Rob Cesternino welcomes Dr. Christian Hubicki to the podcast for the 7th installment of Ask Dr. Christian Hubicki![00:00:00] This episode is brought to you by Bumble, who says Valentine's Day is just for couples.
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[00:00:08] live your best love life.
[00:00:10] That's where Bumble comes in.
[00:00:12] This February 14th, you can flip the script and give those relationships a friendly dose
[00:00:17] of FOMO.
[00:00:18] Say no to staying in this Valentine's Day, and yes to more.
[00:00:22] More dates, more first kisses, more gossip for the group chat, girlies.
[00:00:26] Do Valentine's your way? I was at your place and I got to hang out with you and Jesse wasn't visited. That was a great time. Yep. And now here we are to talk about some science and pop culture, maybe a little survivor here at the end of January. Yeah, this is great because I feel like you have these off seasons
[00:01:41] between survivor seasons and things like that, that it got to do last year, I actually went to Dragon Con, Rob. I'm not sure you know what Dragon can you hear this? I do, no. It's like Comic Con, but it's like in the Comic Con, like kind of the Southeast. It's a lot more, it's a lot more sort of intimate, it's still big, but it's basically a pop culture convention.
[00:03:02] And I lived in Atlanta for years,
[00:03:04] and we would see all the people in their cosplay
[00:03:06] running around, Emily and I would go watch them, the extent of my knowledge on the subject. Oh, that's my kid. My knowledge being, you ask him, my knowledge of anime is about two decades old. Okay, all right. So we're gonna get into a bunch of different stuff here with Christian, anything you wanna say before we jump into the questions? No, other than that, why don't we just dive right in? Okay, all right. So let's start here.
[00:04:21] And Christian, we got a question for you
[00:04:25] that is from Kat. specific. You know, it's it's like, you know, who loves a root canal? No one loves root canal. But I imagine there's a people who didn't especially denies it. Yeah, that's true. Bill it as do insurance companies. So they enjoy root canals, I guess. But when it comes to these robot videos, it's something that just hits me in my profession. Yeah, because it's so easy these
[00:05:40] days to fake robot video. And they just go viral, they show up
[00:05:45] on all the social media platforms. And thankfully, people
[00:06:43] I actually know a lot of researchers who have these. So they're helpful for trying out algorithms and stuff,
[00:06:47] but that's for research, right?
[00:06:48] And for that house, around the house,
[00:06:51] I don't think that's a different story.
[00:06:53] I mean, what I use it for, it would be a gimmick
[00:06:57] around my head, you know, hand me a cup of coffee please,
[00:07:01] because they can put an arm on top of the dog.
[00:07:03] So that, yeah, there are many models of it.
[00:07:07] So, but when it comes to these robots, and bother changing the shadows. The shadows are the same as the person. And you can tell. There are also other good tells that like, there's what I saw of a soccer player, a robot soccer player, a quote unquote, that was dribbling and doing crazy kick flips of the ball right around other soccer players. And my first red flag was,
[00:08:20] if this was a real robot,
[00:08:21] this would be a horrible liability.
[00:08:23] Because if that robot absolutely hit,
[00:08:24] written bumped into the person,
[00:08:26] they would be horribly injured if not sure. Normally it's not like what it's so amazing. Normally it's like when it's like so ridiculous. Like I saw a two-story tall robot once. I was like who on earth would build such a thing. This thing would have cost tens of millions of dollars. And this video was going around in like 2016, 2017. I'm like, oh, this isn't even that cool because I just saw one that can go and play soccer against a bunch of people and shoot and go. Yeah, that's that's very much a problem. That's more of a personal annoyance to me because my students work really hard on this stuff and you put it out there and it's it's eclipsed by something that's actually fake. But so yeah, that that isn't an annoyance to and I think that it just
[00:12:02] I looked up all the plans, all the specs. I did a physical simulation of how the robot would try to throw a ball.
[00:12:05] And basically it would have tossed it like three inches and
[00:12:08] then it would have rolled slowly down the lane.
[00:12:10] I even created a little animation showing what it would actually do.
[00:12:14] So it's one to make sure people knew this is what robots are actually capable of.
[00:12:18] And so you don't get scared unnecessarily.
[00:12:22] We're not ready to turn over bowling to the robots.
[00:12:25] Yeah, I mean, it's certainly just Tesla. There are not even just companies that like, I'd have known from years ago, like five or so years ago, there are companies popping up almost every week with claiming that they're gonna have a new humanoid robot. Some of them have actually already built one. Some of them have actually have built several. What I was making this talk for DragonCon,
[00:13:40] I was going through making sure I counted all the companies
[00:13:43] that were claiming to build or hoping to sell
[00:13:47] humanoid robots and update it As long as I graduate before you're out as a professor, that's cool. And he just got like a hundred million dollar investment from Jeff Bezos for his company. So he's doing okay. I went into the lucrative field of teaching, Rob. That's where I went. But I worked on the research that became that company. So as part of my PhD.
[00:15:01] And their company is trying to get robots in Amazon
[00:15:06] warehouse to pick up totes, little boxes full of stuff from a company like my professors for, you know, somewhere in the range of the low hundreds of thousands, like $100,000. He wants to push it down, Elon Musk wants to push it down to like 20,000. Okay. Beoretically possible with economies of scale, I won't believe it until I can buy one.
[00:16:23] And so anyway, so he's in this space. Hons of other companies.
[00:16:24] So maybe if you were like mass produced standpoint is walking is okay. I was quoted in all places in the LA Times by my opinion on this robot. I put out a massive long tweet thread which I'm sure you're shocked I would do such a thing about my engineering opinions of the robot when it was unveiled and it's well engineered it's fine.
[00:17:42] It's walking is is okay like I mean factory. So it's not so bad, but the hand dexterity and the task that these robots can do appears to be getting better. They'll have videos of an appearing to fold laundry, for instance. But this is where I wanna give a word of caution to your audience. Is that a deep fake? It's not a deep fake.
[00:19:00] It is a real video, but there are lots of caveats
[00:19:04] that you have to ask yourself motion. And sometimes it does a pretty dang good job of making the robot do that thing again, even if the cloth is in a little bit different place. So that stuff's real. So you have this weird watch of stuff that is kind of real, kind of not rather real,
[00:20:21] but kind of not or very real. that fight because I can, I work in academic research. So yeah, but it's, it's that big of a question. If it will happen, it feels like that we're very close, right? It always feels close, Rob. I think in my opinion, like that's, it looks so tantalizingly close. But you know, back in 2006, self-driving cars looked tantalizingly close.
[00:21:43] They had just won a major, there was a major competition in 2006 called the Let's say a question from Karen who wants to know what is your take on the traders follow up question from Sarah If you could pick one other person from reality TV to play the game with who would it be? That's a great question. I have seen season one of the traders. I still need to catch up on what is currently airing Which is season two?
[00:23:01] Right that's a way that you spoiling anybody. No, I'm not gonna spoil anything season two
[00:24:02] kind of like the bowl where you have money, it's in a pot.
[00:24:06] But but no one is sabotaging the pot to like, you know, there's no more sabotaging pot.
[00:24:07] So people are just trying to win the challenge.
[00:24:09] And they won most of them.
[00:24:11] And then then I guess minor, minor spoilers in the end, it didn't even matter.
[00:24:16] Cause they just gave them a challenge to win all the rest of the money that they
[00:24:19] didn't win in the first place.
[00:24:20] So I'm like, yeah, what is the point of this?
[00:24:22] So the setting was cool.
[00:24:24] The fill up hour.
[00:24:26] That's the point.
[00:24:26] They, they do. I think that there would need to be, I would maybe take a little bit of a page from the mole where like if you wanted to save like maybe there's a way to like not help in the challenge like in the in the mole there was the opportunity to win exemptions if you did something in the challenge that maybe was not helpful to the to the team.
[00:25:42] And so was it trade off, you know, that that so you could in the exemption would save you
[00:25:45] from this next round of elimination. as to the identity of one of the traders so that the traders are incentivized to kind of tank the missions a little bit more. That's good. That's not in season two, isn't it? No. That would be interesting. I mean, that we talked to balance for the production of the show to get a clue. Maybe what it could be,
[00:27:02] like you get the opportunity to investigate
[00:27:04] maybe one player if you like,
[00:27:06] if you get a rare instance like that. of the clues was two on the nose. And then other than that famous first boot of that episode of that season was someone was Tom Hanks's like, yeah, loved one or something east. And there was some and the clue was, could you guess, the premise of the show is, can you guess who this person's claim to fame is? What famous persons are they, are they known to be close to?
[00:28:20] And the clue was something about a park bench.
[00:28:23] Yeah, I'm not sure if that was in the clue wall
[00:28:24] or if they ended up pulling it from the wine cellar,
[00:28:27] but they're yeah, basically like, Yeah, I used to be a big real house of Atlanta and Beverly Hills Watcher and a little bit of Vanderpump rules For a long time so though those that's what I was mostly that was my sphere So when the fact that there was Phaedra and Shire on this season. That's coming up. I'm like oh my goodness If I could have just been amongst these folks I
[00:29:41] That would be a lifetime of stories that I could that I could just take with me to my grave
[00:29:47] Okay, and that that's And I think I'm glad. I've never taken an IQ test in my life until that moment. And I still, they never told me my score. I remember I bumped into one of the producers during casting as like, so are you gonna tell us your results? And it's like, I defy.
[00:31:00] Like, I'd like to know my results, please.
[00:31:03] So there is that and also in any interview,
[00:31:08] you know, I knew that? Oh, I mean, just kind of almost like act, I mean, I guess actually half embarrassed that you have to say it. That's sort of like, it's like, I know you need to know this thing. It's like, you know, I'm a smart guy. You know, I ace my GRE math.
[00:32:21] You know, I took the, you know, eight hour
[00:32:25] fundamentals of engineering exam in four hours,
[00:32:27] but I had other things to do. point I was going to meet at the time, Lynn Spillman, who was the casting director. I knew I was going to meet her and I knew I was sitting in a hotel room by myself, waiting for a phone call, waiting for a phone call. I missed two meals because I was waiting for this phone call. I didn't go eat. And eventually they thought I didn't care about the process because I wasn't bothering
[00:33:41] to go eat.
[00:33:42] I was like, no, no, no, I'm not going to leave this phone.
[00:33:45] And they said, no, Christian, we I'm reasonably athletic, I can swim. And a casting director comes up to me and they pull me aside and they start yelling at me. Christian, what the hell are you doing? I'm like, what are you talking about? It's like, I heard that you were doing a strip tease by the pool.
[00:35:03] Do you re-own Reddit that this was a good idea to do this?
[00:35:04] Cause this is gonna, you know,
[00:35:05] this is gonna get you off the show.
[00:35:06] We're like, that's like blah blah blah.
[00:35:07] That's like, probably no small part for all the shenanigans that they had to talk me out of doing during casting. But not not the least of which was me being nervous about not seeming smart enough. I was very nervous. I didn't do well. So in a way, it does fit. Yeah, it
[00:36:22] does fit. Okay. Thank you for listening. All right.
[00:37:24] enough, they couldn't get around like people. So the government funded this massive competition like, hey, the team that makes a robot can go in to a simulated power plant and shut off the
[00:37:31] valve, gets some huge prize. And our team was funded through some other program, we weren't
[00:37:37] eligible for the prize, but we showed up in 2015 at this major final competition, and we were putting
[00:37:44] on a show. It was basically in Pomona, it his children, watched the competition and turned to them and said, I could build a better humanoid robot and then walked away. I was like, oh, okay.
[00:39:02] That's a story.
[00:39:03] And then, you know, seven years later, he actually built a humanoid robot.
[00:39:06] So that was completely unsurprising to me.
[00:39:08] What do you want to that? They don't necessarily say, we have to develop a bunch of fundamental science before we could ever actually do a product. They say, you know what, the science is about at the right place right now that we, with a bit of a push and a bit of vestment, they should take off. So yeah, I mean, certainly he was there and ennoting the robots and clearly thought he had some ideas for how he can improve them. This episode is brought to you by Bumble, who says Valentine's Day is just for
[00:40:23] couples just because you're not in a relationship doesn't mean you can't get out there and live a cool thing, I remember thinking, or main character, had to drive towards some cliff and then turn really fast to make it to turn and then not fall off. And Lightne McQueen had to turn left so he jerked to the left really hard and then he just
[00:43:01] tumbled off the cliff. And I forget how want the entire opposite direction, but got the opposite result. So basically, cars, in my opinion, was exhibiting the idea of a nonlinear system. Just because you put in a little bit more doesn't mean you get a little bit more. In fact, you can do something wildly different
[00:44:20] and get something crazy out.
[00:44:22] That's what a nonlinear system is.
[00:44:24] And that's what you need to have
[00:44:26] in order to have a chaotic system. the course of history. And that's not necessarily true. That's not necessarily true. And so it's kind of I get where they're going for because the idea is trying to say that hey, the world is so chaotic. That tiny changes to the initial conditions. So way back in dinosaur time, butterfly diets, we don't evolve as people. That's what they're going for. But it kind of ignores that that's sort of like the top idea of chaos theory, which
[00:45:44] is oh, it just happen or the other. But that doesn't mean literally anything could happen.
[00:47:00] There are still structure to the world
[00:47:03] and how things work.
[00:47:05] I mean, suddenly, water a speed limit? Yeah, this was this question, this came in early
[00:48:21] when we put up that questionnaire,
[00:48:23] and I actually put out a real,
[00:48:25] I tried putting out a versions of it as well. But operating off the assumption that thoughts are the results of neurons firing in your brain. There's a lot of things you can, certain from that. For instance, that if you wanted to actually map how fast
[00:51:00] signals travel through your brain, I've seen, which is the science of thought. It's huge. But there was an interesting study which tried to take advantage of this idea that it takes about a half a second to react to something. And they made the flash happen a half second after you pressed it. Okay. Basically that same delay you have for sensing things in your brain. Okay. And then people hit the button and over and say hit the button lots of times and it would have this half second delay. But people have the perception that's happening at the exact same time depression in the button.
[00:52:23] They're brain kind of adapted to this. Okay. Then people kept pressing the button that all of a something, think something, feel something new. And I don't know the speed at which we think. However, if we wanted to say, figure out, like how fast does it take for a neuron to fire another neuron within our brain, that might give us an upper limit as to how fast we could potentially think.
[00:53:41] And that is something like less than a millisecond
[00:53:44] that it takes for one neuron to fire against another neuron
[00:53:46] which causes another neuron to fire and things like that. actually fire. Okay. So that speed limit, unless that actual activation time of a neuron would change with age, then that speed limit that I'm talking about would be the same. But the things that we might consider to be thoughts is maybe more than just any particular neuron firing to another. It's a much more complex set of things happening.
[00:55:03] This is the patterns of them as they King, the great, great, great.
[00:56:20] Yes.
[00:56:21] Yes.
[00:56:22] What was the, my favorite part of Survivor,
[00:56:24] I was shocked when I thought Rob,
[00:56:26] I don't think I've ever answered this on any of your podcasts.
[00:56:28] Yes. And we were down in the numbers as David's at the merge. And oh my God, I have to come up with a plan right now. It's gonna pull people in so we can get an advantage so that way we can get an advantage and make it through this vote with our David's in tech. And it's not a thing that could ever really make air in some meaningful way. But like, I'm trying to talk to all these people.
[00:57:42] I was trying to get to know them,
[00:57:46] trying to send the signals.
[00:57:47] I wanted to send to them, Wow. What is your least favorite part of Survivor? Oh, so I loved so much of that experience that the one experience that really stuck out that I did not like. It wasn't even like the elements like the rain. Like you and I have talked about the rain socks. It's the worst elemental part of the show.
[00:59:02] I mean, those don't know.
[00:59:04] But when it rains, not only are you always think it was me, Gabby, Kara, and Allison, where the four people were being voted back to camp and the other people were going to go off and have some barbecue somewhere. And for whatever reason, it took forever to get us back to the island. Like, guys, we already lost. Why are you just tormenting us by making it take longer?
[01:00:20] And then the producer,
[01:00:21] like, and you're not supposed to talk
[01:00:22] to producers during this time,
[01:00:23] but they're like, you know,
[01:00:24] there's lots of, this shows complicated.
[01:00:26] A lot of things are happening.
[01:00:27] A lot of moving parts, blah was the low point of that.
[01:01:42] Cause I was like-
[01:01:42] You protested.
[01:01:43] You feel like that's beneath survivor.
[01:01:45] Yeah, that thought I was a beneath survivor.
[01:01:47] Now I understand in the pantheon of characters we can have this. So, favorite piece in an orchestra. Yeah, so I played in orchestras for most of my life,
[01:03:00] or at least most of my adult-ish life.
[01:03:04] And I minored in music in college.
[01:03:06] I was a clarinet player. listening to a piece of music, but when you're in the belly of the orchestra, and if you're seated where I'm seated, I am right in front of all the brass. So my body is basically being vibrated out of existence by loud French horns away. He actually died in March of 2020, but not COVID. Yeah, he would have been one of the, yeah, that's, you know, I
[01:05:41] remember he was like, he was in his 90s, 93.
[01:05:44] Now, yeah, I remember when I learned that, I was like, wow, he is, you know, he,
[01:05:48] he's, he's what those will do.
[01:07:00] But I'm going to give a sort of a much more simple example one that requires no computer
[01:07:03] programs at all.
[01:07:04] I've seen a few examples that you just with different set of paper. Okay, I won't even be able to see the maze. Okay? And so can you get me to solve it? And they have to write out the steps very carefully to make you do it. And then you've thought, then they read it to you. You know, what's the first step?
[01:08:20] Then you do it.
[01:08:21] Then the next step, and you go through it.
[01:08:22] And if you take your graph paper
[01:08:24] and lay it over the maze, if you did it right, you solved it.
[01:08:28] So that even require an iPad, It's always what is I don't even understand. I mean, I get it. I get it. Maybe it's gonna break this down. Okay. It's attorneys number one because I mean, just saw in this last season, there were three attorneys and all of them lied about it. Yeah. Well, it's I in fairness, Jake did not lie about it. Oh, did he lie not lie? He said he was like
[01:09:42] a prosecutor or a prosecutor. Oh, maybe. Oh, yeah. Okay. Sorry. I can tell you. Yeah. Better Call Saul is a great, I mean, I remember, you know, when people said they were like public defenders after my season, I was like, if you told me that, I would have, you know, I would not have thought you were rich. You know, I've seen Better Call Saul, you know, he's living out of the back of a nail salon. And. I don't think he lived there. And did he work there?
[01:11:00] Well, where do you, no, he couldn't stay at Chuck's place
[01:11:03] in season one.
[01:11:04] He had to stay at the same.
[01:11:05] Did he sleep there?
[01:11:06] Yeah, he had to move his desk He said, oh, don't even get me started. He said, I am not a fan of suits. I dislike suits so much. I'm sorry. What? He just, look, I can take a premise to a degree. I just love that the sheer premise of it and the ridiculousness of it, I feel like at some point that might win the Harvard. Well, and he picked going to Harvard, right?
[01:12:23] But he didn't even have a law degree.
[01:12:24] Like the entire firm of the whole premise
[01:12:27] is like all in the show anymore, I got angry at it. Like, how dare it try to make the go along with this premise for so long. It tricked me so. And so I just, so it, it,
[01:14:44] they're really smart. I mean, that's the three things, right? And that's why all and so any combination of those things individually can lead to people being seen as threatening.
[01:14:49] I think that they see themselves as the being the conglomeration of all these things. And
[01:14:55] as a result, they feel the need to lie about it. And they think people don't like them.
[01:14:59] That's why I assume it's the case.
[01:15:01] Do you think that part of it is that at the trust on Netflix, Christian. If you don't like this. Oh, yeah. So it's about moted. I feel like it's outmoded. I mean, like the, I mean, almost worked out the opposite way to Mike White's favor. Like he could have, he could have played it off differently. And I almost did play off his game differently. We're like, I don't need the money.
[01:16:20] I'm just here for the experience.
[01:16:21] I'll talk to you about this many times.
[01:16:22] And like that, that endeared him in some ways
[01:16:25] to a lot of people.
[01:16:26] So like, I kind of wish someone would have
[01:16:28] would turn it around right now. where it comes from because like I maybe I'm fortunate enough in my life that not have had to deal with a lot of lawyers in a high-stress situation where I have opposing counsel trying to poke into my business. Like if people want a bad experience of the lawyer, I guess that's a thing. But yeah, there's got to be some people who studied this. But don't you feel like that there's less anti-lawyer sentiment
[01:17:41] now than there was like maybe like 20 years ago?
[01:17:46] I feel like that.
[01:17:46] I mean, that's all. The answer is space, but I feel like I got to give ocean credit. I feel like if I go on about how awesome space would be,
[01:19:00] like it's just like burying ocean
[01:19:02] sadly under the water where it is.
[01:19:04] And so when like, I mean space,
[01:19:06] you answer the questions of space.
[01:19:07] You actually answer a lot of other questions Okay, if you have lots of different types of fish, and species of fish, you say, oh, look at all those fishes. Okay. I was told this by a, yeah, I was actually told this by a fish expert. Okay. And so, plenty of fishes in the sea. Plenty of fishes in the sea. That's the way the spray should go. Let's start it right here.
[01:20:20] Every year I go to a biology conference
[01:20:22] called the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology.
[01:20:24] And every year I am wowed see all the fish stuff. And every time I'm always wowed with all the crazy solutions that these fish have come up with, these fishes have come up with. And the how these structures move. And I look at in comparison at robots. And I'm like, wow, our designs are so uncreative
[01:21:41] by comparison.
[01:21:44] It is so nice to go to this conference,
[01:21:47] because I'm reminded, this year, I'll commit to you Rob. I will watch it sometime this year. Yeah, just watch a couple of episodes. If you don't like it, don't stay with it. No, that's fine. I mean, isn't the course of the Flower Moon?
[01:23:01] Is that also an Apple TV plus?
[01:23:04] Yes.
[01:23:05] Yeah, okay, so I don't have it.
[01:23:06] So I have to get a booking to go to the hotel
[01:24:21] and which was incredibly rare to get this.
[01:24:24] And so we went out there and we rented a car to go out they were able to let it go. But I was like, what is this? I mean, looked around for the signs and sink killers of the flower. Is that Leo? Is that Leo? Yeah. That would be fine to get. Did not get recognized in any way, shape or form in tiny bahuska. Yeah. It's a lot alone as Leonardo DiCaprio. Yeah. I did get recognized in Alaska though.
[01:25:40] That was a trip.
[01:25:41] Yeah.
[01:25:42] I mean, too bad that he wasn't filming,
[01:25:44] don't look up.
[01:25:45] You could have stepped in to be the math double. in that information and processing it somehow giving it to you. Okay, so even a camera would be a sensor, but the greater truth of what they're saying is right that if you went out and looked at the stars from where the JWST telescope is, you would not see what it sees. You can't see what it sees. All of the light that is being fed
[01:27:02] is beyond our human vision. As a result, you infrared is under red, and it goes blah blah blah. And so the JWST takes photos of infrared, which we can't see. But a good way to think about how what it's actually doing, it's kind of like one of those thermal imaging cameras. Okay. Yeah, the thermal imaging cameras, you can't actually see heat, but it has a logic for
[01:28:24] saying, oh, if a thing is a certain temperature you can plug in that's gonna drastically improve your ability to excel at the game unless that is beyond counting to 10. Your ability to count the votes that are better than other votes, it's not going to drastically improve
[01:29:41] with just some mathematical understanding like that.
[01:29:44] That's the hope, that would be awesome.
[01:29:47] There are moments in my YouTube. I'm not sure they're always that fun to watch,
[01:31:01] but like you can't be a pro cop.
[01:31:03] I just talked about this on the on fire podcast.
[01:31:06] Oh really has he? like, with near the end of my game, I remember Davey told me there was this crazy shot clock aisle. And it was something that I, I, we had not seen that part of ghost island yet that it didn't exist. And the coral areas to it on season 35 weren't very strong. So I was like, I guess it could be a thing. But it was a wild thing that he was telling me about. And so like, I didn't interrogate him
[01:32:21] per se. But I was like, I, I, but I was think it was just so weird. I was so blunt on my mind at that point that I felt that he'd do that when I should have been saying should I trust Mike White? Obviously I shouldn't. He should go home and write HBO shows instead. But I think that it's not a mathematically intensive way to go about survivor
[01:33:40] strategy. It's a bit of logic. And I think there's the possibility of it. I feel like the circumstances are such that they have not arose. I feel like there's been this thing which comes up for so many seasons. I know many people have thought about it.
[01:35:02] Where you use the Revote rules to some watching poker back. Poker had that ascendancy. I feel like in the late aughts, like the mid-late aughts, with the era of like the Chris Moneymaker. Moneymaker. Yeah, like around like 2003, 2004. Yeah, yeah, that's right. Mid-day, sort of mid-aughts, mid-early aughts. I enjoyed it then.
[01:36:23] When it was a big thing, I would watch the World Series of poker when I was on.
[01:36:27] I played poker like twice in my life.
[01:36:28] Yeah. you know, you're in there and you see like people like having to get like, like chiropractors and like massages and like, you know, it's work. Yeah, it's in outside. And that's, so that's your, she actually did some, I'm curious about your experience. Yeah, I used to go to Reno Jason Somerville used to have us out there. And so that was
[01:37:40] very fun. But you know, I really like, would be something that would be fun to learn. And really just sort of the, the make in competition between you and this person across the table, from which you are vulnerable to being read and destroyed by, that's not exhilarating, at least to experience. But so no deal math. I was trying to find a database of banker offers to see if I could determine if there was an actual logic to the banking. Some people online said they had a formula for other liars. I don't think they actually had one because I tried it out.
[01:40:20] It didn't make any sense.
[01:40:21] But I didn't have it.
[01:40:22] So I was curious, if you had some formula to say the stink guy. I don't know. It's like, you know, to bluff. And that'd be cool. You're the stink guy. All right, son. So I'm assuming that you want to deal with the island. The deal with the island is being covered on the Robins podcast series. Of course. Of course. Yes. So who's covering this one? Well, look, you have to tune in
[01:41:41] for deal or no deal island coverage.
[01:41:44] Okay. All right.
[01:41:45] So the question is with that.
[01:41:47] We don't really know what exactly, Gerald earlier today. And we were just talking about like, like kind of like bombastic and bombastic personalities on the traders. And even if they're not a trader, I feel like that they, it turns into like a big pile on. Like once like, you know, you have like a, you know, a moment where like Rob's not just gonna like
[01:43:02] sit and play nice.
[01:43:03] Like he's gonna ruffle some feathers.
[01:43:05] And then that always gets turned around
[01:43:07] into getting banished. Yeah, so okay. All right. So Bobby Hall wants to know, I'd love to hear Christian's thoughts about why the video game Baldur's Gate 3 has been so successful. Do you have thoughts about Baldur's Gate 3? I gotta be honest, I don't really know what Baldur's Gate. I don't even know about Baldur's Gate too. You know what, you wouldn't be the only one Rob Podcast here. And I remember back, this was back in like the early mid-autts, I would go off to a dorm room with my friend Nathaniel and he would be the Dungeons and Nasture and we'd play all four years. All my other friends would make fun of me for playing Dungeons and Dragons.
[01:45:40] Emily would laugh at me playing Dungeons and Dragons.
[01:45:43] Everyone would play full-life of Dungeons and Dragons.
[01:45:44] Now a Dungeons and Dragons is suddenly surprisingly cool And often these plot-based games, you got to follow the plot along. You got to end up at the same end point. So how much choice can you have? And this game was so intricate in the amount of choices that they programmed into the game that it actually is really compelling for me to watch and watch to see how people approach it differently.
[01:47:00] Yeah, a quick search reveals that there
[01:47:03] were intimacy coordinators on the set of Baldur's Gate 3. or whatever, pest felt. It's embarrassing to kind of watch people do it. See, that's the part I like. I didn't like rolling the dice. Oh, see, you're more of a role play guy. I'm a never role play guy. I was the game lawyer. I was the guy doing the calculations. I'm the guy who programmed my graphic calculator to tell me the exact attack I should do
[01:48:20] that would optimize my damage out.
[01:48:21] Yeah.
[01:48:22] That was me at the table.
[01:48:23] Less fun to be around.
[01:48:25] But internally in your head, you're imagining these scenes talk to it. There's three rats in the corner. You could talk to any of those three rats and all have different characters and different voice actors for them. So it's incredibly intricate. And the choices matter and the story was well done. I don't like story based games. I think I like it talks as a field. And he hates snakes. And he was like freaking out. Why did it have to be robot snakes? It just always has to be them.
[01:51:01] And I told him, it's like, oh dad,
[01:51:03] it's like, why would you want a robot snake?
[01:51:04] It's like, well, you know,
[01:51:06] what if you're in a collapsed building,
[01:51:07] the snake that can come rescue you? or a little like step back, they're starting to be too close to the robot. And that's a good instinct to not be too close. Some people just freak out. Like they have to like almost leave the room. It's so creepy to see anything remotely biological looking move like a robot that people don't respond well. So that's something I gotta be aware of every time I give a tour. I gotta get it. It's kind of like an uncanny valley of human behavior.
[01:52:22] But in robot snakes, it's basically like a badge, like a trifold door that has like changes, you're looking at it from above, and it can move like that. That's what it is. And
[01:53:40] and the math, and it's basically developed the all vibrating each other. So it's not going to necessarily be obvious
[01:55:02] where it came from. Everything's vibrating when when a fly hits the YouTube. So anyway, so like, robotsnakes are cool. The math is really neat behind them. They're not application ready. There are some neat things, but the spider harp is cool. They had it on Jimmy, they had the, the robot snake on Jimmy Fallon and crawled up Jimmy Fallon's leg. It was pretty cool. Anyway, that's another thing. What would you recommend more for our listeners
[01:56:22] to check out next?
[01:56:23] The spider harp video or Baldur's Gate 3 Let's Play. on a research trip to London. I was working in a bird research barn for two weeks and I found in London, there's some great Indian restaurants. And now I really enjoy Indian style of food. So. Okay, so try the Indian food. Try the Indian food. International food in general. The people setting up shop,
[01:57:40] I mean, my thing is, think of it not as London.
[01:57:43] Think of it as a major city that's a hub
[01:57:46] of lots of different cultures
[01:57:48] that would set up restaurants there. way as I did before at the show, I went on the show. And I cherish the moments that I feel like I felt like when I was before I was watching, but before I went on, where it's sort of just the what's going to happen next kind of feeling and you're just rooting for a character. Because yeah, it's easy to get, yeah, go on, what was your experience?
[01:59:00] You could do one for this.
[01:59:01] Yeah, because I guess I feel like I'm a little jealous of, because, you yeah, I think I probably like, I don't know if jealous is the right word, but I feel like that you got to experience so much more of the catalog of the show in the way it was intended to be experienced than somebody like I did.
[02:00:23] I get it. I understand what you're saying,
[02:00:24] because I would try to put myself in your shoes,
[02:00:27] because yeah, I mean until the day I die.
[02:01:43] I mean, and just like I'll remember where I was
[02:01:45] when I was watching Stephen and, I think it's the characters, what I'm doing is I'm more empathizing with the people who are contestants on the show more than I am viewing them as characters that are on the show. So I've been there, I've been there. And so whenever I have an instinct to say something
[02:03:02] I might've thought about like a character before
[02:03:05] I was on it, I realize, that they're good at pulling it out. So so I think when I watch now, I'm more like what I'm thinking about is like, OK, this person is watching this at home. And I they need it's hopefully they have a wonderful time, but it also can be a lot.
[02:04:21] So I'm doing it from that perspective.
[02:04:23] I mean, when I watch it now as opposed to when I watch before.
[02:04:28] All right. of topology, you judge a shape and a number of holes irrespective of how much a shape is stretched. So in the field of topology, a donut is the same topology as a coffee mug. I technically call them homeomorphisms, but that's a lot of syllables.
[02:05:41] That's beautiful and poetic.
[02:06:44] it means that by the definition of topology, and that is homeomorphic with a ring,
[02:06:48] and a ring has one hole.
[02:06:49] Now, you might say,
[02:06:51] but I don't care about topology,
[02:06:53] why is topology called that, have that definition?
[02:06:56] Why is it so important that you have this definition?
[02:07:00] And the reason being,
[02:07:02] so just to use another example,
[02:07:03] like let's say you think something like flat like a pancake,
[02:07:06] you could never turn this into a doughnut that you can do to help solve these is that if you envision these hoops and this rope, and if in your mind you can shrink and stretch some of those hoops and all of a sudden it becomes obvious how you would pull out the string, that actually gives you a hint as to how to move it, okay, because they are the same topology, all right. And there are all kinds of ways that
[02:08:23] topology is used to understand the world. There, and this is, the hairy ball theorem. You have hairs on some kind of ball. I don't know why Henri Poincare named it that. I don't think he did unless it was the ball hairy or something. But if you can, so questions, can you comb the hairs continuously without a cow lick or a part? And on a circle, a flat circle, you can. Just imagine you take the
[02:09:42] hairs and you comb them all around in a circle. When you're done, they're wind socks that detect the wind, right? So they will blow in the direction of the wind, right? Because the Harry ball of the Harry ball, if you're saying that there is no way to comb all the hairs on the sphere such that there is no cow lick. That means that there will always be somewhere on the earth. One of those wind socks will not be blowing. That means there's always
[02:11:02] a point on the earth, no matter how way to have a nice continuous vector field, meaning that there's going to have to be some place where the vector field is zero, meaning that there's going to be a point where it doesn't blow. It doesn't have to start anywhere necessarily. What it's more like is that if you were to
[02:12:24] comb two hairs and they were to come up up against each other and make a cow lick, there's that's Dr. Christian to save. And like that, my job is rescinded. Yeah. You'll be as smooth as a humanoid robot. No time. Yeah, the jokes.
[02:13:41] I have to know who came up with this.
[02:13:43] I tried to search before the podcast.
[02:13:45] Like who came up with this?
[02:13:46] I don't think it was Henri point to tell that story on big, but it's a publicly known story. It's, but they're all kinds of weird ones out in the science world. People do all kinds of crazy experiments and stuff. So. Okay. All right. Christian, anything else on your mind tonight? Oh, I think I got a lot off of my chest. I just, I have to say once,
[02:15:01] once I realized that I was gonna have to talk about topology,
[02:15:05] I couldn't resist having was a Star Wars fan. Maybe it was just a general purpose heckler that decided to like this harp on Star Wars Yes, it's okay. I think I think I'm gonna say more like yeah, I would say maybe
[02:16:23] It like you know, I think I'll handle the moment
[02:16:25] I never thought I'd have a heckler in any of my So I think that that can count some degree. Okay. You watching anything interesting, you and Emily? Oh, well, we got to catch up on traders. Oh my God, what are we watching? We watched the Squid Game the Challenge. Okay. It's that show. We finally did. I feel like the last three episodes could have been an email. Yeah, yeah. But I think that, but there were hints
[02:17:43] of something interesting there,
[02:17:44] but like I did get to do a deep dive. here where I had a treat. And I think that the podcast listeners are gonna be enjoying this one. So please always let Dr. Christian know that you enjoyed this. Please, I think that Christian appreciates the feedback on Twitter, he is still at Chewbiki.
[02:19:02] Yep, and now I'm also on threads now. I'm also on threads.
[02:19:03] Oh, that thread is still going?
[02:19:05] Yeah, you know, I can tell,
[02:19:06] you're so active on threads, I'm thought she'd be like, Sam, Sam, Rob's looking for somebody else. I'm sorry to tell you something, right now. Well, you never know if you're going to find somebody there, but yeah, I'd like to check my newsfeed on LinkedIn. That's not a bad idea. Because at least it's going to be reasonably professional. I would assume. Yeah. I feel like it's not like nobody's ever like, uh, you know, like we hate you.
[02:20:24] That's, that's true.
[02:20:25] Everyone has to be because you're always talking to a potential new boss or hundred lectures that are all unlisted. And I had to build the courage to actually put something out publicly with my robotics communication on one of these days. And then I actually pulled the trigger on that, make YouTube. Are you ever still streaming on Twitch? I haven't done that in a bit, but I've been tempted because I really enjoyed it, like giving some lectures. I was at a conference once not long ago
[02:21:42] and they pulled up my Twitch feed and they said,
[02:21:43] oh, I've watched your lecture on this.
[02:21:45] I'm like, that would be a good thing for me to do.
[02:21:47] I mean, I also know people on Twitch and Opuya Ron Rob is a pod guest this week. Big traders Monday here had an exit interview with the latest person, Banished. I won't say who that is. And then we also had a feedback show with Michelle Fitzgerald who stopped by to talk about some survivor people and challenge people that are on the traders. So check that out as well.
[02:23:01] And then of course, we'll be back with the traders again,
[02:23:04] live on Thursday at night at 10.15 p.m.