Transcript of AE 1024 - The Goss: Sense Making in the Modern Era of Social Media and Bullshit Artist Politicians

G'day, you mob. Pete here, and this is another episode of Aussie English. The number one place for anyone and everyone wanting to learn Australian English. So, today I have a Goss' episode for you where I sit down with my old man, my father, Ian Smissen, and we talk about the week's news whether locally down under here in Australia or non-locally overseas in other parts of the world.

Okay, and we sometimes also talk about whatever comes to mind, right. If we can think of something interesting to share with you guys related to us or Australia, we also talk about that in The Goss'. So, these episodes are specifically designed to try and give you content about many different topics where we're obviously speaking in English and there are multiple people having a natural and spontaneous conversation in English.

So, it is particularly good to improve your listening skills. In order to complement that, though, I really recommend that you join the podcast membership or the academy membership at AussieEnglish.com.au, where you will get access to the full transcripts of these episodes, the PDFs, the downloads, and you can also use the online PDF reader to read and listen at the same time.

Okay, so if you really, really want to improve your listening skills fast, get the transcript, listen and read at the same time, keep practising, and that is the quickest way to level up your English. Anyway, I've been rabbiting on a bit, I've been talking a bit. Let's just get into this episode, guys. Smack the bird and let's get into it.

So, dad, what's going on?

Hey, Pete.

What's the goss'?

"What's the goss'?" Yeah, not much this week. Not that personally, it's just been- I've finally recovered from the second bout of bronchitis, and apologies to listeners and viewers if I end up coughing and wheezing (coughs) soon. Soon, as you mention it.

Yeah, you just think about it, and you're like... (both talking)

...A bit of blatant product placement here. I better open up a drink first.

I've got a beer.

Geez! Too early for me. Actually, it's not too early for me. I just don't have any in the fridge, so.

It's not 9am, it's 1:05. That's all right.

Yes. Well, the old gag about "it must be 5:00pm somewhere" is actually not true at the moment.

Yeah, smarter man than me, so.

Let's not go there.

Far out. So, how have you been surviving? We could do a little recap if you want. What do we got? We're up to like 500 cases a day at the moment of Victoria. New South Wales are still posting between... (both talking)

...1,000 to 1,500. Yeah.

Yeah, we're at, I think Austra- Australia? Victoria has just passed 70% first vaccine.

First dose. Yeah.

And I think we're hovering just below 50% for second.

Yeah, New South Wales have just kicked over 50% fully vaccinated, so.

Yeah. So, you were raging up about this recently, weren't you? Because...

Usually, yeah.

...Gladys Berejiklian's kind of moved the goalposts a few times. Do you want to talk about that?

Well, it's not yeah, it's not just Gladys. I think it's the whole- And I think it's just a general conspiracy because I reckon Dan's fallen into it as well now. Is that my understanding of it- And I haven't read the full report from Peter Doherty Institute, which was to- Which was the modelling the how the crossover between the number of cases per day, per week is going to balance out once we get vaccination rates up.

And how obviously the more vaccinations you have, then the hope is that you'll reduce the number of cases and therefore you can go out of the strict restrictions in lockdown and so on. So, that was all a bit of a guessing game. But then modelling was that at 70% fully vaccinated across the country, we would be able to reduce a few of the restrictions and at 80%, we'll be able to reduce even more.

The publicity, though from the right-wing governments, the federal government and New South Wales government is once we get to 80%, we're fine, we can just remove everything, which is never what Doherty suggested. And 80% is not 80%. This is how to manipulate. It is not even statistics; this is how to manipulate a number.

Because when it was originally, it was if you got 80% fully vaccinated, now it's 80% of the people who are eligible to be vaccinated, which is everybody over the age of 16, which cuts out 10% of the population. So, and funnily enough, that 10% of the population is, if not the most vulnerable, at least as vulnerable as the rest of the population.

And so, we should be aiming at high 80s to get the blanket of 80% until we are allowed to vaccinate people under the age of 16.

Now I know in Australia we're pushing to get 12- to 16-year-olds vaccinated after we've got the 16 to 18 year olds, there's a big push to get the senior high school students in Victoria their VCE, in New South Wales HSC and so on vaccinated, so that they can complete their year of study this year and not have that fully interrupted, which makes perfect sense.

Well, and you've also got a big issue, don't you, if you end up with a sizeable population of people un-vaccinated all around the same age that are obviously going to school together?

Exactly. One gets it, everybody gets it.

And they can bring it home and it can affect people who are even if they've got one dose or even two doses. There are some people dying despite having two doses of the vaccine, so.

Yeah. The effective population, vaccinated population for your average 10-year-old, for instance, even if 80% of the adult population, assuming adult is 16 and over or even 18 and over. If 80% of the adult population in Australia is vaccinated, the effective population vaccinated for your average 10-year-old will be in single digits because they don't come across many adults...

Well, it was interesting...

...With their family and children.

It was interesting when I saw a doctor on the TV talking about this recently, and he's like, 80% is all well and good. But you forget that it's not a- It's kind of like having multiple colours poured into a bucket that haven't been stirred up very much, right? So, you're gonna have patches of vaccination hot spots and places where there have been much fewer vaccinations.

Because it's the overall number is the 80%...

And at primary schools, kindergartens and childcare will be rampant.

At least for the children, right? All the teachers would be loving it.

Well, yeah. Exactly.

And what's been happening recently with mandating vaccines? It's been this interesting kind of discussion that's been going on. Because I think that's one of the biggest things that the right-wing nut jobs I've seen online kind of jump on the, oh my god, Australia's, you know, separating...

Did you see the thing with the video of the child being separated from the father by people in PPE and it got jumped on by all these, you know, conservative commentators from overseas? There was a young lady who was clearly from the UK based on her accent, and she was like Australia's turning into, you know, 1984.

You know, they're separating chil- They're forcibly separating children to make- To force them to be vaccinated. And it was just so funny because she was going nuts, saying, you know, Australia is turning into a police state and we're force vaccinating our population, blah blah blah.

What's next? You know, you're going to have to hide your children. And automatically, two, she goes to, this is going to be like 1930s Germany with everyone... Oh, of course.

And your just like, really? Really? And then it was like, simply look at the video and you can see this child is under the age of 12, and at the time, no one under the age of whatever it was, 16 can get vaccinated.

Exactly.

And then all these stories came out saying, this has- This footage had nothing to do with...

It never does. It never does. They, you know, they use B-roll from somewhere else because it suits the story. And then that becomes the story.

It's so irritating how much, not just the message that they share with everyone that there is all this misinformation and fear. And then she showed footage of the Melbourne protesters in this video and said that that was because of the children being separated from their parents.

And you're like, well, no, they're whingeing about the lockdowns. They're not whingeing about the vaccine specifically or- And definitely not about children being forcibly separated from their parents. But the thing that irritates me most about these people is the- It's the amount of confidence they have in their assertions.

Oh, yeah. Of course.

And your just like...

Well, there's an inverse proportionality between confidence and intelligence when it comes to these things. The dumber and less informed you are, the more confident you are, because if you are smarter and better informed, you realise that there are multiple variations and different opinions and things, and therefore you have to actually go and look at the evidence and make an educated decision...

Not only that. Not only that, right. You are more afraid of being wrong, then you are motivated to be correct, right? So, like you feel- At least this happened to me as a scientist. I had it bashed out of me pretty quickly when you start doing science.

Because you realise that if you take a solid position on anything, it's almost certain that at some point in the future, there's going to be evidence that comes up that shows either that it's improbable or it might be completely wrong. And so, people get irritated with scientists' kind of being wishy washy and hard to pin down on things, and they use a lot of this kind of cautionary language.

Yeah. And that's- And that- You're right. And we get as scientists, we- As an ex-scientist in both our cases, we get sucked into the common vernacular being used when scientists say something. Like, we're a scientist, we're often being asked to, can you prove scientifically? And the answer to that is, I don't care what the rest of the question is, the answer is no.

Because scientific proof is an oxymoron. Proof has a very specific meaning in science and mathematics. It is- Proof is a mathematical concept. It is about establishing a series of logical steps that lead you to an inevitable and factual conclusion.

In science, what we are doing is that we're trying to find results that support or refute a hypothesis, and then we are making something it says, the best answer we have now is this based on the evidence. We never prove something, because...

Well, that's it... (both talking)

...Prove it up until the first time it becomes unproven.

Yeah, you're searching for the option that is has the least amount of what would you say, negative evidence, right? That has the most amount of evidence to say that it isn't wrong yet.

Exactly.

It's like saying, models, right- This was interesting, too. It was on the news recently where they were talking about these models for- That the Doherty Institute had created to work out what was going to happen with COVID. And the guy stated he's like, by definition, models are incorrect.

Yeah.

Like they're...

Models are mathematical principles applied to existing data that we have, and they are making predictions in the future and the prediction can never be 100%.

Yeah. Well, and that would be like saying, having a room of, say, 50 people and getting the average height and no one in that room is necessarily that height, but that as a model of, you know, the average height in this room is 100% correct.

And if you were to use- What- If you were to say, guess what the next person to come into this room's height is going to be? You would use that model even though you are almost certain that it's going to be incorrect.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, the tallest people in the world are the Dutch. That doesn't mean that every Dutchman or Dutch woman is taller than anybody else. It's an averaging thing.

So, it's been really interesting to have to try and brush up, as well, just on my own critical thinking skills and statistics and realising how much information you need to pass. Do you think it's becoming more of a burden today for people in general, not just young or old, the amount of fact checking they kind of have to do?

Or that if they want to be well informed about any topic, do you think it requires a great deal more personal research or a personal investment into a certain topic that you want to know about?

Oh, absolutely.

Or people just like, I don't give a shit, I'll just pick a side and they've always done it?

It absolutely doesn't. I'm not a big fan of using that word, and I've used it three times in a 30 second period.

What, "absolutely"?

"Absolutely". Yeah.

Or "does".

Oh yes. The...

...Word.

...If I go back to my childhood watching, you know, television news in my childhood, you would be almost sure that what you were being told was factually correct. Because journalists had already done the background and they'd already fact checked, and they'd already looked at alternatives and they had come and told you the story. That is not the true truth now.

Now, what we have on television news as an example, is we're going to get you the sexiest story. Because it'll do two things, one, television is a visual medium, so we will show you video of anything. And as we've already said, we saw a story, you were mentioning the story at the beginning of this, about- Here's a bit of video and we're going to tell a story and we're going to match these two things up and they're completely unrelated.

To pause you quickly there, a good example of that was the Afghanistan suicide bombing at the airport. I think that some people said they had footage of the actual bombing taking place, and it was during the day, and it turned out to be in Palestine. And you were just like, you know, guys...

I know. And that's the problem now we have is that because television is obviously a visual medium, it appears now that television news is entirely visual. It doesn't matter whether it's true, whether it is B-roll from a year ago, we're going to show you something and tell a story around it. The other thing is that we have, you know- That's the first problem.

The second problem is that we now have a news medium, news media in general that wants to tell a balanced story, and often there is no balance. A fact is a fact. You don't need an alternative fact to balance out a fact.

And this is a big issue around climate change, right, where you can't just say we need a voice on either side of yes and no. That's one sort of definition of balance in that you have different sides, you know, in terms of representation, but it's not necessarily balanced in terms of evidence.

Equally valid arguments. And the other side of that, too, is political balance. We've had for a year and a half, and fortunately, the leader of the opposition in Victoria has just been sacked and we now have somebody who- I'm not a big fan of Matthew Guy, but he's a lot more sensible and articulate than Michael O'Brien.

Michael O'Brien, who was a leader of the opposition in Victoria for 18 months, got his face on television for 10 second grabs every night, just being negative to whatever the government was saying. And yet, why do we need to have him on there? We know he's going to say, that's not true. It doesn't matter. If he's not going to have an alternative point of view and actually give us some information, we don't need him.

But this is almost, oh, we have to show balance, so we'll, you know, here's the premier telling us the state of COVID. And then the leader of the opposition comes on and says, I think they should be doing something else. Nobody asked the question, what? They just take that grab and then run with it. So, there's all this sort of, you know, it's now news is entertainment, I think is the problem.

And that gets back to your question is, if you want to actually understand what's going on, you need to do your own research and so on, and you need to be constantly questioning. I would love to have your listeners in a version of that television show that I won't actually name, because it's the most, you know, one of the most ridiculous things on Earth where you actually are watching people watching television.

If you watch me watching the evening half an hour or hour news with me shouting at the television, at these idiots, not asking follow up questions and just producing complete and utter rubbish and calling it news is beyond me. You know, as I think I've said the other day, why is that every crime in Victoria happens outside a police station?

It actually doesn't, but that's the way it appears because we have no footage of a crime being committed. But we're going to have a reporter on the spot standing outside any police station and talking about the crime...

The issue, though there, is that...

We don't even need- Sorry, but we don't even need the reporter there. They're not adding anything that the person sitting at the desk couldn't say.

But it's suggesting that they have more authority about the story.

Yeah, it's giving weight. Exactly.

Which is, you know, it's an interesting form of messaging without it being explicit.

Oh yes, it's totally subliminal. Yeah.

Just like, you know, being on the sign- at the scene of a crime, you know, or the scene of an accident. You've appeared, but you may not have spoken to anyone, you just happen to be in the same place, and you can see it, and you've found out all the information from back at headquarters. But the fact that you're there lends to people being like, oh crap, you know, this person is in the know. They've got all the info.

And the other side of that too, is that we now have vox pop as an alternative form of television. And that is, here's the story, you know, such and such has happened. Blah blah blah. And we'll go and ask one person their opinion in the street, and that appears on the news.

Yeah.

Somebody walks up, sticks the mic, what do you think of this? I think it's crap. Good. And then we go, you know, everybody's against this. No. The one person who asked said it was and all we got is your edited, you know, ten seconds of it.

I always wonder that when they do those interviews in the street, especially about polarising topics where, you know, I don't know, do you think women should have xyz? Or should they be paid exactly the same as men? And they'll find either, you know, one person that says 100% yes, or someone who's like a 100% no. And your kind of like, I would love to have an idea of the sampling. Did you actually ask 100 people whatever question it was?

No.

And you just picked out the nice one that you were like, that fits in with the story and more people will watch that? Or is it a fair representation? You just went out there and ask one person that was it, and that was the first person...

And that's all you want. You only want 10 seconds of filler to make up the 30 second story on your news show.

It's frustrating, but it's kind of like, how do you get around that? Like, I've been watching a lot of, you know, a lot of news shows, some of them on the ABC like Insiders or The Drum, where they at least try and get, say, politicians from both sides of the fence onto the show to talk about these things.

But it is always irritating when you- She'll be like, alright, you've got 30 seconds, you know, like you- She'll be talking to one of them and then she'll be like, okay, we've only got 30 seconds left on the show. What's your answer? Yeah, and your kind of like, this is such...

But that's...

...A way of giving information forward, you know.

Those conversational current affair shows, like- Well, they're not news shows. They're talking about the news rather than presenting the news, are always going to be like that. Because they're going to get carried away in a conversation, they're going to run out of time. I actually do like both of those shows, particularly The Drum, because they usually have some interesting commentators on.

Not just political commentary, but they have some people, you know, authors who are specialists in particular areas and those sort of things that you can get a genuine conversation going amongst people, so. We learn more about the background by listening to those people than we're ever going to get out of the news.

Well, or out of the politicians, right?

Well, you know, never listen to a politician.

Well, that was the most irritating thing. I was watching The Drum recently and- I can't remember what they were- They were talking about Christian Porter having his legal fees paid for by an unknown donor. So, Christian Porter, the story- The background story is he was accused of raping a woman who, you know, in the 80s, I think it was, or the early 90s and...

Decades ago.

...She ended up committing suicide but made these allegations beforehand. And so, he, you know, the allegations came out and he confessed or said, you know, they were aimed at me, you know, before the media effectively gave his name out and then step down for a certain amount of time. And he then, I think what sued the ABC for story...

For telling the story.

...About this thing. And they ended up, I think, settling out of court where the ABC accepted no liability, didn't take the story down. And Christian Porter, I don't know if he got an apology or something, and that was it?

No. No, he didn't get an apology.

...Sort of thought that he saved face effectively. But anyway, so he's had, you know, the legal fees were hundreds of thousands of dollars on both sides, I think. I think the ABC paid like $700,000 or something for this case, and he's had his legal fees, whether all of it or part of it paid for by an unknown donor. And it's interesting to see the response.

So, on the drum, they had these two politicians, one from Labour, one from the Liberals, and it was just really irritating/interesting to kind of see the liberal guy being like, look, I've got a lot of strong personal opinions on this, but I'm going to just wait to see what Scott Morrison has to say about this... (both talking)

...Why are you on here?

Well, the woman, though, was saying, so you agree. You think it's really bad. And he's like, look, I've got a lot of strong opinions on this, but I can't say any more on the topic, you know. And so, it is kind of funny how you have to...

Party first, honesty second.

That's the most irritating thing I think about democracy. And this would be an interesting conversation, I guess, to have. Is this where democracy fails? Or at least, is this as good as it gets in terms of this is the kind of the sealing of a good democracy?

You end up with people having to toe the line because the game theory of the whole situation is that first and foremost, they need to maintain their positions and they're interested in maintaining power, even if that power is benign. Like they don't want to be a dictatorial government, but they want to keep ruling because that's how the individuals keep their jobs and keep their hundreds of thousands of dollars a year pay check.

It's the- It's I've been ranting for years about the moral anomaly of a conscience vote in parliament.

Yeah.

And a conscience vote is a, it's a legitimate thing in parliamentary terms because parliament is so party aligned. And that is typically when there is an issue, for instance, a lot of people in the Liberal National Party, the right-wing parties in Australia were fighting to get a conscience vote for gay marriage.

Yeah.

Because they were saying, I am in favour of gay marriage, but my party's position is against it, I want a conscience vote in parliament. Whereas and I've- Excuse the language to you listeners. I'm sitting there going, why the fuck isn't every vote a conscience vote? Why do we have, we elect people to represent us in parliament, and they are- We're setting them up so that they never actually vote.

Very rarely, in fact, vote the way they want to vote. They vote along party lines, and you just sit there and go, this is ridiculous. Yes, there are some things where it's purely economic and I'm not an economist. I should have my opinion about that, but I should be listening to, if I'm in the government, I should be listening to the Treasurer and the prime minister and whatever.

And I'll vote the way they told me to vote, because I'm not- But when it comes down to anything else, you sit there and go, no, I'm representing 100,000 people in my particular constituency. Wherever I live in Australia, I should be voting either my conscience as in what I think or to represent them. What do they think? And it's not about, well, the majority of them voted me in therefore they voted for my party.

It's about every individual nuance. Now, a lot of those nuances actually happen in the background, in committees and things before legislation gets to parliament. But the whole idea of having an established process that says you don't have to vote along party lines, the party will let you off this time.

It just seems bizarre to me. And yeah, and it's a fine line as well from the party's point of view. Because if I choose not to vote with my party, if I'm a parliamentarian and I choose not to vote with my party, the only thing they have to do is drop me from the party.

Yeah.

And if they keep doing that, they're no longer in the majority because for the last few parliaments in Australia, we've had a very fine balance between the leaders and the opposition. And so, you know, if they drop three or four people because they don't want to vote where the party goes in on a particular issue.

Then all of a sudden, those people are either sitting in the middle or they'll cross the floor and deliberately vote with the opposition, in which case you've lost government.

So, it's this weird thing of, well, if I'll allow a conscience vote on something that I know a number of my party members are going to vote against me, so I don't want to drop them. It's this bizarre playing politics within politics. It sort of- It's weird... (both talking)

...It is interesting, you know, you have to get really, really good at reading between the lines. It's so- I remember as a young kid being like, you know, but these people are saying these things, don't they believe them? Like, shouldn't you take this at face value effectively and believe what they're saying on news?

And the older you get the more you realise that pretty much anything any of these politicians say on TV is never the whole story, let alone what they actually believe or, you know. I think it's so frustrating, you know. And it is annoying, too, that the average punter, you know, the average Joe blow in Australia, man or woman will probably just eat up whatever's dished out, right and vote along lines.

And that's why we get that version of politics. We get the superficial 10 second sound bite all the time because the majority of people or at least enough people are going to continue to believe the rubbish that they get thrown without interrogating it, asking questions and so on.

That's why we need, you know, it's the old story about the Fourth Estate is the media. We need the media to be constantly questioning our parliamentarians and our politicians, but they don't.

Yeah.

Yeah, it takes too long. I've told the story over and over again over decades of bring back Jana Wendt. Jana was a TV journalist in the 1980s, and she would sit, you know, she ran a half hour TV show back when a current affair was actually a current affair. It wasn't just a news magazine show.

And she- I remember her with, I think it was a treasurer one night, where she asked him a question, and he just circled around it, as they typically do. And she said, you haven't answered the question. And he said, I've answered the question. She said, no, you haven't.

I'm going to keep asking until you answer it. And she sat there for 15 minutes while he just dodged the question. In the end, he got angry about it and he said, you don't have the right to do that. She says, yes. Yes, I do. You're a public servant. I'm asking you a question you owe me and our public and your constituents an answer.

That's the most annoying part about hearing any of these interviews. I think Gladys is- Gladys Berejiklian is a queen of it.

Queen of spin.

Oh, man, in just avoiding tough questions. Because you just, it's really interesting...

So, what's your favourite colour? Well, I think number six is a really nice number.

Yeah.

Sorry.

Well, no, it's not even, it's really clever. I was just watching one of her interviews the other day, and I'm like, she's so slimy at how she can just kind of like, move like water around these questions. And I remember there was one instance where the reporter was just like, you haven't answered the question, could you just answer the question? And had to keep asking like three times, and then Gladys was just like, next person.

And your just like, how do you- How do we have a system set up like that where, you know, there's no shame in doing that, right? And Scott Morrison's the king of that, as well. And I think he was caught what last year handing out a document to all of his people of like how to get around tough questions.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

And your just like...

Here's the objection handling to all these, you know, difficult questions that you're going to get.

I know. Well, and it gets to that point, though, for me. I'll be watching the news or any of these interview shows, and they'll bring these people on, and your just like, what is even the point of asking these?

You might as well just have the default position of both parties displayed on screen, and you don't need to hear the long, drawn-out BS from these people. It's just like, you know what they're going to say. You know they're not going to answer the questions.

It's just a waste of everyone's time.

Yep. And that's because we stuck in the cycle of where news is now entertainment. And we unfortunately, we went from, you know, when I was a teenager and even a young adult, news services, you know, your average commercial and ABC, the national broadcaster, the news service was a 30-minute service.

Now all of the commercial channels have got one hour of news, and they can't fill an hour of news. It's just- Half of it is just garbage. But they have the opportunity with a one-hour news thing. If they're going to tell a political story, instead of doing it for two minutes, do it for ten minutes and grind these bastards into the ground.

But they won't. It's- Now they won't in this case because the majority of them are owned by either Rupert Murdoch or other right wing political supporters.

Yeah.

So, the current government is never going to be hammered on it. And even when there's a labour government, you know, you get these odd questions, but they still just, move on. We'll show you pictures of kittens and puppies rather than, you know, actually tell the news.

So, I guess circling back to the question I asked probably about 20 minutes ago, although, you know, we've gone off on tangents. Do you think it's more difficult these days? And what is a way for any of these people listening now, and they're like, okay, I want to better align my understanding of reality with reality, what can they do in order to try and do that? What should they do? What are some good housekeeping kind of tips?

Well, funny, I used to teach this stuff to kids. When we, you know, we used to teach things of- I can't even remember what- It was a generalised sort of subject on, you know, how to survive in life, almost. And some of the things that we were teaching was, any bit of information that you were given from a third party- That is, you're not talking. 1st party is you; 2nd party is a person who the information is actually about.

Any third party you've got to look at firstly, what's the- Who was giving it to you? What's their authority? What's their background and experience? And what's their motivation? So, there's that, you know, the messaging about the messenger and therefore, do you trust them?

And if you don't trust them, why don't you trust them? And therefore, where can you look for alternative, not even alternative points of view as in the opposite. But can you go and find out more about the specific instance of that information, rather than just trusting what either a news broadcast tells you or what a politician is quoted as saying?

And often, you know, to defend politicians, which I don't do very often. Often, they get the ten second grab is out of a two-minute speech or a three-minute speech, or sometimes an hour-long speech given to the press club or something.

And we get a 10 second one sentence grab that is supposed to reflect their entire understanding of something, which may not be true. So, I think it's just, it's find out. Firstly, shoot the messenger, so as in work out, whether they're reasonable or not.

And then the second thing is actually go and find out more about that bit of information yourself, because it'll be out there, there'll be plenty of alternative points of view and alternative sources of information.

I think that's the difficult thing, though, right. It's learning to be able to weigh these different- These different bits of information up and being able to decide, who do I give authority to? Who do I not? Who do I trust? Who don't I trust? And not only that, getting good at second guessing your own biases. Why do I want to believe that this is xyz? Why is- Why- Am I confirming my own biases, right?

Yeah. That confirmation bias.

How do I get out of that? And that's a very difficult thing to kind of do, right. We had to sort of learn that when we were scientists. Because a lot of the time you would set up a study to try and look at something and inherently when you're setting up the study to sort of ask a question, you know, we're going to, I don't know, look at 100 sheep and try and work out if the wool that's longer on some sheep means that they live longer.

As soon as you set up that kind of study, you automatically want to find that the thing that you're questioning is true, right? I do want to find that the sheep with longer wool are going to live longer. And so, you have to get good at, well, I have to try and avoid biasing any of the results or searching for that outcome in the results and just let things speak for themselves.

And that has to be conscious. There's been studies done about- Back in the olden days when I was a scientist and a lot of things, particularly where you're doing multiple measurements as an example, when you're measuring things manually, you're not using technology to measure it, which is theoretically objective. But when you got subjective measurement, there is that confirmation bias, which is subconscious in your head.

And there have been studies done to show that exactly what you were saying. If my hypothesis is that wool is going to be longer in sheep that survive longer and I'm actually measuring wool on those sheep that survive and don't survive. I'm likely to round up in one case and round down...

Yeah.

...That might only be in tenths of a millimetre, which is within the boundaries of what I can actually measure and I'm not even thinking about, I'm not consciously deciding to do that. But that's the way your brain is going to operate. And so, you have to have a way of countering that.

And so, there were studies done to say, if you can't do that, then you just split it 50/50 every time you decide. This one, I went over, that next one I've got to go under and so on. And because there is that bias, we are always going to look for the answer that we think is true.

I think you have to get comfortable with ambiguity, too, right and being- This is one of the things that I think it sucks with science communication is because we do as scientists use that kind of language, that means that we are not asserting something as 100%, usually in the majority of cases. People hate it because they're like, well, I want to be able to pin you down.

Yeah.

But the scientist is just thinking, I don't want to assert anything that could potentially be shown to be incorrect in the future, whether personally or for the sake of, you know, whoever's listening and receiving this information. And it is that you have to just get comfortable with ambiguity to some degree, right? You have to be comfortable with just not knowing...

Well, it's just uncertainty as much as ambiguity. And uncertainty does not mean you are not sure, it means you are not absolutely sure. You know, you can be- You know, statistically, you can be within the 99% certainty range, but nobody is ever going to say, I am certain.

You can say, I am certain to within 99%. And most people won't accept that in general terms, they say, but what's the answer? Yeah. The answer is six. But I'm only 99% sure, it's six.

All right. We can probably finish up there and then go to the next episode. I know. That's it. Thanks for joining us, guys.

Thanks, everyone.

Alrighty, you mob. Thank you so much for listening to or watching this episode of The Goss'. If you would like to watch the video if you're currently listening to it and not watching it, you can do so on the Aussie English Channel on YouTube. You'll be able to subscribe to that, just search "Aussie English" on YouTube.

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