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Penn & Teller: Bull!
Penn & Teller: Bullshit!
2003 · TV series · documentary · 30 min episodes · 8 seasons
Created by Eric Small
This daring original series stars postmodern bad boys of magic Penn & Teller as they question many of our culture's most cherished and widely held beliefs. From the truth about palm readings and TV psychics to the reality behind Feng Shui and Ouija boards, the archly comic masters of misdirection host this eye-opening analysis of the middle-ground between perception and reality.
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8 comments on Hacker News
S06E06 of Penn & Teller: Bullshit! debunked carbon credits.
That was 15 years ago.
https://m.imdb.com/title/tt1272784/
On "Penn & Teller: Bullshit", there was an episode where one of the people they interviewed was a woman who's initially seen carrying a large stack of envelopes, and Penn on voiceover said something like, "We told the previous guy that we wanted to see a woman with really ... big ... envelopes. He's foreign; he didn't understand that, in America, every plural noun means tits." So there may be some regional variation.
It's interesting how consistent all this news has been with the Penn & Teller: Bullshit! episode on recycling from over 15 years ago. From what I recall, the takeaway was that recycling anything other than glass, paper, or aluminum was a waste of money.
At the time, I wasn't sure how valid it was (whether they were potentially exaggerating or simply being contrarian, etc.), but it seemed plausible, and now it's looking increasingly likely that their take was spot on.
Penn & Teller: Bullshit Season 8 Episode 8 did an experiment to try to verify this. They couldn't find that people could predict who is old and who isn't via a sniff test.
The first time I really started thinking about this was years ago after watching the recycling episode of "Penn & Teller: Bullshit" where they essentially warn that many recycling programs consist of shipping our waste elsewhere for someone else to deal with and that some day the countries we send our "recycling"/waste to will likely get sick of it and start rejecting it and we'll be fucked.
That was almost 10 years ago
> Years ago there was a "Penn & Teller: Bullshit!" episode on recycling that did a decent job of looking into the psychology and economics of recycling.
I watched that episode and it was hardly a decent job. Penn is a staunch libertarian and that colors his presentation of the facts. Also, it is an entertainment show so they love to have something to yell "bullshit" at. There is no nuance.
For sure, in the zeal to increase recycling percentage, it was a huge mistake for cities which used to collect sorted recyclables to have a "single stream" recycling flow to make it easier for people to "recycle". No argument there.
Something that shouldn't be discounted is that it seems like a relatively simple problem to have NN image classifiers to sort the stream of waste. It doesn't need to be 99% accurate at all -- it is better that it can classify 90% of the items with near 100% accuracy and just throw away the 10% it isn't sure about, resulting in more pure recycling streams.
Years ago there was a "Penn & Teller: Bullshit!" episode on recycling that did a decent job of looking into the psychology and economics of recycling.
What I remember is that most people feel bad about throwing stuff away, so a big part of the recycling movement is based around guilt rather than facts. The slogan "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle" is in that order for a reason. Reducing the amount of what you use and reusing what you have is much more important and effective in helping the environment than recycling. Also putting things in a landfill really isn't really a problem. Landfills don't take up a significant amount of space, and when regulated and managed properly they aren't bad for the environment.
As for the economics of recycling:
* Recycling paper is a terrible idea. It takes a lot more chemicals, fuel and labor to recycle paper than produce new paper from trees (and it's a much lower quality product). Also, landfills are able to capture and sell the methane produced from paper as it decomposes, so it makes a lot more economical and environmental sense to just throw it away.
* Recycling glass can be economical depending on the cost of natural gas because the melting point of glass is slightly lower than raw silica. Unfortunately recycling adds cost because of the sorting and cleaning.
* Some plastics can't be made from recycled materials, and even when they can be, the economics of it depends on the cost of crude oil and natural gas. Prices for gas and oil fluctuate a lot, so it's risky for companies to be in the business of processing plastic back into feedstock because they don't know whether they will be able to sell it at or above cost at the time they're buying materials.
* Aluminum is really the only commonly recycled material that makes 100% economic sense. It's really expensive to produce from ore, and cheap produce from recycled materials.
EDIT: Found the episode here - https://www.bitchute.com/video/j0Hd6UfA4MKo/
I highly recommend everyone watch Penn and Teller's "Bullshit" series.