Fact Checking Ep 46 Divine Council with Mike

The following is a fact check by ChatGPT 5 of Jimbo Radio episode "Ep 46 Divine Council with Mike." Here is a transcript of the episode. 

Quick verdicts

• Two creation accounts in Genesis (and the “older one comes second”) — basically right. Gen 1:1–2:4a (Priestly, generally dated later) is followed by a different creation story in Gen 2:4b–3 (often dated earlier), then redacted together, so an older tradition likely does appear after a later one. Bible Odyssey

• “Let us make humankind…” (Gen 1:26) ≠ the Trinity in the original context — mainstream view. In the Hebrew Bible, the plural is best read as God addressing a divine/heavenly council (or a “plural of exhortation”), not a fourth-century Trinitarian formula. Gen 1:27 then reverts to singular verbs (“God created”), underscoring God’s primacy. TheTorah.com

• Divine council scenes are real features of the Hebrew Bible — correct. Besides Gen 1:26/3:22; 11:7, see 1 Kgs 22:19–22; Job 1–2; Ps 82; Ps 89:5–7. Psalm 82 explicitly pictures God judging elohim “in the council of El.” Many scholars read these elohim as heavenly beings, though some traditions take them as human judges. Bible Odyssey

• Deut 32:8–9 and the Dead Sea Scrolls — you stated the key point correctly, but pushed one inference too far. The oldest witnesses (Dead Sea Scrolls and the Greek Septuagint) read “he fixed the boundaries of the peoples according to the number of the sons of God,” with v.9 “YHWH’s portion is his people” (contrasting the later Masoretic “sons of Israel”). That supports an older “divine council/territorial deities” worldview. It does not require Elyon to be a god “over” YHWH telling him what to do; many scholars see Elyon identified with YHWH in Israel’s developing monotheism. The Gospel Coalition

• “Angels can’t be insubordinate,” therefore Gen 6 “sons of God” can’t be angels — false. The NT itself refers to rebellious angels (e.g., Jude 6; 2 Pet 2:4). A widespread Second Temple reading (e.g., 1 Enoch) connects Gen 6’s “sons of God” to fallen angels/Watchers who cohabit with women and beget the Nephilim. This doesn’t “contradict” Matt 22:30, which says angels in heaven do not marry; it doesn’t address rebellious angels acting outside their proper domain. Bible Gateway+1Bible Odyssey

• “Angels aren’t physical, only ‘essences’ ” — over-stated. In the HB, heavenly messengers routinely appear in embodied ways (e.g., Gen 18–19 where the visitors eat with Abraham); whatever their ultimate nature, the texts present tangible encounters. Bible Gateway

• “Ancient Israelites were polytheists/monolatrous” — needs nuance but directionally fine. Many scholars describe early Israel as practicing monolatry/henotheism (exclusive worship of YHWH while acknowledging other divine beings), with strict monotheism consolidating later. That squares with inscriptions and texts from Israel/Judah and broader ANE parallels. Acts Network

• “Trinity didn’t exist until centuries after Jesus” — accurate as a historical claim. The doctrine was formally articulated in the 4th century (Nicaea 325; Constantinople 381); reading it back into Gen 1 is anachronistic. (Background embedded in the “divine council” scholarship above.) TheTorah.com

• Church finance/salaries: it’s fair to critique practices, but a couple specifics were too sweeping:

  • U.S. churches are not required to file the public IRS Form 990, which makes transparency uneven, but many voluntarily publish reports. Saying “90% won’t be audited or transparent” is an assertion, not a documented statistic. Simulation Argument

• “Young people’s religiosity is now going back up” — not supported by the best current data. Large-sample U.S. surveys (Pew, 2025) show Christian identification declining overall with possible leveling, not a clear rebound among Gen Z. Media pieces talk about small “stirrings,” but the broad trend has not reversed. Encyclopedia Britannica+1

• Simulation hypothesis bits (“binary code in the laws of physics”) — over-sold. Bostrom’s simulation argument is a philosophical probability puzzle, not empirical evidence; popular claims that physics has “computer code” baked in are speculative and contested, not consensus science. RedditTheTorah.com

A few precise fixes you can make in-episode notes/transcript

• It’s “divine council,” not counsel (the transcript alternates both).

• Nag Hammadi (not “Nagamati”): discovered in 1945 near the Egyptian town of Nag Hammadi; codices date mainly to the 4th century CE.

• The Hebrew term you were reaching for is bᵉnê ʾĕlōhîm (“sons of God”), not “Nahilohim.” (Related forms like bᵉnê ʾēlîm occur too; in several places these denote heavenly beings.) Bible Odyssey

What you got especially right (and nicely framed)

• Treating Gen 1:26 as divine-council language and noting the singular verbs of 1:27. TheTorah.com

• Seeing Ps 82 as a council/judgment scene (while acknowledging the alternative “human judges” reading). Bible Odyssey

• Recognizing Deut 32:8–9 textual history (DSS/LXX vs MT). The Gospel Coalition

If you want, I can mark up the transcript line-by-line with suggested wording tweaks and embedded citations you can drop into show notes.

5k Warmup

I've been very focuses on my running the last several weeks. For the first time in over 15 years that I have created and followed a training plan. I have not missed a workout or run in the last six weeks. Now, that I finished my last quality workout yesterday, I have transitioned to my tapering. And I'm focusing on other aspects of the race. I made this warmup routine specific to me.  My usual warmup for workouts includes more lunges and a few other mobility/yoga poses. But I cut everything that isn't directly preparing me for running a 5k. Here is my sheet if anyone wants to copy and paste it. 

 

Fact Checking Ep 45 Rereading Zen in the Martial Arts with Brendan Howard

The following is a fact check by ChatGPT 5 of my Jimbo Radio episode "Ep 45 Rereading Zen in the Martial Arts with Brendan Howard." Here is a transcript of the conversation.

1. Healing Visualization and Ellen Langer’s Research

• Claim in transcript: A martial artist healed his broken hand much faster by visualizing “little workers” fixing it. This is linked to Ellen Langer’s “counterclockwise” study and to the idea that mindset can shorten recovery time.

• What’s misleading/wrong:

  • Physiological limits: Bone healing requires biological processes (osteoblast activity, mineralization, vascular remodeling). The timeline (6–12 weeks for most fractures) isn’t just mindset—it’s constrained by biology. Visualization cannot dramatically accelerate this beyond normal variation.

  • Langer’s research: The “counterclockwise” study (elderly men in a retro 1959 environment) is often criticized for weak methodology (no clear controls, small sample, possible experimenter bias). Later replication attempts haven’t confirmed the dramatic “looked younger” results.

  • Expectation effects: Patient expectations do affect pain perception and subjective recovery, but evidence that belief alone accelerates tissue healing is weak. Placebo can improve reported outcomes, not necessarily objective healing speed.

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2. Qi / Ki and Supernatural Martial Arts Powers

• Claim in transcript: Aikido masters can make themselves “unliftable” in a chair or knock people back without touching them, explained as manipulating universal energy.

• What’s misleading/wrong:

  • No empirical evidence: Demonstrations of “no-touch knockdowns” and “unmovable chair” stunts have been repeatedly exposed as stage tricks, compliant students, or biomechanics (using leverage and balance shifts). In controlled conditions, these effects disappear.

  • Physical test issue: If weight was actually increasing, a scale would measure it. It never does. Claims of Ki altering mass or force output violate physics and have not survived scientific testing.

  • Groupthink/placebo: Believers and students often unconsciously “go along” with the demonstration. It’s similar to hypnosis or stage magic. This explains why skeptical outsiders (e.g., MMA fighters) can easily dismantle supposed “masters.”

  • Comparison to psi research: You referenced telepathy card-guessing experiments. Parapsychology research has decades of statistical noise but no robust, replicable findings once bias and poor controls are eliminated. It’s misleading to connect this with martial arts demonstrations as if they reinforce each other.

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3. Willpower Depletion (Preview for Next Episode)

• Claim in transcript: You plan to cover “willpower depletion” (ego depletion).

• What’s misleading/wrong:

  • The classic Baumeister “radish vs. cookies” study (1998) did inspire hundreds of papers, but large-scale replication attempts failed to confirm ego depletion as originally described.

  • Current consensus: Self-control isn’t a depleting fuel tank; it’s more about shifts in motivation and attention. Framing it as a literal resource that “runs out” is misleading.

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4. Dark Matter, Dark Energy, and “Everything is Energy”

• Claim in transcript: Because most of the universe is made of dark matter/energy, maybe Ki fits into that mystery.

• What’s misleading/wrong:

  • Dark matter/energy are scientific constructs to explain observed gravitational effects and cosmic expansion. They aren’t blank checks for “mystical energy.” Equating them with Ki is a category error: unknown ≠ supernatural validation.

  • Saying “we don’t know what dark matter is, therefore Ki could be real” is a God of the gaps fallacy.

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5. Animal Telepathy / Universal Consciousness

• Claim in transcript: Some animals learn from distant animals, suggesting a web of consciousness.

• What’s misleading/wrong:

  • No solid evidence supports animal telepathy. Observed behaviors (e.g., bird flock learning, dolphins coordinating, cultural transmission in primates) can be explained by imitation, communication, or independent discovery, not extrasensory fields.

  • Rupert Sheldrake’s “morphic resonance” ideas (which this resembles) are popular but scientifically rejected for lack of evidence.

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6. Tracking Devices and the Habenula

• Claim in transcript: Tracking recovery (sleep, readiness, etc.) may harm habits because it programs the habenula to associate failure.

• What’s misleading/wrong:

  • Habenula function: True, it’s linked to negative reinforcement and processing failure/reward prediction error. But the idea that tracking devices inherently harm habits via habenula over-activation is speculative extrapolation, not well-established neuroscience.

  • There’s limited direct evidence connecting commercial trackers to habenula dysfunction. More accurate claim: over-monitoring can create anxiety and undermine motivation, but the brain mechanism is still debated.

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7. General Overstatements

• Bruce Lee mythos: You correctly debunk the idea he could defeat anyone regardless of weight class. The myth persists, but it’s good you flagged it.

• Zen = Performance Drug: Framing Zen as a “drug for performance” is catchy, but misleading. Zen practice can reduce stress, improve focus, and aid resilience — but its purpose is not utilitarian performance hacking, and overstating effects risks turning philosophy into pseudoscience.

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✅ Summary of the biggest misleading/wrong ideas:

• Visualization/mindset can’t radically speed up biological healing beyond normal variance.

• Ki/no-touch martial arts powers have no scientific basis and collapse under controlled testing.

• Ego depletion is not supported by modern replication studies.

• Dark matter/energy ≠ mystical energy fields.

• Animal telepathy / universal consciousness claims lack evidence.

• Habenula explanation for habit tracking is speculative, not proven.

Fact Checking Ep 44 Knowing about Knowing and Evolution

The following is a fact check of Jimbo Radio Ep 44 Knowing about Knowing and Evolution with Brendan Howard. ⁠Here is a full transcript of the episode.⁠ The following was performed by ChatGPT-5.

Fact Check 

• Eyewitnesses vs. “closer in time = better”: Being near in time to an event does not guarantee accuracy; eyewitness memory is highly fallible and malleable. The National Academies’ review recommends caution and specific safeguards because misidentification is a leading contributor to wrongful convictions. ✅ Accurate skepticism; good nuance to prioritize objective evidence (DNA, video, etc.). CDCEverytown Research & Policy

• Risk perception: planes vs. cars: People routinely misjudge these risks (availability/recency effects). Lifetime odds tables show motor-vehicle crashes pose vastly higher risk than passenger air travel. ✅ Claim aligns with data; the cognitive-bias framing is standard. NEJM CatalystFreakonomicsStatistics By Jim

• School shootings, fear, and base rates: High salience events drive fear, but the per-student risk on any given day is extremely low even as incidents with casualties have risen in recent years. At the same time, firearms became the leading cause of death for U.S. children and teens starting around 2020, which contextualizes broader risk beyond schools. ✅ Mostly right with important context. AACN

• TSA lines as “security theater”: Experts (e.g., Bruce Schneier) use that term for visible-but-low-yield measures. Government covert testing has repeatedly found detection shortfalls; GAO and DHS IG have documented significant problems over the years. ✅ Directionally right; the system also relies on less visible layers beyond the checkpoint. AACNKFF

• “Poor people buy TVs instead of food” (from Poor Economics): Banerjee & Duflo document that poor households sometimes allocate limited income to festivals/entertainment rather than extra calories; boredom/pleasure matter and choices can still be “rational” in context. ✅ Example reflects the literature (book + earlier paper). cdgi.edu.ininequality.stanford.edu

• “Free-will/ willpower depletion” at day’s end: The classic ego-depletion “willpower as a fuel” model is contested. A large registered multi-lab replication failed to find the effect; meta-analyses that adjust for publication bias find little or no reliable depletion. There are newer “process” models (motivation, attention) that can explain late-day lapses without a glucose-like resource. ❗Needs revision/nuance. National Center for Education Statistics+1Education Week

• Evolution’s testability: Darwin worked pre-genetics; later genetics (Mendel → modern synthesis) and DNA phylogenies, biogeography, fossils, and observed evolution (e.g., Lenski’s long-term E. coli) independently corroborate and test evolutionary theory. ✅ Sound. Injury Facts+1

• Evolutionary psychology— A) BMI often predicts attractiveness better than WHR. Tovée et al. (1999), Proc. R. Soc. B — “Visual cues to female physical attractiveness.” Finds BMI is the primary determinant of perceived attractiveness; WHR plays a smaller role and earlier work likely overestimated WHR due to covariation. PubMed. Tovée et al. (2002), Proc. R. Soc. B — “Human female attractiveness: waveform analysis of body shape.” Again shows BMI correlates more strongly with attractiveness than WHR, even when shape is analyzed more holistically. PubMed. (Background/contrast: Singh 1993 is the classic WHR≈0.7 paper.) PubMedlabs.psych.ucsb.edu. 

  B) An “optimal WHR for easy childbirth” isn’t established; pelvic/obstetric trade-offs are complex. Betti & Manica (2018), Proc. R. Soc. B — “Human variation in the shape of the birth canal is significant and geographically structured.” Shows large population-level variation in bony birth-canal shape, cautioning against simple external proxies like WHR for obstetric ease. (Free full text.) PMC. Grunstra et al. (2023), Am. J. Biol. Anth. — “There is an obstetrical dilemma: Misconceptions about the evolution of human childbirth.” Reviews evidence that childbirth difficulty reflects multiple, partly opposing selective pressures; the mechanics aren’t captured by a single external ratio. (Free full text.) PMC. Mitteroecker et al. (2024), Am. J. Obstet. Gynecol. — “Evolution of the human birth canal.” Updated review tying evolutionary, biomechanical, and clinical data; emphasizes complex, multi-factor pelvic constraints rather than any single “optimal” external measure. AJOG.

• Self-deception to better deceive others: This is a prominent theory (Trivers; Von Hippel & Trivers). There’s suggestive lab evidence (e.g., overconfidence aiding persuasion), but the empirical base is mixed and mechanisms remain debated. ❗Plausible but not settled. Bureau of Justice StatisticsNational Center for Education Statistics

• “Species evolve” vs. human-behavior claims: Your split is fair: biological evolution is strongly evidenced and testable; many adaptive stories about specific human psych traits are harder to test and should be held with greater skepticism. ✅ Good epistemic stance. Injury Facts

• Public intellectuals straying outside domain: That’s an opinion claim about discourse, not a factual one; it’s fine to present as commentary (Richard Dawkins is indeed a biologist famous for evolution and for The God Delusion, but “how much theology he’s read” is not a checkable fact here). ✅ Treat as viewpoint.

• Opioids/corporate incentives: Purdue Frederick pled guilty (2007) to misbranding OxyContin; later federal actions continued, and reporting has documented push for 12-hour dosing despite problems. The Supreme Court struck down Purdue’s proposed bankruptcy plan shielding the Sacklers in 2024. ✅ Accurate in substance. Injury FactsCDC

• Tobacco companies & addictiveness: Internal documents and litigation (1990s) revealed knowledge of nicotine addictiveness and marketing strategies; CEOs’ 1994 testimony denying addictiveness is infamous; the 1998 Master Settlement memorialized state lawsuits. ✅ Accurate. Stephens Law Firm, PLLCInjury Facts

• Special interests/factions (Madison): Yes—Federalist No. 10 squarely addresses factions (what we’d now call “special interests”). ✅ Accurate. Amazon

• “People are less informed now” (media, civics): Evidence is mixed. Trust in government/news has declined; volunteering dipped during the pandemic and rebounded in 2023 but remains below some pre-pandemic levels; political knowledge appears surprisingly stable over decades. ❗Call this unsettled and domain-specific. PMCAmeriCorps+1Pew Research Center

• Negativity bias & 24/7 news: Research shows people attend more to negative information; in news, negativity draws attention—helping explain “if it bleeds, it leads.” ✅ Broadly supported. CDC

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Bottom line

Your episode’s skeptical/empiricist posture is well-grounded. Where you’ll want to tighten claims: (1) ego depletion (treat as contested), (2) WHR → childbirth “optimality” (avoid overreach), and (3) “less informed now” (point to mixed indicators rather than a blanket decline). The rest is largely solid—with good instincts about base rates, incentives, and how stories can outrun data.

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Further reading & sources

• Eyewitness reliability: National Academies, Identifying the Culprit (2014). CDC

• Risk perception & flying vs. driving: National Safety Council odds; Freakonomics overview. NEJM CatalystFreakonomics

• School shootings & child mortality: NCES Indicators; firearm deaths among youth. AACN

• TSA screening effectiveness & “security theater”: GAO/DHS IG; Schneier. KFFAACN

• Poor Economics (Banerjee & Duflo) and antecedent paper on poor households’ spending. cdgi.edu.ininequality.stanford.edu

• Ego depletion: Registered Replication Report; critiques/alternatives. National Center for Education StatisticsEducation Week

• Evolution evidence & testability: Nature review of Lenski LTEE; Britannica on modern synthesis. Injury Facts+1

• WHR/BMI and attractiveness; pelvic trade-offs are complex. Education WeekNational Center for Education StatisticsAllSides

• Self-deception theory (Trivers; Von Hippel & Trivers). Bureau of Justice StatisticsNational Center for Education Statistics

• Opioids litigation/history. Injury FactsCDC

• Tobacco industry documents & 1994 hearings; 1998 MSA. Stephens Law Firm, PLLCInjury Facts

• Factions/special interests: Federalist No. 10. Amazon

• Civic knowledge/engagement & trust trends: Pew; AmeriCorps/Census. PMCAmeriCorps+1