The Skeptics Guide #949 - Sep 16 2023
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
You're listening to The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.
Hello and welcome to The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. Today is Wednesday, September 13th, 2023, and this is your host, Stephen Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella. Hey, everybody. Jay Novella. Hey, guys. Evan Bernstein.
Hello, everyone.
And we have a special guest, Christian Hubicki. Christian, welcome to the SGU. Thank you.
Thank you so much for having me.
It's great to be here. They only gave us an hour and we figured we need more than that for a full show. So you agreed to give a virtual interview with us after the facts. Now it's like a week after Dragon Con. This is the week that the show is going to come out. We're just going to have a little preamble discussion before we go to the live Dragon Con show. For those who don't know, you'll hear again in a bit, but Christian, you are an alum of the Survivor TV show.
That's right.
That's right. Yep. We talk a little bit about that on the show.
Who is Christian Hubicki and why is he the DragonCon special guest?
And you are a professor of robotics at the Florida State University as well.
That's right. That's right. And I got to say, as a professor, I'm not used to being cut off after an hour. The students stay until I'm done. That's right.
You leave when I say you leave.
That's right.
You know, it was fun. So, you know, when we got together with Christian at DragonCon, we had never met in person before. We emailed each other like a few years ago, I think, right? That's right. But we had really good discussions over a couple of meals during DragonCon.
Oh, yeah.
Because we're all super into it. Of course, we're all super fans of robotics, and we like artificial intelligence, and we're really getting into it. I'm like, damn, these conversations were really good. We should have recorded them because we asked a lot of wacky questions, too. Because we'll ask anything when we're at dinner. We're like, so what are sex robots going to be like? You know what I mean?
Yeah.
That was not recorded, thankfully. For my 10-year packet, I'm glad for that. But otherwise, it was fantastic.
Christian's like, I got 15 of them. They're awesome.
And don't forget, guys. Guys, don't forget, Liz and Courtney, they watch Survivor every season. And they were very psyched.
Yeah, they were big fans.
But I'd say what relevant to discuss – speaking of sex robots, Jay, it was something that came up in casting interviews when you're interviewed before you go on the show. And so I was prepared that I was going to be interviewed by like a Hollywood casting person. I tried to prepare myself. What are the stereotypical questions that people are going to ask you? And one of them, of course, would be about sex robots. So I had some pre-canned jokes. So I, of course, had – I didn't study sex robots in robot school. That was one of them that deployed.
It wasn't a course.
Yeah. No, I didn't enroll. It was capped out. I couldn't get in. But yeah, I would, though, recommend the reality casting process to anyone trying to go on a job interview because there's probably no harder job interview than whatever curveballs they try to throw you in order to see how you'll react on a reality show. So highly recommended for at least the experience.
This is our first time back to DragonCon since the before time, right? The pre-pandemic. What did you guys think about it? Did you guys have a good time?
Well, I made an observation. Yeah. And I talked to several people at DragonCon. I did notice that the overall quality of the costuming was not at the level that it's always been at for all the DragonCons we've been to.
There were some standouts, but it was a little underwhelming this year.
And I thought about it and I talked to some people at DragonCon who made similar observations and they were saying that they noticed that this happened post-pandemic. This is a post-pandemic thing that's happening at DragonCon. And we were surmising it's probably because people are financially strapped and they don't have like the five grand it probably takes them to build some of these costumes, some of the more outrageous ones.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–1:16
2
Who is Christian Hubicki and why is he the DragonCon special guest?
1:16–10:41
3
What were the hosts' impressions and highlights from DragonCon 2023?
10:41–29:05
4
Why are UFOs and UAPs back in the news and how should skeptics respond?
29:05–1:14:17
5
How does Christian Hubicki describe the current state and timeline for robotics?
1:14:17–1:41:38