talented scientist? The answer is… yes. And that begs the question: is there even a difference?
#roalddahl #neuroscience #neurology
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As the 20th century approached, our understanding of the natural world and of the cosmos was increasing at a more rapid pace than any time in the history of science. We were building on our knowledge of asteroids, the discovery of Neptune, and understanding the transit of Venus, and science fiction like Jules Verne's "Journey to the Center of the Earth" was taking our imagination deep inside our own planet.
But one man rejected the long march of seemingly-irrefutable scientific progress. The cult leader Cyrus Teed was convinced that we weren't living amidst a complex solar system, and that we weren't on top of the Earth at all. Cyrus Teed thought that we were living inside the Earth.
Teed's Koreshan movement focused on the concept of a hollow earth, and he set out to prove scientifically that we were living on a concave surface inside of a giant hollow ball. From the religious awakenings of Upstate New York to Chicago to a swamp in Florida, Cyrus Teed gained converts who believed in his science and his religion. But did the rectilineator Teed built to conduct his painstaking measurements prove that we're really living inside, or did they just prove that Teed and his followers were insane?
#popularscience #science #education
Support Vsauce2 on Patreon: patreon.com/Vsauce2
The life, death, and legacy of Russian geneticist Nikolai Vavilov isn’t just one of the most compelling science stories of the 20th century -- it’s a combination of scientific progress, human resilience, and a celebration of both the scientific and human spirits.
Vavilov’s tumultuous career in biology and genetics flowed from Vladimir Lenin’s support to Trofim Lysenko’s hostility to Joseph Stalin’s outright persecution. And while Vavilov himself succumbed to Stalin’s scapegoating and purges, his groundbreaking efforts to create a global seedbank for the betterment of mankind inspired his peers to endure suffering beyond comprehension in the service of science.
The staff of Vavilov’s plant institute endured the nearly 3-year Siege of Leningrad: no heat, no safety, and most importantly, no sustenance. But while the rest of the city struggled to survive in conditions of starvation, Vavilov’s peers and staff were actually surrounded by the one thing that would keep them alive: food.
Dozens of scientists met their deaths to protect Vavilov’s vision despite protecting tons of the exact material that would keep them alive.
They did it for Vavilov, they did it for humanity, and they did it for science.
*** FURTHER READING/VIEWING ***
"The Murder of Nikolai Vavilov" by Peter Pringle: amzn.to/3RPfCrf
"Stalin and the Scientists: A History of Triumph and Tragedy" by Simon Ings: amzn.to/3GSOukP
"The Scientist, the Imposter and Stalin" from Icarus Films: vimeo.com/ondemand/scientist
"The Man Who Haunts Science" by Vsauce2: youtube.com/watch?v=AhSBQOTW018
"The Scapegoat Mechanism" by Vsauce2: youtu.be/lNJq6BlVyhM
*** CREDITS ***
Vsauce2
Twitter: twitter.com/VsauceTwo
Instagram: instagram.com/kevlieber
Facebook: facebook.com/VsauceTwo
TikTok: tiktok.com/@vsaucetwo
Talk Vsauce2 in The Create Unknown Discord: discord.gg/tcu
Vsauce2 on Reddit: reddit.com/r/vsauce2
Hosted and Produced by Kevin Lieber
Twitter: twitter.com/kevinlieber
Podcast: youtube.com/thecreateunknown
Research and Writing by Matthew Tabor
twitter.com/TaborTCU
Editing by John Swan
youtube.com/channel/UCJuSltoYKrAUKnbYO5EMZ2A
Huge Thanks To Paula Lieber
Vsauce's Curiosity Box: curiositybox.com
#science #scientist #history
Support Vsauce2 on Patreon: patreon.com/Vsauce2
There’s more to the story of Trofim Lysenko and the Soviet Union’s most disastrous era of science than you probably realize. Everyone knows of “Lysenkoism” regarding the USSR’s failed theories of genetics, but Trofim Lysenko’s lifelong body work was driven by a perfect combination of history, revolution, political theory, power, and personalities.
Lysenko’s impact on Russian biology was a direct result of crafting science -- and scientists -- in service of Vladimir Lenin’s new Soviet man at a time when the international scientific community was making tremendous progress on genetics and biology. But to Lysenko and Josef Stalin, the real science was in the potential of plants and animals to behave like Soviet citizens.
That led Russia and its scientists down a path that derailed progress for decades. But what if Lysenko’s theories on the inheritance of acquired traits actually have merit? A resurgence of support for Lysenko has gone beyond the grim history of science to look at what we know about altering the expression of DNA and how a human’s experiences in life can even affect their grandchildren. The truth is that modern genetics has little to nothing to do with Lysenko, but the specter of his pseudoscience continues to haunt the disciplines of genetics and biology -- and science as a whole.
*** SOURCES / ADDITIONAL READING ***
“Lysenko’s Ghost: Epigenetics and Russia” by Loren Graham: bit.ly/3ReCEpT
“A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution: 1891-1924” by Orlando Figes: bit.ly/4a8Ti32
“Stalin and the Scientists: A History of Triumph and Tragedy” by Simon Ings: amzn.to/3RwD5NE
*** CREDITS ***
Vsauce2
Twitter: twitter.com/VsauceTwo
Instagram: instagram.com/kevlieber
Facebook: facebook.com/VsauceTwo
TikTok: tiktok.com/@vsaucetwo
Talk Vsauce2 in The Create Unknown Discord: discord.gg/tcu
Vsauce2 on Reddit: reddit.com/r/vsauce2
Hosted and Produced by Kevin Lieber
Twitter: twitter.com/kevinlieber
Podcast: youtube.com/thecreateunknown
Research and Writing by Matthew Tabor
twitter.com/TaborTCU
Editing by John Swan
youtube.com/channel/UCJuSltoYKrAUKnbYO5EMZ2A
Huge Thanks To Paula Lieber
Vsauce's Curiosity Box: curiositybox.com
#science #scientist #history
Subscribe to the Foundation for Economic Education: bit.ly/feeyt
The Population Bomb by Paul Ehrlich: amzn.to/3Mo3lH5
10 Reasons We’re Wrong About the World by Hans Rosling: amzn.to/3FELJDc
The Ultimate Resource by Julian Simon: amzn.to/3MlE3JM
Support Vsauce2 on Patreon: patreon.com/Vsauce2
The most pressing threat to civilization is us -- and paradoxically, we’re also the solution. When Paul Ehrlich published “The Population Bomb” in 1968, he ushered in an era of doomsday predictions that we’re still in. There are more than twice as many people in the world now than when his book came out, and Ehrlich insists that the population bomb just hasn’t gone off yet.
But optimists like Julian Simon see something else happening. They acknowledge that man-made threats of destruction are not only challenges we can solve -- and that we’re in a better position every day to eliminate our problems -- but that we’re also better off for it.
The philosophical differences between Ehrlich and Simon led to the most famous bet in the world, a bet over natural resources that was really a bet about the future of the human race. And as wrong as Paul Ehrlich has proven to be, we’re so hard-wired to think like him that it’s actually perfectly reasonable to conclude we’re perpetually facing disaster.
*** CREDITS ***
Vsauce2
Twitter: twitter.com/VsauceTwo
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Facebook: facebook.com/VsauceTwo
TikTok: tiktok.com/@vsaucetwo
Talk Vsauce2 in The Create Unknown Discord: discord.gg/tcu
Vsauce2 on Reddit: reddit.com/r/vsauce2
Hosted and Produced by Kevin Lieber
Twitter: twitter.com/kevinlieber
Podcast: youtube.com/thecreateunknown
Research and Writing by Matthew Tabor
twitter.com/TaborTCU
Editing by John Swan
youtube.com/channel/UCJuSltoYKrAUKnbYO5EMZ2A
Huge Thanks To Paula Lieber
Vsauce's Curiosity Box: curiositybox.com
What did you think about the population theory of The Population Bomb by Paul Ehrlich? Subscribe for more science, history, and education videos every month!
#Education #Science #Vsauce #History #doomsday #Humanity #populationbomb
Please support Vsauce2 on Patreon: patreon.com/Vsauce2
When we look back on the history of science and scientific progress, we celebrate the pioneers who dared to make life-changing discoveries. The truth is that the first people to introduce a paradigm-shift almost always face persecution, and many are overshadowed by the less-controversial minds who follow them.
Such is the case of Ignaz Semmelweis, a Hungarian doctor who fought a lifelong battle against a disease he couldn’t see and that the medical establishment repeatedly told him wasn’t real. How does a scientist or doctor combat bacteria when they don’t even know it exists? The epidemics bacteria, viruses, and germs brought to innocent hospital patients wracked hospitals of the day, but the history of medicine is as much one of complacency and cosmic explanations as it is about breakthroughs.
Ignaz Semmelweis used incredible powers of logic and deductive reasoning to isolate a problem so complex that it stymied all the scientific minds of continental Europe, first by examining data within the clinics of his own hospital, and then identifying the source of infection. Through years of refining an antiseptic regimen that would end up saving an incalculable number of lives -- and paving the way for better-known scientific giants like Lister and Pasteur -- Semmelweis compiled one of the era’s great medical texts, one that would change healthcare worldwide.
And for that, he was ridiculed, criticized, fired, dismissed, institutionalized, and beaten to de*th. The shocking story of Ignaz Semmelweis is the real story of scientific progress.
*** Additional Reading ***
Semmelweis, Ignaz. “The Etiology, Concept, and Prophylaxis of Childbed Fever,” 1861; Translated by K. Codell Carter, 1983: amazon.com/Etiology-Prophylaxis-Childbed-Wisconsin-Publications/dp/0299093646
Semmelweis, Fjernsynsteatret (Television Theater, Norway), 1983: https://tv.nrk.no/serie/fjernsynsteatret/1983/FTEA00005183
Semmelweis, 1952 (Courtesy of the Hungarian National Film Archive): youtu.be/z3Xg5mXW218
Sla*ghter, Frank J. “Immortal Magyar: Semmelweis, Conqueror of Childbed Fever,” 1950: amazon.com/Immortal-Magyar-Semmelweis-Conqueror-Childbed/dp/B0006ASE5M
Obenchain, Theodore G. “Genius Belabored: Childbed Fever and the Tragic Life of Ignaz Semmelweis,” 2016: amazon.com/Genius-Belabored-Childbed-Tragic-Semmelweis/dp/0817319298
*** CREDITS ***
Vsauce2:
Twitter: twitter.com/VsauceTwo
Instagram: instagram.com/kevlieber
Facebook: facebook.com/VsauceTwo
TikTok: tiktok.com/@vsaucetwo
Talk Vsauce2 in The Create Unknown Discord: discord.gg/tcu
Vsauce2 on Reddit: reddit.com/r/vsauce2
Hosted and Produced by Kevin Lieber
Twitter: twitter.com/kevinlieber
Podcast: youtube.com/thecreateunknown
Research and Writing by Matthew Tabor
twitter.com/TaborTCU
Editing by John Swan
youtube.com/channel/UCJuSltoYKrAUKnbYO5EMZ2A
Huge Thanks To Paula Lieber
Vsauce's Curiosity Box: curiositybox.com
#semmelweis #history #medicine #surgery #germs
Get Ad-Free Mind Blow on Patreon: patreon.com/Vsauce2
Patron Thanks
BENEFACTOR
Xemboy01
EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS
Brent Tiggelaar, Ian Fabs, Jonathan Hawk, Markus Fleischer, NullBlox.ZachryWilsn, Thomas Kaminski, Wolfgang Hutton
You discover a new species of succulent. It’s composed of two tiny butt cheeks. What do you call it? BABY BUM. And there’s really no possible alternative, because this is Mind Blow.
An array of 100 robotic muscles that can flex 50 times per second is like a giant fluid trampoline with haptic response that can move and sort objects and also generate images. It’s like a waterbed mixed with a computer. What more could you need?
We talk a lot about AI in art, but we’re making fantastic progress in using AI to fuel neural bypass connections -- like an electronic brain-body-spinal cord bridge that has brought back movement and sensation in the limbs of a man with quadriplegia.
A full decade ago, Mind Blow highlighted the weirdly anti-bacterial wings of the clanger cicada. By analyzing the nanostructure of the wings, we finally know how the nanopillars on the wings kill bacteria and clean the surface -- and it has tremendous implications for sanitizing the surfaces of medical devices.
A 600-pound asteroid is coming directly for your head… sort of. It’s 13 million miles away, which means it’s classified as a “potentially hazardous asteroid,” and it’s tracked twice a day with a 3,200 megapixel camera. They say you never hear the one that gets you.
Spiders are incredible at pulling moisture from the air, and they do it by constructing webs on which droplets collect easily and efficiently. Replicating their process allows water collection to happen without expending energy. Science smarter, not harder.
What if tattoos could be functional instead of purely aesthetic? Nanotech’s got it covered, starting with individual cells. 3-D bioprinting technology can place a flexible tattoo that functions as a data collection and warning system for the body.
40 years ago we discovered fantastic fossils of the immortal jellyfish… and no one bothered to look at them until now, because sometimes science news takes a couple generations to develop. But the Canadian fossils are so detailed that some even reveal an animal’s last meal. They show that jellyfish as we know them today are even older than we thought -- but they’re still an aquatic whippersnapper compared to the sea sponge.
*** SOURCES ***
Baby Bum Succulent (0:00)
livescience.com/planet-earth/plants/this-bizarre-little-succulent-looks-like-a-babys-butt
Shape-Shifting Display For 3D Designs (0:33)
nature.com/articles/s41467-023-39842-2
A.I. Brain Implant (1:23)
https://www.northwell.edu/news/the-latest/bioelectronic-medicine-researchers-restore-feeling-lasting-movement-in-quadriplegic-man
Cicada Wings Kill Superbugs on Contact (2:06)
pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsami.2c18121
New Algorithm Ensnares Asteroid (3:43)
https://www.washington.edu/news/2023/07/31/heliolinc3d/
Spider Web Fog-Water Collection (4:33)
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/adfm.202305244
Nanoscale Tattoos For Cells (5:17)
pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.nanolett.3c01960
500 Million Year Old Jellyfish (5:58)
royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2022.2490
RCA XL-100 TV Set Commercial, 1975 (6:55)
youtube.com/watch?v=utYZN9WGqZw
*** CREDITS ***
Hosted, Researched and Created by Kevin Lieber
twitter.com/VsauceTwo
Written by Matthew Tabor
twitter.com/TaborTCU
Edited by Vic Grimes
twitter.com/VicGrimes
Fact Checking by Geoff Barrett
twitter.com/GeoffdBarrett
Watch more science news, tech news, space news, and educational videos like Mind Blow with the Vsauce crew on our channel!
#MindBlow #Vsauce #ScienceNews #science #Education #science #scienceshorts #shorts
Please support Vsauce2 on Patreon: patreon.com/Vsauce2
You almost certainly know a psychopath in real life… and you may very well be one yourself. And that might even be a good thing.
We’ve recognized psychopathy in science and culture for thousands of years, yet we still don’t know what to do about it. Yet we use the word itself now more than ever, so much that the meaning of the word “psychopath” has become diluted in popular culture. As we increasingly learn more about the science of psychopathy, we should get better at deploying the term more accurately -- but instead, it’s become a catch-all for unconscionable human behavior and a mainstay of true crime stories.
Psychopaths are much more complex than that… for better and worse.
In reality, a psychopath’s brain creates and perpetually reinforces a moral code that is defined more by what it lacks than what it contains. From a total absence of anxiety to a simple utilitarian worldview that can do tremendous harm to others, the psychopath is a mix of brute force and the most subtle manipulation. And this is where it gets really complicated: you actually want the ruthlessness of a psychopath to run your company, you want the charm of a psychopath for investigative journalism, and you want the fearlessness of a psychopath to respond to medical emergencies.
Can we harness the biological and psychological forces that create dangerous, destructive psychopaths to improve humanity? And if we could cure or eliminate psychopathy… would we even want to?
ADDITIONAL READING
Kiehl, Kent. “The Psychopath Whisperer: The Science of Those Without Conscience.” amazon.com/Psychopath-Whisperer-Science-Without-Conscience/dp/0770435866
Dutton, Kevin. “The Wisdom of Psychopaths: What Saints, Spies, and Serial Killers Can Teach Us About Success.” amazon.com/Wisdom-Psychopaths-Saints-Killers-Success/dp/0374533989
*** CREDITS ***
Vsauce2:
Twitter: twitter.com/VsauceTwo
Instagram: instagram.com/kevlieber
Facebook: facebook.com/VsauceTwo
TikTok: tiktok.com/@vsaucetwo
Talk Vsauce2 in The Create Unknown Discord: discord.gg/tcu
Vsauce2 on Reddit: reddit.com/r/vsauce2
Hosted and Produced by Kevin Lieber
Twitter: twitter.com/kevinlieber
Podcast: youtube.com/thecreateunknown
Research and Writing by Matthew Tabor
twitter.com/TaborTCU
Editing by John Swan
youtube.com/channel/UCJuSltoYKrAUKnbYO5EMZ2A
Huge Thanks To Paula Lieber
etsy.com/shop/Craftality
Vsauce's Curiosity Box: curiositybox.com
#psychology #truecrime #psychopath #mentalhealth #science
Get Ad-Free Mind Blow on Patreon: patreon.com/Vsauce2
This science research doesn’t just pass the sniff test -- it IS the sniff test. Our olfactory abilities are so refined that our noses can identify a person’s gender with over 96% accuracy from the smell of their… hands?!
Robotics is advancing past clumsy limbs and brute force by getting better at both -- this rolling robot that can make deliveries, throw objects, and dynamically adjust its application of force.
Sometimes our most advanced scientific discoveries already exist in nature -- like a tiny pill modeled after the pangolin that can roll up to be deployed in internal medicine applications. Oh, and it’s moved around your body by a magnet.
A scientific breakthrough has been sitting at the bottom of a canyon for decades -- and despite it being over 100 meters high, we’re only just seeing Asia’s tallest tree.
Birds are once again dominating the science news cycle, and this time it’s by thumbing their beaks at our efforts to deter them from public spaces. It seems like anti-bird spikes actually make great bird castles.
Until recently, bionic limbs have been rudimentary with little fine motor control -- but harnessing AI algorithms, neuroscience, and osseointegration may allow for natural motions in bionic hands and fingers.
The dark side of the Moon continues to keep secrets, like why there’s a giant slab of thorium and uranium resulting from a billion-year old moon volcano.
A giant 300,000 year old flint axe has been discovered in England, and it either hurt people, hunted animals, or just looked awesome.
Patron Thanks
BENEFACTOR
Xemboy01
EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS
Brent Tiggelaar, Ian Fabs, Jonathan Hawk, Markus Fleischer, NullBlox.ZachryWilsn, Thomas Kaminski, Wolfgang Hutton
*** SOURCES ***
Hand Sniff Identifies Gender (0:00)
journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0286452
Wheeled Humanoid Controlled by Whole-Body Teleoperation (0:40)
https://publish.illinois.edu/robodesign/
Tiny Pangolin-Inspired Medical Robot (1:23)
nature.com/articles/s41467-023-38689-x
Asia’s Tallest Tree (2:13)
https://newsen.pku.edu.cn/news_events/news/research/13432.html
Birds Building Anti-Bird Nests (3:53)
https://www.hetnatuurhistorisch.nl/fileadmin/user_upload/documents-nmr/Publicaties/Deinsea/Deinsea_21/Deinsea_21_17_25_2023_Hiemstra_et_al.pdf
Bionic Hand Individual Finger Control (4:39)
sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/07/230712165138.htm
Radioactive Granite Buried On Moon (5:24)
nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06183-5.epdf
Britain’s Oldest and Largest Stone Age Tools (6:17)
ucl.ac.uk/news/2023/jul/giant-stone-artefacts-found-rare-ice-age-site-kent
Lady Kenmore Dishwasher Commercial, 1974 (7:04)
youtube.com/watch?v=QUrDobvRLcA
*** CREDITS ***
Hosted, Researched and Created by Kevin Lieber
twitter.com/VsauceTwo
Written by Matthew Tabor
twitter.com/TaborTCU
Edited by Vic Grimes
twitter.com/VicGrimes
Fact Checking by Geoff Barrett
twitter.com/GeoffdBarrett
Watch more science news, tech news, space news, and educational videos like Mind Blow with the Vsauce crew on our channel!
#mindblow #vsauce #science #robotics #technology #sciencefacts
Get Ad-Free Mind Blow on Patreon: patreon.com/Vsauce2
Could one of the staples of a gamer’s diet actually improve physiological health the same way it has for mice and worms? Is it possible to harness plant photosynthesis with a synthetic leaf that mirrors the same chemical process to replace fossil fuels? Will small armies of robot cartographers replace Google Street View cars -- and eventually explore the unknowns of Earth’s oceans? How long have hominins existed in Greece, and are our Mediterranean ancestors hundreds of thousands of years older than we think?
The James Webb Space Telescope has just captured images of molecules over 12 billion light years away -- but are they just specks of matter, or are they the building blocks of stars?
Han Solo’s nap in carbonite might just be a part of your own future now that mice have been induced into a state of torpor -- and it has implications for improving emergency medicine. The idea of inducing torpor was first proposed to reduce the physical demands of space travel, and when you finally cruise to Mars, who knows how many arms and legs you’ll have? Researchers at MIT have tacked on a pair of supernumerary limbs that gets us one step closer to being space octopuses.
The future of science and technology gets more exciting by the day, but we continue to uncover amazing elements of our past -- like a 3,000 year old sword in Bavaria that has been preserved so well that its blade still shines. Past. Present. Future. Mind Blow!
Patron Thanks
BENEFACTOR
Xemboy01
EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS
Brent Tiggelaar, Ian Fabs, Jonathan Hawk, Markus Fleischer, NullBlox.ZachryWilsn, Thomas Kaminski, Wolfgang Hutton
Taurine Anti-Aging (0:00)
science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adi3025
Artificial Leaf (0:59)
nature.com/articles/s41560-023-01262-3#Sec21
Multi Robot Mapping (1:45)
arxiv.org/pdf/2106.14386.pdf
Oldest Evidence of Humans In Greece (2:29)
livescience.com/archaeology/oldest-evidence-of-humans-in-greece-is-700000-years-old-a-quarter-of-a-million-years-older-than-previously-thought
James Webb Telescope Discovers Oldest Organic Molecules (4:37)
nature.com/articles/d41586-023-01844-x
Ultrasound Deep Sleep (5:38)
nature.com/articles/s42255-023-00804-z
Supernumerary Limbs For Space Suit (6:38)
youtube.com/watch?v=Wed7JAyfLyA
Shining Bronze Age Octagonal Sword (7:12)
https://www.blfd.bayern.de/mam/blfd/presse/pi_bronzezeitliches_schwert.pdf
Introducing The Amazing Compact Disc (7:42)
youtube.com/watch?v=_Tx6TYnPat8
*** CREDITS ***
Hosted, Researched and Created by Kevin Lieber
twitter.com/VsauceTwo
Written by Matthew Tabor
twitter.com/TaborTCU
Edited by Vic Grimes
twitter.com/VicGrimes
Fact Checking by Geoff Barrett
twitter.com/GeoffdBarrett
Watch more science news, tech news, space news, and educational videos like Mind Blow with the Vsauce crew on our channel!
#MindBlow #Vsauce #ScienceNews #science #Education #shorts #science #scienceshorts
Please support Vsauce2 on Patreon: patreon.com/Vsauce2
When we think of the human experience, we tend to focus on the good things: love, happiness, and progress. But what if the most important part of our lives is actually one of the worst? Our relationship with pain stretches back further than any other sensation, and it turns out that pain has been and continues to be our most important teacher. We paradoxically need something awful to survive. Vsauce2 explores the science and psychology of pain going all the way back to our four-legged ancestors.
Despite pain dictating daily life for millions of years, we’ve only come to understand exactly how it works fairly recently. We now know the exact physiological mechanisms of how pain works within our bodies -- which evolved from rudimentary scientific theories from Descartes and others -- but we’re still figuring out how it works within our minds. And as we navigate the science of it all, from neuroscience to psychology, we uncover more questions than ever. Should we eliminate pain, or should we learn to live with it? What happens to our identities when we take all the pain away, and is it worth the cost to ourselves? What is society’s responsibility to relieve pain, and how does politics factor in? How much of your pain is real and how much pain is essentially imagined?
On the surface it seems like an ideal world would be one completely devoid of pain, with strong mental health in conjunction with physical wellness. But the reality is more complex, and it’s worth thinking about the implications of the convoluted link between pain and suffering that we can’t live with… and can’t live without.
*** CREDITS ***
Vsauce2:
TikTok: tiktok.com/@vsaucetwo
Twitter: twitter.com/VsauceTwo
Instagram: instagram.com/kevlieber
Facebook: facebook.com/VsauceTwo
Talk Vsauce2 in The Create Unknown Discord: discord.gg/tcu
Vsauce2 on Reddit: reddit.com/r/vsauce2
Hosted and Produced by Kevin Lieber
Twitter: twitter.com/kevinlieber
Podcast: youtube.com/thecreateunknown
Research and Writing by Matthew Tabor
twitter.com/TaborTCU
Editing by John Swan
youtube.com/channel/UCJuSltoYKrAUKnbYO5EMZ2A
Huge Thanks To Paula Lieber
etsy.com/shop/Craftality
Vsauce's Curiosity Box: curiositybox.com
#MindBlow #Vsauce #ScienceNews #science #Education
Get Ad-Free Mind Blow on Patreon: patreon.com/Vsauce2
In this episode of Mind Blow on Vsauce2: the ruins of Ancient Rome reveal interesting medical devices, a new humanoid robot learns to be just like you, scientists develop a neural brain implant that works like an octopus, Team Trees might have accidentally grown 20 million computers with wood transistors, Stone Age architectural plans reveal sophisticated abstract cognitive abilities, olfactory virtual reality now includes scents and smells, the Titanic gets 3D mapped with over 700,000 images, which may reveal clues about how the Titanic sank, and the glassy-winged sharpshooter contributes to our biological understanding of fluid dynamics with its built-in butt catapult.
Patron Thanks
BENEFACTOR
Xemboy01
EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS
Brent Tiggelaar, Ian Fabs, Jonathan Hawk, Markus Fleischer, NullBlox.ZachryWilsn, Thomas Kaminski, Wolfgang Hutton.
*** SOURCES ***
Wood Electrochemical Transistor (0:00)
pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2218380120
First Ever Full-Sized Scans of Titanic Shipwreck (0:49)
magellan.gg/titanic-in-3d
Roman Urine Flasks (1:48)
cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/disease-control-and-the-disposal-of-infectious-materials-in-renaissance-rome-excavations-in-the-area-of-caesars-forum/F43A8803C6D74D01C4C07DC0D4C81094
Sanctuary AI (2:31)
sanctuary.ai
Soft Robot Brain Implant (3:11)
science.org/doi/10.1126/scirobotics.add1002
Stone Age Blueprints (5:04)
journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0277927
VR Smells (5:45)
nature.com/articles/s41467-023-37678-4
Superfast Insect Urination (6:48)
https://research.gatech.edu/super-fast-insect-urination-powered-physics-superpropulsion
Sony Walkman Commercial 1983 (7:55)
youtube.com/watch?v=7lipckhgG5g
*** CREDITS ***
Hosted, Researched and Created by Kevin Lieber
twitter.com/VsauceTwo
Written by Matthew Tabor
twitter.com/TaborTCU
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youtube.com/@JohnSwanYT
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twitter.com/GeoffdBarrett
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Vsauce2 dives into the fundamental meaning behind the concept of "happy" and how our twisted modern take on happiness is making things measurably worse. What is the paradox of chasing happiness? And how to things we think will make us happy actually lead to depression?
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Vsauce2:
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Hosted and Produced by Kevin Lieber
Twitter: twitter.com/kevinlieber
Podcast: youtube.com/thecreateunknown
Research and Writing by Matthew Tabor
twitter.com/TaborTCU
Editing by John Swan
youtube.com/channel/UCJuSltoYKrAUKnbYO5EMZ2A
Additional Editing by Vic Grimes
twitter.com/VicGrimes
Huge Thanks To Paula Lieber
etsy.com/shop/Craftality
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In this episode of Mind Blow on Vsauce2: scientists have a new hypothesis for why bugs fly around light bulbs, we learn of secret science new virus hiding in baby diapers, in space news Einstein helped discover a massive black hole, a simple drought solution, fruit helping recycle batteries, an ancient Egyptian gifting custom now has physical evidence, a massive leap in MRI brain scan technology, and bioadhesives just got stronger and safer for surgery. The type of science news found only on Mind Blow by Vsauce2.
Patron Thanks
BENEFACTOR
Xemboy01
EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS
Brent Tiggelaar, Ian Fabs, Wolfgang Hutton, NullBlox.ZachryWilsn, Jonathan Hawk, Markus Fleischer, Thomas Kaminski
*** SOURCES ***
Why flying insects gather at artificial light (0:00)
biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.04.11.536486v1
Expanding known viral diversity in the healthy infant gut (0:39)
nature.com/articles/s41564-023-01345-7
Abell 1201: detection of an ultramassive black hole in a strong gravitational lens (1:27)
academic.oup.com/mnras/article/521/3/3298/7085506
Structure-guided engineering of a receptor-agonist pair for inducible activation of the ABA adaptive response to drought (2:08)
science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.ade9948
Brain Images Just Got 64 Million Times Sharper (3:49)
https://today.duke.edu/2023/04/brain-images-just-got-64-million-times-sharper
NTU Singapore and Se-cure Waste Management build pilot recycling plant to tackle lithium-ion battery waste with biomass waste (4:30)
eurekalert.org/news-releases/984142
First osteological evidence of severed hands in Ancient Egypt (5:07)
nature.com/articles/s41598-023-32165-8
Injectable gelatin-oligo-catechol conjugates for tough thermosensitive bioadhesion (5:40)
sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666386423000140?via%3Dihub
Database, 1984 (6:40)
youtube.com/watch?v=szdbKz5CyhA
*** CREDITS ***
Hosted and Created by Kevin Lieber
twitter.com/VsauceTwo
Research and Writing by Scott Frank
twitter.com/hollywoodsapien
Graphics and Editing by Vic Grimes
twitter.com/VicGrimes
Special Thanks John Swan
youtube.com/channel/UCJuSltoYKrAUKnbYO5EMZ2A
Fact Checking by Geoff Barrett
twitter.com/GeoffdBarrett
Watch more science news, tech news, space news, and educational videos like Mind Blow with the Vsauce crew on our channel!
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How does herd mentality go wrong and lead to the madness of crowds? How can we harness it for the wisdom of crowds? Vsauce2 explores the fine line between group smart and group crazy.
The age of mass communication has brought with it mass psychogenic illness alongside opportunities to crowdsource solutions that improve the world. It's a delicate science we're trying to navigate. Are we smart enough to make use of our herd mentality or we will succumb to the madness of the crowd?
*** LINKS ***
Vsauce2:
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Hosted and Produced by Kevin Lieber
Instagram: instagram.com/kevlieber
Twitter: twitter.com/kevinlieber
Podcast: youtube.com/thecreateunknown
Research and Writing by Matthew Tabor
twitter.com/TaborTCU
Editing by John Swan
youtube.com/channel/UCJuSltoYKrAUKnbYO5EMZ2A
Additional Editing by Vic Grimes
twitter.com/VicGrimes
Huge Thanks To Paula Lieber
etsy.com/shop/Craftality
Vsauce's Curiosity Box: curiositybox.com
#vsauce #psychology #science
Join RAID’s 4th Anniversary celebration, use the Promo Codes below to get special B-day gifts: 4YEARSRAID (includes Legendary Skill Tomes) - Available for ALL users
FIRESTARTER (includes an Epic champion Ultimate Galek) - Available for New users
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Note that only 1 Promo code can be used within 24 hours
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This week on Vsauce2 Mind Blow: Mussels with ridiculous distance, some science education under a fluorescent microscope, and: has science finally come up with a hangover cure?
Patron Thanks
BENEFACTORS
Xemboy01
Chillustrations
EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS
Brent Tiggelaar, Wolfgang Hutton, NullBlox.ZachryWilsn, Jonathan Hawk, Markus Fleischer, Thomas Kaminski, Ian Fabs
*** SOURCES ***
Fishing for hosts: Larval spurting by the endangered thick-shelled river mussel, Unio crassus (0:00)
esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ecy.4026
A low-cost smartphone fluorescence microscope for research, life science education, and STEM outreach (0:43)
nature.com/articles/s41598-023-29182-y
Instructions for how to build it: static-content.springer.com/esm/art%3A10.1038%2Fs41598-023-29182-y/MediaObjects/41598_2023_29182_MOESM1_ESM.pdf
Optical tweezers throw and catch single atoms (1:32)
opg.optica.org/optica/viewmedia.cfm?uri=optica-10-3-401&seq=0
FGF21 counteracts alcohol intoxication by activating the noradrenergic nervous system (3:21)
cell.com/cell-metabolism/fulltext/S1550-4131(23)00041-4
A self-healing electrically conductive organogel composite (4:14)
nature.com/articles/s41928-023-00932-0
Magical practices? A non-normative Roman imperial cremation at Sagalassos (4:59)
cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/magical-practices-a-nonnormative-roman-imperial-cremation-at-sagalassos/0559636D95DF5D5CEACACE733F758D1E
Nuts For Nintendo - 20/20, 1988 (5:49)
youtube.com/watch?v=yt4KG9ib8S4
*** CREDITS ***
Hosted and Created by Kevin Lieber
twitter.com/VsauceTwo
Research and Writing by Scott Frank
twitter.com/hollywoodsapien
Graphics and Editing by Vic Grimes
twitter.com/VicGrimes
Special Thanks John Swan
youtube.com/channel/UCJuSltoYKrAUKnbYO5EMZ2A
Fact Checking by Geoff Barrett
twitter.com/GeoffdBarrett
Watch more science experiment videos like Mind Blow with the Vsauce crew on our channel!
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The Last of Us HBO series and the video game tell us a little bit about Joel's past. We know he's from Texas, we know when he was born, we know he hates carbs. But where did his hardened, rugged personality come from? Why is he so irascible?
It all started when he drank from the firehose.
Joel Miller in Weird Al's UHF is the SAME Joel Miller in The Last of Us. CHANGE MY MIND.
#thelastofus #lastofus
Thanks to Wondrium for sponsoring this video!
Vsauce2 Patreon: patreon.com/Vsauce2
Nothing is more exciting than a high speed car chase -- and it turns out that almost nothing is more dangerous, too. Suspects, innocent pedestrians, and even the police themselves are subject to everything that makes watching movies like Fast & Furious or playing Grand Theft Auto a seriously entertaining experience. For thousands of people every year, that means serious injury and even death.
But the crazy thing is that we know exactly how to solve the problem, and no one seems to care.
I analyzed the data and even found an anonymous source inside a state police department who was willing to tell me how car chases really work. The result? We’re doing something that’s bad for everyone, usually for unimportant reasons, with life-changing consequences.
And why do we keep doing it? The benefits are minor and the consequences are major. But if all the data suggests the tradeoffs we make when we engage in car chases isn’t worth it, why don’t we just stop? That’s the problem here… and no one cares.
*** ADDITIONAL READING ***
Bureau of Justice Statistics, “Police Vehicle Pursuits, 2012-2013”: bjs.ojp.gov/library/publications/police-vehicle-pursuits-2012-2013
Fatal Encounters with Police: fatalencounters.org
“High-speed police chases have killed thousands of innocent bystanders,” Thomas Frank, USA Today: usatoday.com/story/news/2015/07/30/police-pursuits-fatal-injuries/30187827
*** LINKS ***
Vsauce2:
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Hosted and Produced by Kevin Lieber
Instagram: instagram.com/kevlieber
Twitter: twitter.com/kevinlieber
Podcast: youtube.com/thecreateunknown
Research and Writing by Matthew Tabor
twitter.com/TaborTCU
Editing by John Swan
youtube.com/channel/UCJuSltoYKrAUKnbYO5EMZ2A
Huge Thanks To Paula Lieber
etsy.com/shop/Craftality
Vsauce's Curiosity Box: curiositybox.com
#education #vsauce #crime #carchase #policechase #crimestory
Get Ad-Free Mind Blow episodes and much more.
BENEFACTORS
Xemboy01
Chillustrations
EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS
Brent Tiggelaar, James, Wolfgang Hutton, NullBlox.ZachryWilsn, Jonathan Hawk, Markus Fleischer
*** SOURCES ***
Researchers turn to tiny robots to fight antibiotic resistance (0:00)
pnas.org/doi/epdf/10.1073/pnas.2300515120
Hunting and processing of straight-tusked elephants 125.000 years ago: Implications for Neanderthal behavior (1:00)
science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.add8186
Compact holographic sound fields enable rapid one-step assembly of matter in 3D (1:56)
science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adf6182
Medium-density amorphous ice (2:45)
science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abq2105
Hericerin derivatives activates a pan-neurotrophic pathway in central hippocampal neurons converging to ERK1/2 signaling enhancing spatial memory (3:56)
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jnc.15767
Hubble detects ghostly glow surrounding our solar system (4:40)
hubblesite.org/contents/news-releases/2022/news-2022-050
Design Line by AT&T (1977) (5:38)
techchannel.att.com/playvideo/2012/03/23/AT&T-Archives-Design-Line
*** CREDITS ***
Hosted and Created by Kevin Lieber
twitter.com/VsauceTwo
Watch more science and tech news each month on our channel with Mind Blow!
Research and Writing by Scott Frank
twitter.com/hollywoodsapien
Graphics and Editing by Vic Grimes
twitter.com/VicGrimes
Special Thanks John Swan
youtube.com/channel/UCJuSltoYKrAUKnbYO5EMZ2A
Fact Checking by Geoff Barrett
twitter.com/GeoffdBarrett
Watch more science videos with the Vsauce crew on our channel!
#MindBlow #Vsauce #ScienceNews #science
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From career mafia rats to kindergarten tattle-tales, no one likes a snitch. Every society reviles the informant -- but why? And how can game theory analysis reveal what’s actually happening when society rewards a snitch?
Despite teeming with serious problems, snitch culture is so deeply-engrained in law enforcement that it’s sentenced countless innocent people over centuries -- including convicting men of murder when no one was even killed at all. Why does snitching go so wrong so often?
The truth is that everyone involved in the snitch system is playing their own game. Police are the game masters and the house never truly loses. Informants are engaged in a form of the Prisoner’s Dilemma, while outside actors resort to tactics like witness intimidation to win their own game within a game.
The result is a perversion of justice so severe that everyone ends up worse off -- including the famously impartial blind bastion of justice.
*** ADDITIONAL READING ***
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "The Prisoner's Dilemma": https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/prisoner-dilemma/
*** LINKS ***
Vsauce2:
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Hosted and Produced by Kevin Lieber
Instagram: instagram.com/kevlieber
Twitter: twitter.com/kevinlieber
Podcast: youtube.com/thecreateunknown
Research and Writing by Matthew Tabor
twitter.com/TaborTCU
Editing by John Swan
youtube.com/channel/UCJuSltoYKrAUKnbYO5EMZ2A
Huge Thanks To Paula Lieber
etsy.com/shop/Craftality
Vsauce's Curiosity Box: curiositybox.com
#education #vsauce #crime
The truth is that they all have serious problems that lead us down the wrong path for making sense of social behavior. But if they’re all awful, how can it possibly be useful to employ every strategy together?
To understand crime, we need to measure crime. To measure crime, we need to understand people. And all of it relies on a deep knowledge of individuals who employ malevolence, who are victims of flawed and biased systems, or who are just plain wrong in good faith.
In a way, it’s hopeless -- but in the morass of human social behavior, we manage to progress.
*** ADDITIONAL READING ***
“Survey of Prison and Jail Inmates: Background and Method,” Peterson, Chaiken, Ebener, Honig (1982): rand.org/pubs/notes/N1635.html
“Extent of Unrecorded Juvenile Delinquency: Tentative Conclusions,” Short and Nye (1959): https://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/jclc/vol49/iss4/2/
“Measurement Error in Self-Reported Health Variables,” Butler, Burkhauser, Mitchell and Pincus (1987): jstor.org/stable/1935959
“A Comparison of Participant Observation and Survey Data,” Vidich and Shapiro (1955): jstor.org/stable/2088196
“Bias in Interviewing in Studies of Opinions, Attitudes, and Consumer Wants,” Hart (1948): jstor.org/stable/3143052
“Deception in Social Research I: Kinds of Deception and the Wrongs They May Involve.” Sieber (1982): jstor.org/stable/3564511
“Measuring bias in self-reported data,” Rosenman, Tennekoon, Hill (2011): ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4224297
*** LINKS ***
Vsauce2:
TikTok: tiktok.com/@vsaucetwo
Twitter: twitter.com/VsauceTwo
Facebook: facebook.com/VsauceTwo
Talk Vsauce2 in The Create Unknown Discord: discord.gg/tcu
Vsauce2 on Reddit: reddit.com/r/vsauce2
Hosted and Produced by Kevin Lieber
Instagram: instagram.com/kevlieber
Twitter: twitter.com/kevinlieber
Podcast: youtube.com/thecreateunknown
Research and Writing by Matthew Tabor
twitter.com/TaborTCU
Editing by John Swan
youtube.com/channel/UCJuSltoYKrAUKnbYO5EMZ2A
Huge Thanks To Paula Lieber
etsy.com/shop/Craftality
Vsauce's Curiosity Box: curiositybox.com
#education #vsauce #crime
Use code KEVIN for 50% off your first box
We’ve been collecting and analyzing social statistics for about 200 years now. In some ways, we’ve made a lot of progress -- but in others, we’re just as clueless now as when André-Michel Guerry first set forth his laws of tracking crime. Mixing math and morality introduces so many possible variables that our interpretations of the data can range from insightful to harmful. Comparisons of violent crime between Scotland, India, and Estonia show just how difficult it is to make sense of social statistics, especially if we try to judge them in relative terms.
A handful of additional problems plague our analysis: data and its inferences that are good today might not hold up in the future, and a study of Boston-area youth shows how surprising long-term outcomes can be. Perverse financial incentives, underreporting, and catching minor criminals instead of the major drivers of crime all make our understanding of antisocial behavior that much more tenuous. Throw in the media’s use of our social statistics and it feels like the more we know about crime, the less we understand.
*** ADDITIONAL READING ***
Analysis of A-M Guerry’s “Essay on the Moral Statistics of France,” by Michael Friendly: datavis.ca/gallery/guerry
English Translation of Guerry’s Essay, by Whitt & Reinking: datavis.ca/gallery/guerry/Guerry1833-Whitt-translation-OCR.pdf
“The Mismeasure of Crime,” by Mosher, Miethe, and Phillips (2011): sk.sagepub.com/books/the-mismeasure-of-crime-2e
“The Cambridge-Somerville Study: A Pioneering Longitudinal Experimental Study of Delinquency Prevention,” McCord, J. (1992). psycnet.apa.org/record/1992-98237-009
“Crime Waves and Moral Panics,” by Morgan Godvin: daily.jstor.org/crime-waves-moral-panics
*** LINKS ***
Vsauce2:
TikTok: tiktok.com/@vsaucetwo
Twitter: twitter.com/VsauceTwo
Facebook: facebook.com/VsauceTwo
Talk Vsauce2 in The Create Unknown Discord: discord.gg/tcu
Vsauce2 on Reddit: reddit.com/r/vsauce2
Hosted and Produced by Kevin Lieber
Instagram: instagram.com/kevlieber
Twitter: twitter.com/kevinlieber
Podcast: youtube.com/thecreateunknown
Research and Writing by Matthew Tabor
twitter.com/TaborTCU
Editing by John Swan
youtube.com/channel/UCJuSltoYKrAUKnbYO5EMZ2A
Huge Thanks To Paula Lieber
etsy.com/shop/Craftality
Vsauce's Curiosity Box: curiositybox.com
#education #vsauce #crime
Unfortunately, New York City (and everyone else) has found that it isn’t that simple. Jack Maple’s bold vision for a statistics-based police department has been plagued by inconsistent application and perverse incentives that prioritize numbers over public safety. The perpetual conflict between good policing and good CompStat numbers has mitigated the program’s positive effects and magnified its criticism on civil rights grounds.
CompStat reinforces our biggest problem with statistics in public life: the numbers we increasingly depend on don’t lie, but we don’t always know which truth they’re telling us.
*** ADDITIONAL READING ***
Jack Maple, “The Crime Fighter: Putting the Bad Guys Out of Business” (1999) amazon.com/Crime-Fighter-Putting-Guys-Business/dp/0385493630
“Compstat: Its Origins, Evolution, and Future in Law Enforcement Agencies,” US Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs: bja.ojp.gov/sites/g/files/xyckuh186/files/Publications/PERF-Compstat.pdf
George Kelling, “Fixing Broken Windows: Restoring Order And Reducing Crime In Our Communities” amazon.com/Fixing-Broken-Windows-Restoring-Communities/dp/0684837382
NYPD’s CompStat 2.0: compstat.nypdonline.org/2e5c3f4b-85c1-4635-83c6-22b27fe7c75c/view/89
*** LINKS ***
Vsauce2:
TikTok: tiktok.com/@vsaucetwo
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Vsauce2 on Reddit: reddit.com/r/vsauce2
Hosted and Produced by Kevin Lieber
Instagram: instagram.com/kevlieber
Twitter: twitter.com/kevinlieber
Podcast: youtube.com/thecreateunknown
Research and Writing by Matthew Tabor
twitter.com/TaborTCU
Editing by John Swan
youtube.com/channel/UCJuSltoYKrAUKnbYO5EMZ2A
Huge Thanks To Paula Lieber
etsy.com/shop/Craftality
Vsauce's Curiosity Box: curiositybox.com
#education #vsauce #crime
It sounds crazy, and almost paranoid, but algorithm-based initiatives have aided police from Chicago to London to help guide public safety interventions. In the case of Robert McDaniel, he was assigned a score that put him on Chicago’s “Heat List,” and he was told that he was likely to be involved in a shooting. But police didn’t know whether he’d be the shooter or the victim.
That resulted in the city offering him a range of services, but it also put him on the police’s radar -- and that began a chain of events that fulfilled a grim prophecy.
The promise of advanced math utilizing increasingly sophisticated data collection grows stronger by the year… but so do its potential perils. Can quantifying a person’s behavior actually tell us anything useful about them? And if it can, is it ethical?
The rise and fall of Chicago’s Heat List demonstrates not just how predictive policing works, but how it impacts individuals. And while the calculations themselves are a black box, there’s one thing we do know: once you’re on the list, you can’t get off.
MUST WATCH: Fantastic German documentary “Pre-Crime” (2017) by Matthias Heeder and Monika Hielscher. Pre-Crime delves into the details and implications of data-based policing and where the future is headed worldwide, available on Amazon and more: imdb.com/title/tt6998222
MUST READ: “Heat Listed,” by Matt Shroud, which describes Robert McDanels' experience and the efforts of Chicago police to use data to reduce gun violence: theverge.com/c/22444020/chicago-pd-predictive-policing-heat-list
*** ADDITIONAL READING ***
“The Small Social Networks at the Heart of Chicago’s Violence,” by Whet Moser: chicagomag.com/city-life/December-2013/The-Small-Social-Networks-at-the-Heart-of-Chicago-Violence
“For years Chicago police rated the risk of tens of thousands being caught up in violence. That controversial effort has quietly been ended.” by Jeremy Gorner: chicagotribune.com/news/criminal-justice/ct-chicago-police-strategic-subject-list-ended-20200125-spn4kjmrxrh4tmktdjckhtox4i-story.html
“Pre-Crime” (2017), documentary by Matthias Heeder and Monika Hielscher: imdb.com/title/tt6998222
“The grim reality of life under Gangs Matrix, London's controversial predictive policing tool,” by Peter Yeung: wired.co.uk/article/gangs-matrix-violence-london-predictive-policing
“The Police Are Using Computer Algorithms to Tell If You’re a Threat,” by Andrew Guthrie Ferguson: time.com/4966125/police-departments-algorithms-chicago
“Violence Is Contagious”: A Conversation with Andrew Papachristos,” by Greg Berman: hfg.org/conversations/violence-is-contagious-a-conversation-with-andrew-papachristos
“Social Networks and the Risk of Gunshot Injury,” Papachristos, Andrew V et al. Journal of urban health : bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine vol. 89,6 (2012): 992-1003.
*** LINKS ***
Vsauce2:
TikTok: tiktok.com/@vsaucetwo
Twitter: twitter.com/VsauceTwo
Facebook: facebook.com/VsauceTwo
Talk Vsauce2 in The Create Unknown Discord: discord.gg/tcu
Vsauce2 on Reddit: reddit.com/r/vsauce2
Hosted and Produced by Kevin Lieber
Instagram: instagram.com/kevlieber
Twitter: twitter.com/kevinlieber
Podcast: youtube.com/thecreateunknown
Research and Writing by Matthew Tabor
twitter.com/TaborTCU
Editing by John Swan
youtube.com/channel/UCJuSltoYKrAUKnbYO5EMZ2A
Huge Thanks To Paula Lieber
etsy.com/shop/Craftality
Vsauce's Curiosity Box: curiositybox.com
#education #vsauce #crime
A decade ago, predictive policing algorithms were hailed as one of the most important inventions of our era. In just a few short years, thousands of mathematicians had publicly refused to work on predictive policing projects. What started a century ago in the concentric zone model of mapping urban areas and evolved into social disorganization theory has culminated in sophisticated algorithms that claim to pinpoint the place and type of crime well in advance.
The problem, though, is that algorithmic outcomes are only as good as the data going into them. Between flawed data collection/reporting, yet another black box algorithm, and a total inability to measure results effectively, the promise of predictive policing has come under scrutiny -- and the real question is how long we keep experimenting to get it right, and who we run those experiments on.
*** ADDITIONAL READING ***
“Precise Event-level Prediction of Urban Crime Reveals Signature of Enforcement Bias”: researchgate.net/publication/349228599_Precise_Event-level_Prediction_of_Urban_Crime_Reveals_Signature_of_Enforcement_Bias
Letter, “Boycott Collaboration with Police”: math-boycotts-police.net
PredPol’s Predictive Policing Algorithm: predpol.com/technology
“Predictive Policing Software Is More Accurate at Predicting Policing Than Predicting Crime,” Ezekiel Edwards: aclu.org/news/criminal-law-reform/predictive-policing-software-more-accurate
Chicago’s Strategic Subject List Dataset: data.cityofchicago.org/Public-Safety/Strategic-Subject-List-Historical/4aki-r3np
“What Can FBI Data Say About Crime in 2021? It’s Too Unreliable to Tell,” Weihua Li, The Marhsall Project: themarshallproject.org/2022/06/14/what-did-fbi-data-say-about-crime-in-2021-it-s-too-unreliable-to-tell
"Abraham Wald's work on aircraft survivability". Mangel and Samaniego. June 198, Journal of the American Statistical Association. 79 (386): 259–267: https://people.ucsc.edu/~msmangel/Wald.pdf
“LAPD data programs need better oversight to protect public, Inspector General concludes”: latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-lapd-data-20190312-story.html
“UCLA Study Proves Predictive Policing Successful in Reducing Crime Over Several Months of Deployment with The LAPD”: predpol.com/ucla-predictive-policing-study
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Vsauce2:
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Hosted and Produced by Kevin Lieber
Instagram: instagram.com/kevlieber
Twitter: twitter.com/kevinlieber
Podcast: youtube.com/thecreateunknown
Research and Writing by Matthew Tabor
twitter.com/TaborTCU
Editing by John Swan
youtube.com/channel/UCJuSltoYKrAUKnbYO5EMZ2A
Huge Thanks To Paula Lieber
etsy.com/shop/Craftality
Vsauce's Curiosity Box: curiositybox.com
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Curiosity Box: curiositybox.com
MEL Science: melscience.com/curiositybox
But by the time you’re solving the Knight’s Tour with a grid of 8 or 9 squares on one side, the patterns become insanely difficult. Computers can calculate Knight’s Tours easily even with grids 10 or 12 squares wide -- but can you?
#education #vsauce #maths
But one of the simplest problems in mathematics -- how to connect three utilities to three houses without crossing lines -- has proven to be impossible. Grab a sheet of paper and try it out. It won’t take long to realize you can get very close, but never solve the three utilities problem -- and you’ll see quickly that graph theory is a hidden force in everyday life.
#education #vsauce #maths
The goal here is to keep making unique arrangements with increasing numbers of matches. By the time you’re using 8 matches, you’ll have over 200 possible ways to combine them to form a unique pattern of nodes and lines.
#education #vsauce #maths
And it gets more impressive. Schumanniophyton problematicum is one of four plants to contain rohitukine naturally, which has shown antiinflammatory properties and can combat leukemia and colon cancer cells.
Photo by Ben P. guatemala.inaturalist.org/photos/30933078
#education #vsauce #math #facts
It’s true -- you can get the job done simply by transposing the first digit to the end of the number. 410,256 is a small, accessible number to try it. Just slide the 4 from the first digit to the last digit and you’re all set… and it works with some much larger numbers, too.
In terms of mathematical value, these quirky numbers probably don’t lay the foundation for a groundbreaking Fields Medal-worthy discovery. But this is what recreational mathematics is all about: pushing and pulling on numbers to recognize patterns and curiosities that facilitate your ability to handle heavier-duty work, sort of like how poetry plays with words to express thoughts that *could* be written much more simply. It’s beautiful. And it’s just plain interesting.
#vsauce #education #maths
#vsauce #education #maths
You can start with any digit on this circle and move in either direction to generate a prime. The pattern is both simple and mathematically beautiful -- and THAT is why someone needs to make this into a necklace.
#vsauce #education #maths
In just a few hours, you can build the entire roster of Snowball Primes up to 8 digits by hand. DO IT. Why not? This is recreational math. Your parents will be proud of you.
#vsauce #maths #education
You could find them all by hand, calculating every squared whole number until you got a value larger than 10 digits (and don't forget, all of them need to be unique), but over 50 years ago the IBM 1620 used its 1,200+ pound frame to work it all out. Do it by hand. What else do you have to do?
#maths #shorts #mathematics
There are questions about whether strobogrammatic properties reveal intrinsic value within numbers, but it also presents a pattern worth investigation -- including the subset of strobogrammatic primes. And when’s the next strobogrammatic YEAR? You probably didn’t live through the last one, and you’ve got about 4,000 years before the next one. GOOD LUCK.
#maths #shorts #mathematics
But the real question is whether bees poop or vomit honey. And the answer is COMPLEX.
#vsauce #education #maths
That’s the idea behind risk assessment algorithms like COMPAS. And while the theory is excellent, we’ve hit a few stumbling blocks with accuracy and fairness. The data collection includes questions about an offender’s education, work history, family, friends, and attitudes toward society. We know that these elements correlate with anti-social behavior, so why can’t a complex algorithm using 137 different data points give us an accurate picture of who’s most dangerous?
The problem might be that it’s actually too complex -- which is why random groups of internet volunteers yield almost identical predictive results when given only a few simple pieces of information. Researchers have also concluded that a handful of basic questions are as predictive as the black box algorithm that made the Supreme Court shrug.
Is there a way to fine-tune these algorithms to be better than collective human judgment? Can math help to safeguard fairness in the sentencing process and improve outcomes in criminal justice? And if we did develop an accurate math-based model to predict recidivism, how ethical is it to blame current criminals for potential future crimes?
Can human behavior become an equation?
*** ADDITIONAL READING ***
Sample COMPAS Risk Assessment: documentcloud.org/documents/2702103-Sample-Risk-Assessment-COMPAS-CORE
COMPAS-R Updated Risk Assessment: equivant.com/compas-r-core-transparent-rna
“The accuracy, fairness, and limits of predicting recidivism.” Julia Dressel. science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aao5580
“Understanding risk assessment instruments in criminal justice,” Brookings Institution: https://www.brookings.edu/research/understanding-risk-assessment-instruments-in-criminal-justice/
“Machine Bias,” Julia Angwin, Jeff Larson, Surya Mattu and Lauren Kirchner, ProPublica: propublica.org/article/machine-bias-risk-assessments-in-criminal-sentencing
“The limits of human predictions of recidivism,” Lin, Jung, Goel and Skeem: science.org/doi/full/10.1126/sciadv.aaz0652
“Even Imperfect Algorithms Can Improve the Criminal Justice System,” New York Times: nytimes.com/2017/12/20/upshot/algorithms-bail-criminal-justice-system.html
Equivant’s response to criticism: equivant.com/official-response-to-science-advances
“A Popular Algorithm Is No Better at Predicting Crimes Than Random People,” Ed Yong: theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/01/equivant-compas-algorithm/550646
“The Age of Secrecy and Unfairness in Recidivism Prediction,” Rudin, Wang, and Coker: https://hdsr.mitpress.mit.edu/pub/7z10o269/release/6
“Practitioner’s Guide to COMPAS Core,” s3.documentcloud.org/documents/2840784/Practitioner-s-Guide-to-COMPAS-Core.pdf
State v. Loomis summary: harvardlawreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/1530-1537_online.pdf
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Vsauce2:
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Hosted and Produced by Kevin Lieber
Instagram: instagram.com/kevlieber
Twitter: twitter.com/kevinlieber
Podcast: youtube.com/thecreateunknown
Research and Writing by Matthew Tabor
twitter.com/TaborTCU
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youtube.com/channel/UCJuSltoYKrAUKnbYO5EMZ2A
Police Sketches by Art Melt
Twitter: twitter.com/EelJammin
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Huge Thanks To Paula Lieber
etsy.com/shop/Craftality
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Sometimes it feels like too much of a coincidence, like being able to take the reciprocal of Pi and permute its digits into the reciprocal of the Golden Ratio. Not enough for you? Tack on another Pi digit and throw it in front of the reciprocal of Phi and you'll get the actual Golden Ratio's digits.
HOW CAN THIS BE A COINCIDENCE?!
#math #mathematics #vsauce
As long as you count 1 as prime (which it was considered in the past), you can construct a massive 15 x 15 (Order 15) magic square out of the first 225 odd consecutive prime numbers ranging from 1 to 1,427 with a Magic Constant of 9,635? YEP, HERE IT IS.
#maths #vsauce #mathematics
The remarkable thing is that the Brāhmasphuṭasiddhānta contained no mathematical notation. It was only prose, and Brahmagupta still managed to be the first to describe the solution to quadratic equations. But what about dividing 0 by 0?!
#maths #shorts #mathematics
Determining a fair and just sentence for an offender is a delicate balance of punishment, rehabilitation and protection. From Aristotle to restorative justice initiatives, we’ve spent thousands of years developing theories of sentencing and striving for better ways to implement them. But no matter how refined our concept of justice becomes, it’s also subject to overt biases and both conscious and unconscious discrimination based on any number of factors, from age and race to completely unrelated societal forces. Does that mean real justice is impossible? And can we combat the failings of the human mind by replacing people with mandated algorithms?
The answer is yes -- and no. When Marvin Frankel conceived of a justice system that would remove bias and variations in sentencing from United States federal sentencing, he was convinced that he’d ushered in a new, fairer regime of sentencing. In a way, he had… when Congress passed the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984, criminal sentencing became significantly more consistent. But it also opened the door to even more sinister discrimination with mandatory minimums and disparate impacts on minorities -- precisely some of the problems the sentencing reform was meant to address. It also rendered useless the professional experience of judges and ran complex crimes, and their victims, through a dispassionate algorithm that failed to tailor results to specific circumstances.
Justice is hard, and we continue to figure out how to do it right. Maybe it can be based on numbers. Maybe it should be based on feelings. And maybe it’s just impossible to achieve perfect justice.
*** ADDITIONAL READING ***
Marvin Frankel, “Criminal Sentences: Law Without Order”: amazon.com/Criminal-Sentences-Law-Without-Order/dp/0809013746
Chapman v. United States, Supreme Court transcript: supremecourt.gov/pdfs/transcripts/1990/90-5744_03-26-1991.pdf
New York Times review of Frankel’s “Law Without Order,” 1973: timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1973/05/13/90954511.html?pageNumber=342
“Measuring Interjudge Sentencing Disparity: Before and After the Federal Sentencing Guidelines,” The Journal of Law & Economics, 1999: jstor.org/stable/10.1086/467426
The Sentencing Project: sentencingproject.org
*** LINKS ***
Vsauce2:
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Talk Vsauce2 in The Create Unknown Discord: discord.gg/tcu
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Hosted and Produced by Kevin Lieber
Instagram: instagram.com/kevlieber
Twitter: twitter.com/kevinlieber
Podcast: youtube.com/thecreateunknown
Research and Writing by Matthew Tabor
twitter.com/TaborTCU
Editing by John Swan
youtube.com/channel/UCJuSltoYKrAUKnbYO5EMZ2A
Huge Thanks To Paula Lieber
etsy.com/shop/Craftality
Vsauce's Curiosity Box: curiositybox.com
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That's the theory behind Zeno's thought experiment on movement. If every distance can be divided up into smaller parts, and traversing every part takes a non-zero amount of time, then how can we make any progress at all in a finite amount of time?
This is obviously wrong, since you can walk to the mailbox and back every day without facing an existential or physics-based crisis. The tale of Achilles and the Tortoise has a certain logic to it that took thousands of years to unravel -- but once we understood the power of the convergent series, the paradox disappeared.
#maths #education #mathematics
And although we refer to it as Pascal's Triangle, it's not actually Pascal's. Mathematicians in China, India, Persia, and even France centuries before Pascal completed his Treatise on Arithmetical Triangle in 1665.
GET FLIPPING.
#education #mathss #shorts
#vsauce #education
#shorts #vsauce #education
As Pascal’s Triangle expands, it reveals mathematical patterns we value elsewhere, from the simple whole number line and the primacy of 1 to a succession of the powers of 2 and the digits of 11’s exponential sequence. And lurking within is a classic Fibonacci sequence in which each successive digit is the sum of its two predecessors.
But one of the most interesting elements of Pascal’s Triangle is the way it lays bare the possible outcomes of any series of simple coin flips. Like everything else in Pascal’s Triangle, it’s in there if you know where to look.
#shorts #vsauce #maths
Witnesses often make accurate identifications, but it's not hard to see how they can very easily get it exactly wrong.
#education #vsauce #truecrime
A number of factors conspire to erode the truth. From biological realities of memory and the brain’s propensity to fill in gaps with fiction to procedural errors that unintentionally reinforce a false narrative, it’s hard for witnesses to get it right. All the flaws in eyewitness testimony seem obvious, and most of them are. What’s interesting is how long we’ve known and largely ignored them.
More than a century ago, psychologist Hugo Münsterberg wrote detailed essays about the problems with witnesses, including eviscerating his own memory of being a crime victim. And before that, Hermann Ebbinghaus explained the “forgetting curve” that shows how memory deteriorates and how spaced repetition -- of both fact and fiction -- can cement what’s in our minds.
Despite generations of knowledge about the fragility of eyewitness identification and testimony, there’s still nothing more powerful and persuasive than a witness pointing a finger at a defendant in court. In the end, forensic science saved Ronald Cotton. But for an immeasurable number of victims of eyewitness error throughout humanity’s pursuit of justice, the result has been imprisonment and death -- and the truth is that the problem can’t ever be solved completely.
*** SOURCES & READING ***
“Picking Cotton: Our Memoir of Injustice and Redemption,” by Erin Torneo, Jennifer Thompson-Cannino, and Ronald Cotton: pickingcottonbook.com
“What Jennifer Saw,” PBS Frontline (1997): pbs.org/wgbh//pages/frontline/shows/dna/photos
“Eyewitness: How Accurate is Visual Memory?” CBS 60 Minutes (2009): cbsnews.com/news/eyewitness-how-accurate-is-visual-memory
“Eyewitness Identification Reform,” Innocence Project: innocenceproject.org/eyewitness-identification-reform
*** LINKS ***
Vsauce2:
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Talk Vsauce2 in The Create Unknown Discord: discord.gg/tcu
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Hosted and Produced by Kevin Lieber
Instagram: instagram.com/kevlieber
Twitter: twitter.com/kevinlieber
Podcast: youtube.com/thecreateunknown
Research and Writing by Matthew Tabor
twitter.com/TaborTCU
Editing by John Swan
youtube.com/channel/UCJuSltoYKrAUKnbYO5EMZ2A
Huge Thanks To Paula Lieber
etsy.com/shop/Craftality
Thumbnail by Dave Keine
Vsauce's Curiosity Box: curiositybox.com
#education #vsauce #crime