Futility Closet - 252-The Wild Boy of Aveyron

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to the Futility Closet podcast, forgotten stories from the pages of history. Visit us online to sample more than 10,000 quirky curiosities from bilingual palindromes to a guttered raincoat. This is episode 252. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. In 1800, a 12-year-old boy emerged from a forest in southern France, where he had apparently lived alone for seven years. His case was taken up by a young Paris doctor who set out to see if the boy

Starting point is 00:00:38 could be civilized. In today's show, we'll explore the strange, sad story of Victor of Aveyron and the mysteries of child development. We'll also consider the nature of art and puzzle over the relationship between salmon and trees. On January 9, 1800, a boy about 11 or 12 emerged from the woods around the village of Saint-Sernan in southern France. He walked upright, but he couldn't speak. He uttered only unintelligible cries. He wore only a tattered shirt and seemed unconcerned at his nakedness. He wandered into a tanner's workshop, perhaps seeking food or attracted by the fire, and was taken in hand by the local authorities.

Starting point is 00:01:20 Word of his capture spread quickly. It was clear that he'd lived in the woods for a considerable length of time. Word of his capture spread quickly. abandoned him in the forest had cut his throat, thinking this was merciful. He walked with a limp because his right leg was bent slightly inward. He squatted to urinate and defecated standing up wherever he happened to be. He would eat only potatoes. He would throw them into the fire and then eat them hot, usually burning himself in the process. After two days, he was taken to the local orphanage in Santa Frick, where he was named Joseph. He seemed to grow despondent there. He didn't make a sound for the next two weeks. He refused almost all food except potatoes and would drink only water. When they gave him clothes to wear, he would tear them up, and he refused to sleep in a bed. His senses seemed to be intact, but nothing seemed to interest him except food and sleep. The orphanage director called the boy

Starting point is 00:02:18 a phenomenon and wrote to the newspapers in Paris, suggesting that the government adopt him so that he could be studied. And with that news, he became the talk of the capital. This seemed to be a natural opportunity to study the philosophical theories of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who had argued that in a state of nature, man was good, that it was society that corrupted him. Paris had a famous institute for deaf children run by Rochambeau's Coquiron Sicar, a recognized expert in the education of the deaf. Sicar read about the case and asked for custody of the boy in order to study him scientifically, but the local commissioner suggested the boy remain where he was for a time so that his story could be investigated and so

Starting point is 00:02:53 that local parents who had lost children might examine him. During this time, Joseph began to expand his diet to include peas, green beans, walnuts, and rye bread. After four months, he began to eat meat, but he seemed indifferent to whether it was cooked. He would take leftovers into the garden, where he buried them, perhaps to eat later. The investigation showed that there had been reports of a naked boy in an area around Lacan, about 30 kilometers south of Saint-Sernan, for at least two to three years. He had survived on roots and acorns and had run away whenever anyone had tried to approach him. He was sometimes seen moving on all fours, but there were no calluses on his knees, so it seems that he mostly walked upright. Apparently, the peasants in that area knew of his existence, but considered him a curiosity

Starting point is 00:03:31 and mostly ignored him. There were reports that he'd been captured once in 1798 and put on display in the village square, but he'd escaped and wasn't seen again for at least a year. Then, in June 1799, three hunters had come upon him accidentally and captured him. A local widow looked after him for a few weeks. She had taught him to cook potatoes and given him the shirt he now wore. After the woman's kindness, he seemed to seek out more human contact. He would approach local farms and wait for food to be given to him. After he was fed, he would disappear again into the hills. In effect, the farmers treated him like a wild animal that made occasional visits. They recognized him as human but didn't feel they ought to capture or clothe him. In those days,

Starting point is 00:04:08 people were more familiar with the idea of a village idiot. He was causing no harm, so they left him alone. He could probably have kept up this life, but for some reason he moved north, up to Saint-Sernan, where curious people captured him. The local commissioner tried to find out how he'd begun this wildlife in the first place, but there was no reliable evidence to explain what had happened. After five months in the local district, Joseph had made little progress. Those who cared for him suggested he was still more animal than human. It was decided he should be sent to Paris for further study. He caught smallpox on the way to the capital, which delayed his arrival, but on August 6, 1800, his stagecoach arrived at the Institute for Deaf Children in the Luxembourg Gardens, and he was given to Sikar.

Starting point is 00:04:47 An intellectual excitement surrounded the boy. Because he had grown up in a pristine state, he might help to answer the central question of the Enlightenment. What is the nature of man? But after his arrival at the Institute, he was largely left to himself, a sort of living enigma. He often laughed, though it wasn't clear at what. He still wouldn't use a toilet, but would go outside to relieve himself without modesty. He still seemed interested almost exclusively in eating and sleeping. He took no interest in almost anything around him. And he avoided other children, though he wasn't actively hostile to them. During the first three months, his condition deteriorated. He began to harm himself and soil

Starting point is 00:05:17 the bed and to bite and scratch his attendants. He was pestered by curious members of the public who bribed the attendants to see him. Rather than educate him, Sikar seems to have forgotten him, and he wandered the corridors and gardens apathetically. Possibly Sikar had already decided that Joseph's case was hopeless and that Sikar might risk his own reputation by even trying to treat him. They set up a commission to assess Joseph, and it agreed with Sikar's opinion that Joseph was an idiot, his time in the woods had reduced him to animal instincts, and there was nothing to be done for him. But the picture changed that autumn, when the institute recruited a new doctor, Jean-Marc Gaspar Itard. His first meeting with Joseph was not auspicious. He described him as, quote, a disgustingly dirty child affected with spasmodic movements and often convulsions,

Starting point is 00:05:58 who swayed back and forth ceaselessly like certain animals in a zoo, who bit and scratched those who opposed him, who showed no affection for those who took care of him, and who was, in short, indifferent to everything and attentive to nothing. But Itar took an immediate interest in Joseph. He found an apartment within the institute where they could work closely together, and unofficially he became a sort of foster father to the boy. He believed that Joseph had lived completely alone from age four or five, almost to age twelve, which would mean that he'd spent seven years alone in the wilderness. He believed that people are the product of their environment, which meant that it should be possible to re-educate Joseph given the appropriate circumstances. He set about the work of trying to make him into a normal boy. He hired a woman named Madame Guiron to serve as

Starting point is 00:06:38 another surrogate parent. She lived with her husband in a small apartment directly below Joseph's, and the boy began to spend most of his time with her. She would devote the next 27 years of her life to Joseph. She fed him, clothed him, nursed him, took him on trips out of the institute, and looked after his needs, which were often unique. And I just want to take a second to praise her. She's always mentioned in these accounts, but always kind of in passing. But she devoted much more of her time and care to him, really, than Itar did. And this wasn't her project. She was just sort of enlisted to help. It was thought back then that bonds with women are natural and those with men are rational. Her official role was to awake in him a pleasure in human company. Itar seemed

Starting point is 00:07:18 to think that would require the development of feeling but not rational intellect. One writer says civilization, it would seem, is a masculine condition. Itark designed a program for Joseph hoping to improve his ability to speak, think, and interact with other people. In the beginning, he was largely unknowable. He loved to walk in the fields that surrounded the institute, especially in bad weather, and he always went to bed when it got dark. When the moon was full, he would stand for hours and gaze at the countryside through his bedroom window. And he loved snow. One morning, on finding that snow had fallen overnight, he went out and rolled in it, laughing with joy. That's a little surprising, you would think. Like, if he didn't have any clothing and he lived in the woods, you would think snow would not be his friend. No, in fact,

Starting point is 00:07:58 I don't remember the number. When he traveled north from one town to the other, he had to cross a plateau with quite an alarmingly high elevation. I mean, in other words, it was very cold condition. And there are stories of people who witnessed him in the wilderness where he would just laugh at the sky. If I were naked and alone and 12 years old in the wilderness, I don't think I'd be laughing at all. But it's surprising how much—I don't know if you can call it joy, but to laugh at all is kind of surprising. I think I'd just be miserable all the time. Itar began to give him a daily bath, and Joseph seemed to look forward to these. It seemed to teach him to dislike the cold. He refused to get in if the

Starting point is 00:08:36 water wasn't hot enough, and he started to wear warm clothing. He began to use a spoon to retrieve his potatoes from the pan. Remarkably, in this period, Itar saw him sneeze apparently for the first time ever. He seemed frightened that it had happened. When he started catching colds, Itar joked that the process of civilizing him was working. Joseph seemed uninterested in toys, and he hid or destroyed them when given the chance. He loved a game in which a chestnut was hidden under one of several cups. He was allowed to eat the chestnut if he could find it. That seemed to suggest some untapped intelligence under the surface. Itar took him to the countryside on a two-day trip in a horse-drawn carriage, and he seemed ecstatic to visit the woods and fields. Madame Guiron also took him on daily walks at a local garden. But Joseph still didn't communicate

Starting point is 00:09:18 with anyone. Itar knew he could hear because he would run from approaching voices, but generally he didn't pay much attention to sounds, and apart from laughter and some suppressed cries, he made no sounds himself. He did seem to respond particularly to the sound O, so Itar proposed renaming him Victor, a name that ended with that sound, and he began to show gradual improvements in hearing. Itar spent months trying to teach him to speak.

Starting point is 00:09:39 Physically, he seemed capable of producing speech, and the wound to his throat hadn't affected his vocal cords. But after hundreds of trials to get him to associate the word la with milk, he found that Victor would say the word as the milk was poured, but never before. That seemed to mean that he associated the sound with the drink, but hadn't grasped the meaning of the word. But he did make some progress with language. Madame Guirand often said, oh God, oh Dieu, and he began to imitate this, and he could express himself effectively with gestures. He would point outside to show that he wanted to go for a walk, and he would get his cup to show he wanted milk. If visitors bored him, he'd fetch their hat and gloves, a practice that I plan to

Starting point is 00:10:13 adopt. The institute held about a hundred deaf children who communicated every day using sign language, but there's no evidence that Itard ever tried to teach it to Victor. It's not clear why. Modern speech therapists have argued that it might have been successful. Instead, he would try to teach him to associate line drawings with the objects they depicted. Victor did learn to do that, even if the objects were moved around the room, and in a similar task, he learned to group paper cutouts by shape and color. It was slow work, and Victor would throw tantrums when he got frustrated, but over the next few months, he learned to spell simple words and to understand that words stood for objects, once he presented the letters L-A-I-T to get a glass of milk. He developed a warm relationship

Starting point is 00:10:49 with Madame Guirand and to a lesser extent with Itard, who had to act as an authority figure. There are stories that he would cry for long periods when he knew he had upset Madame Guirand, and when Itard looked in on Victor before he went to sleep, the boy would welcome him with hugs, laughter, and kisses and invite him to sit on the bed with him. It had taken nine months to reach this stage, but Itard considered they had made significant progress. In 1801, Itard presented a progress report to the Academy of Science in Paris. He said Victor had become an affectionate child who preferred being warm and clean, who could perform minor duties, loved his governess, and accepted a social existence. At first, Victor expressed desire only for food and comfort,

Starting point is 00:11:27 but he had advanced to express gratitude and even affection. He could identify numerous objects, copy words in chalk, and understand their meaning. But Itard called speech man's supreme function, and that had eluded them. He went back to work, but now their progress began to slow. Itard blindfolded Victor to see whether he could discriminate among words and among musical sounds. They made minimal progress. And Victor didn't seem able to imitate actions. Itard would

Starting point is 00:11:48 set up two blackboards side by side and tried to get Victor to copy his movements with no success. Obviously, that would have limited his learning capacity severely. Many animals can imitate behavior successfully, but Victor couldn't. Itard found he could send Victor into another room to fetch objects he had put there. After much training, Victor could return with as many as four objects, a clear sign of developing cognitive ability. But when Itard sent him to fetch a book, just any book, he failed. He could associate the word only with a specific given book, not a general class of object. Itard was vastly discouraged at that and in frustration called Victor a useless being.

Starting point is 00:12:20 The boy must have sensed his tone because he closed his eyes and started sobbing. Itard hugged him at this, as a father might, and found that physical contact helped their progress. Victor did eventually learn to understand that one word could represent many similar objects and, in fact, started to overgeneralize, confusing brush with broom and knife with razor. Still, their progress was slow. Victor began to learn more nouns and started to combine them with simple adjectives and verbs. He learned to write simple words legibly, and by the end of 1803, he could be said to communicate very crudely through reading and writing. But Itard began to accept that Victor would never be capable of

Starting point is 00:12:52 spoken language. It seemed that no amount of training could overcome his early deficits. Victor continued to make himself useful by chopping wood, laying the table, and other small chores. When Monsieur Guiron died, Victor set his place at the table as usual, and Madame Guiron burst into tears. Seeing that his actions had caused this, Victor removed the table setting and never laid it again. This seems to show that he was developing emotional maturity. He could understand another person's feelings and empathize with them. When she took ill shortly afterward, he managed to escape, and it took two weeks to find and return him to the Institute. When he was reunited with her, he was ecstatically happy. He was said to be like a son returned to his affectionate mother. Itar's second report, submitted in 1806, was much more discouraged than the first. He wrote to the Minister of the

Starting point is 00:13:33 Interior, My lord, to speak to you of the wild boy of Aveyron is to utter a name that no longer inspires any interest. It is to recall a being forgotten by those who saw him for a time only, and disdained by those who thought to judge him. He allowed that they had made some progress, but he said he'd concluded that Victor's limited ability to communicate severely reduced his capacity for education, and his long years alone in the wilderness had stunted his intellectual faculties and his emotions. In 1805, after five years of work, Itard effectively abandoned his efforts to educate Victor. In 1806, Madame Guiron was given official charge of him with a salary of 150 francs a year. We don't know much about what happened after that. In 1811, they moved to a house around the corner.

Starting point is 00:14:10 As it happened, Victor Hugo lived just four doors away, but there doesn't seem to be any reference to Victor in his writings, which suggests that Victor largely kept to himself. When one naturalist visited Victor there nearly a decade later, he found him, quote, fearful, half-wild, and unable to learn to speak, despite all the efforts that were made. Victor continued to live with Madame Guirand until he died in 1828, when he was probably in his 40s. Itard died 10 years later, in 1838. There are no documents to tell us Victor's cause of death or even where he was buried. Victor's true identity was never discovered, and that limits what we can learn from him.

Starting point is 00:14:42 We don't know whether his deficits were present at birth or whether they arose because of his isolation in the forest. His intelligence seems good because he managed to stay alive in the woods and he made significant progress with Itar. But some people argue that he must have been mentally disabled in some way because he must have lived with other people at least into early childhood and yet never learned to speak, despite Itar's intensive efforts. Possibly he'd been disabled since birth. Indeed, perhaps that's why he'd been abandoned. But if that's the case, then it clouds the picture. His case doesn't show us what would happen to a normal boy who lived alone for seven years.

Starting point is 00:15:12 I guess, yeah, you could imagine he might have had, like, audio processing problems or maybe some deficits in hearing that kept him from understanding language. Or, like you're saying, maybe there was just some disability present from birth that would keep him from being able to speak at all. And if you don't have that baseline, if you don't know, you know. I guess that would fit too with the theory that somebody may have tried to cut his throat,

Starting point is 00:15:35 like his family just wouldn't accept that he couldn't develop normally. Yeah, if you picture that, it's just an awful story. It is an awful story. As it happened, Victor died in the same year that Caspar Hauser appeared in the streets of Nuremberg. We covered Hauser in episode 29. He claimed to have spent his early life confined alone in a dark cell. If that's true, it seems to show that early environmental deprivation doesn't necessarily disrupt development irreversibly,

Starting point is 00:15:59 especially language development. Kaspar could speak and had at least the rudiments of civilization, where Victor really had neither. Because we know so little about Victor's early life, Itar was never really able to answer the deepest question, what is it to be human? We know that babies are born with potential, that they need a nurturing environment in order to develop fully, and that childhood is a critical period for learning many skills, including language. Some of these deficits can be overcome later by intensive training, but without knowing who Victor was when he was abandoned in the forest, it's hard to know exactly what effect those lonely years had had on him. In episode 244, I discussed a podcast whose script had been computer-generated and the larger question of whether machine-generated works can be considered art.

Starting point is 00:16:55 Alex Baumans wrote, Just some thoughts on the question of whether computers, or non-human agents in general, can make art. I suppose it is perfectly possible that a computer might make something that will be pretty or artistic, but whether that will actually be considered as art by society has everything to do with art as a social construct. In the current thinking about art, whether or not something is recognized socially as art has everything to do with the intentionality of the person who is recognized as an artist. Art is seen as the expression of a person. This was exemplified slash lampooned, depending on how you look at it, by Marcel Duchamp and his famous urinal. If an artist intends something to be a work of art, then it is, by definition,

Starting point is 00:17:35 which in turn leads to the concept of ready-mades and pop art, or as is attributed to Andy Warhol, I take a Brillo box and I say it is art. In such a concept of art, a computer can never produce a work of art, short of becoming sentient. Both examples that Alex gave of humans producing art were rather controversial in their time, but definitely illustrate that intentionality does often seem to be an essential part of what we will even consider calling art. does often seem to be an essential part of what we will even consider calling art. Marcel Duchamp was a French-American painter and sculptor who was born in 1887. One of his most famous sculptures was an ordinary porcelain urinal that was placed on its back and titled Fountain.

Starting point is 00:18:23 Duchamp submitted this in 1917 for the inaugural exhibition by the Society of Independent Artists that was being held in New York. The Society's constitution stated that all members' submissions had to be accepted, but after some debate, the board of directors decided that they did not consider this to be a work of art, and further found it to be indecent, so it was not displayed at the exhibition. Duchamp resigned from the Society in protest of the board effectively censoring an artist's work, and thus was touched off a bit of a conflict in the New York art world. For their part, the board of the Society was quite clear that the fountain may be a very useful object in its place, but its place is not in an art exhibition, and it is, by no definition, a work of art. On the other side of the conflict, Duchamp

Starting point is 00:19:02 and his supporters felt that his ready-mades, as he termed his work such as Fountain, were indeed art. Their reasoning was that the choosing of the object was in itself a creative act, and that by giving it a title and presenting it from a new point of view, it became art. As the Tate Art Museum website says, Duchamp's ready-mades asserted the principle that what is art is defined by the artist. History, I have to say, ended up siding with Duchenne on this. Fountain is viewed by art historians as a major landmark in 20th century art, and in 2004 was chosen as the most influential artwork of the 20th century in a poll of 500 art experts.

Starting point is 00:19:40 An article in Forbes in 2017 said, The primary reason for the influence of Fountain can be quite easily stated. Challenging the status of authorities and their vested interest in tradition, Duchamp effectively declared that artistic authority belonged to the artist. And a BBC article written at the time of the poll quotes an art expert as saying, the choice of Duchamp's Fountain as the most influential work of modern art ahead of works by Picasso and Matisse comes as a bit of a shock, but it reflects the dynamic nature of art today and the idea that the creative process that goes into a work of art is the most

Starting point is 00:20:15 important thing. The work itself can be made of anything and can take any form. It does seem to me that the assertion has to be made in good faith, though. I don't know about Duchamp, but it's at least possible that he was just trying to be deliberately provocative. It is possible. And even if he wasn't, I could do that tomorrow. Right. Representing something and saying that I honestly consider it art, when in fact I didn't and was just trying to be... I guess that does come back down to the artist's intention. And I guess you say you do have to take it that the artist is intending this in good faith.

Starting point is 00:20:48 Yeah. Although sometimes I imagine they are intending it as a parody or a critique, possibly, of the current state of art. So if they're intending it as more of a critique or a parody, then is that art? Then it weakens that argument, yeah. So you can't, just because someone says that, you can't, that doesn't guarantee that the thing ought to be considered properly art. It seems to me, I don't know. And I also do want to note that Fountain wasn't actually Duchamp's first ready-made sculpture. I think it just became his most famous because of the ruckus it created. But he had produced a few ready-mades before Fountain,

Starting point is 00:21:22 such as in 1915 when he titled a snow shovel Prelude to a Broken Arm. I like that one. Andy Warhol's Brillo boxes were another facet of the question of whether art really can be anything an artist says it is. Warhol, an American artist who was born in 1928, was considered to be a leading figure in the pop art movement that emerged in the 1950s. Warhol had carpenters construct plywood boxes in the size and shape of supermarket cartons, and then he and two assistants painted and silkscreened the boxes to make them virtually identical to cartons of products such as Kellogg's Corn Flakes, Heinz Ketchup, and Brillo's Soap Pads. They were first exhibited in 1964 and were crammed into a gallery

Starting point is 00:22:06 in stacks, such as you might see in a grocery warehouse. Warhol invited collectors to buy the sculptures by the stack, but they did not sell well, and they were sharply criticized by art critics who were incensed by the mundane and commercial nature of the works. One of the assistants who worked on the project with Warhol described how arduous and time-consuming the project really was, and it's been noted that the process to produce these boxes was in some ways imitative of a factory assembly line, and that the numerous Brillo boxes and such that were produced could be, in a way, considered as mass-produced consumer goods. But in doing the research for this piece, it was clear to me that today,

Starting point is 00:22:44 these Brillo boxes do tend to be considered art. So he didn't just go to a store and buy an actual Brillo box and put that on a pedestal. Right. He created his own exact copies of Brillo boxes. With some effort. With some effort. That seems like it's worth something, you know? But it still comes down to what... I don't know what to call it. But it would be harder for me to accept just an actual, honest Brillo box as something other than... Unless he gives it a fancy title, apparently, or clever title, which is what Duchamp was saying. That's still creative. It has to make you see it in a different perspective, and then it's art.

Starting point is 00:23:19 On this topic, Paul Winner from Columbia, Maryland wrote, I have a brief comment regarding whether what animals create is art. I have this discussion with family and friends every time there is a story in the news about something created by a chimpanzee or an elephant. When the animal, let us stick with elephant, creates some work of art, inspects it, destroys it because he or she isn't satisfied, and starts again, we'll call it art. To be art, the artist has to decide it is art. On your podcast, you mentioned people who wondered if the public would consider something art or music. At that point, the horse is out of the barn. An artist and a musician create something and then decide whether it is worth being released to the public. When an elephant can do that,

Starting point is 00:24:00 art will have been created. So to me, this seems to be an extension of the argument that art is what an artist says it is. Since an animal, or at this point, a computer, can't itself consider what it is creating to be art, then possibly the rest of us can't consider it as art either, at least if you take this definition of art. That makes sense to me. That implies, too, that it really doesn't matter what the audience thinks. I mean, the whole audience can disagree with the artist's contention. Right. Well, a lot of the audience did disagree, for example, with Duchamp in 1917, right? The art world, at least a significant part of it, disagreed with him. But in retrospect, its opinion has changed. Yeah. In his email, Alex also pointed out that

Starting point is 00:24:41 this artist-centered focusing on the artist to determine what is art is probably more of a Western way of defining art. I'll add that this makes some sense to me, as Western culture often does have a focus on the individual and individuality. Alex notes that in East Asia, there seems to be more fascination with an openness to technology, to the point, for example, that in Japan, vocaloids are a rather popular subgenre of music. Vocaloid is the name of a software singing voice synthesizer that was originally developed in 2000 and first released in 2004. The word has also come to be used for specific cartoon avatars that have been created for specific singing voices, and some have become rather popular in Japan and other

Starting point is 00:25:23 countries. One of the most well-known of the vocaloids is Hatsune Miku, who is depicted as a teenage girl with very long turquoise twin tails. Miku is basically a synthesized pop idol, and a holographic version of her has been performing in concerts around the world for several years. At this time, the software that controls her and the lyrics and melodies for her songs are all created by humans. She is merely rendered by the software. Alex says, I guess that raises legal questions, too, about if it gets to that point where she's considered sentient or a creative being on her own,

Starting point is 00:26:07 who owns her creations? You know what I mean? A human can't claim to have written them anymore if they're sort of produced in this mysteriously sentient way. That's a whole nother can of worms, I imagine. As for machine-generated podcasts, as discussed in episode 244 and related to synthesized voices, I recently read that researchers from the AI startup Dessa have cloned the voice of Joe Rogan, one of America's top podcasters. An article in The Verge calls it, by far, the most convincing voice clone we've ever heard, and says that it perfectly mimics Rogan to the point that a quiz that has you choose

Starting point is 00:26:45 whether something is the real Rogan or the fake Rogan is surprisingly difficult. Dessa says of their software, right now technical expertise, ingenuity, computing power, and data are required to make models like Real Talk perform well. But in the next few years, or even sooner, we'll see the technology advance to the point where only a few seconds of audio are needed to create a lifelike replica of anyone's voice on the planet. So besides the potential threat to podcasters' jobs, which of course we're a little concerned about, there are some potentially concerning implications of technology that can so well mimic people, which could include fake phone calls, impersonating family or friends, or spreading misinformation through impersonations of, say, politicians. Yeah, because I think the same thing's happening with video, right? That you can fake something so convincingly that it's undetectable.

Starting point is 00:27:35 Yeah, and so then you begin, you know, sort of like an arms race of trying to get software to determine fakes as fast as software is trying to be able to produce more convincing fakes. Yeah, I mean, that's a disaster when it happens. I mean, think of all the mystery if you could, so... Yeah, although people were really concerned about that when programs like Photoshop first came out. That's true. You know, and I guess it hasn't been quite as big of a problem as we were all worried that it might be. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:28:00 So we'll have to see. As for Rogan, he posted on Instagram in response to the voice clone. At this point, I've long ago left enough content out there that they could basically have me saying anything they want. So my position is to shrug my shoulders and shake my head in awe and just accept it. The future is going to be really bleeping weird, kids. Thanks so much to everyone who writes in to us. We're sorry that we can't read all the email that we get on the show, but we always appreciate receiving your follow-ups, feedback, and comments.

Starting point is 00:28:33 So please send any that you have to podcast at futilitycloset.com. It's Greg's turn to try to solve a lateral thinking puzzle. I'm going to give him a strange-sounding situation, and he has to try to work out what is going on, asking only yes or no questions. Scientists were monitoring salmon populations in an Alaskan stream and discovered that their activities as part of this project had inadvertently ended up affecting the growth of some of the trees in that area.

Starting point is 00:29:07 How? Their activities, meaning the scientists' activities? Yes. In monitoring a salmon population? Yes. Where did you say this was, Alaska? In Alaska. Okay.

Starting point is 00:29:19 So do I need to know specifically? I guess I do. Exactly what the scientists were doing to monitor the salmon? Part of it. Some activity. Does this have to do with the water itself in other words did the trees benefit by no nothing to do with the water stream or something right nothing to do with the water itself uh and you said sorry you said this the trees it grew what what was the change in the trees that they observed i just said that it ended up affecting the growth of some of the trees. Did the trees grow more higher? Yes. More robustly? Yes. Some of the trees grew more robustly. Was that because of a greater supply of food or nutrients than they

Starting point is 00:29:57 were getting before? Yes. It can't be fish. Trees don't eat fish as far as i know but you say it's not water it's not to do with the water um okay um and i have to ask this have anything to do with any kind of gases carbon dioxide or anything else no i don't think so okay so we're talking about nutrients that they took in through the soil yes through the roots yes do i need to know anything more about what kind of trees they were or anything like that? Just trees in Alaska? Just trees, yes. All right. So were they somehow benefiting from dead fish?

Starting point is 00:30:33 Yes. Oh, it's just a wild guess. I was waiting for you to say no to that. So the scientists were doing something that resulted in some of the fish dying, I guess? No. No? No. So there were fish in the stream. fish dying, I guess. No. No. No. So there were fish in the stream.

Starting point is 00:30:48 Yes. And scientists show up. Yes. And recover some dead fish. Yeah. Or move some fish that were already dead. Yes. Yes.

Starting point is 00:30:57 From one position to another closer to the trees where they decompose. Yes. And fertilize the trees. Yes. So I just need to know where these dead fish came from. Yeah. They were in the stream. So they're just fish. The scientists were not capturing,

Starting point is 00:31:11 but collecting dead fish from the stream in order, I guess, to measure them? Yeah, well, to count them. I mean, that's pretty much it. As part of the ecological study, the dead fish were cataloged by research students and then chucked away from the stream so they wouldn't be counted again, right?

Starting point is 00:31:27 So 20 years and 217,055 dead salmon later, the ecologists had significantly changed the balance of nutrients over a two-kilometer stretch near the stream because they were basically flinging the fish, and they needed to fling them far enough away that they wouldn't wash back into the stream and get counted again. And it turns out there's a whole art to this. There's a long pole with a hook on one end that you use to toss the fish, and apparently some students find it easier to learn to do this than others. So that's a really large-scale study then. It's a whole thing, yeah. Yeah, so they did it for 20 years, yeah, so it was a lot of dead fish.

Starting point is 00:32:04 And then just one day somebody noticed that the trees were getting better. Yes! The trees on one side of the stream were growing a lot better than the trees on the other side. Well, the trees were happy, I'm sure. So I guess that counts as a fatal puzzle since the salmon involved were all dead, but it did work out well

Starting point is 00:32:19 for the trees. And we are always looking for more lateral thinking puzzles, so if anyone has one they'd like to send, please send it to podcast at futilitycloset.com. Futility Closet would not still be here if it weren't for the generous support of our listeners. If you would like to help support our celebration of the quirky and the curious, please check out our Patreon page at patreon.com slash futilitycloset, or see the support us section of the website at futilitycloset.com. If you become one of our incredible patrons, you'll also get access to outtakes, more discussions on some of the stories,

Starting point is 00:32:58 extra lateral thinking puzzles, and peeks behind the scenes of the show. At our website, you can graze through Greg's collection of over 10,000 exceptional esoterica, browse the Futility Closet store, learn more about the Futility Closet books, or see the show notes for the podcast with links and references for the topics we've covered. If you have any questions or comments, you can email us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. Our music was written and performed by the inimitable Doug Ross. Thanks for listening, and we'll talk to you next week.

Futility Closet - 252-The Wild Boy of Aveyron

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