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  • Hey, Vsauce.

  • Michael here. The title of this video is misspelled

  • in honour of mistakes. Mistakes are

  • everywhere, they surround us like air

  • To err is human. Faults, flaws, faux pas, fumbles

  • and fallacies are as much a part of who we are today

  • as the stuff we've gotten right. For instance,

  • if a knight knocked your knuckle or knifed your knee,

  • why would there be so many "k"s?

  • Well, the "k"s are silent by mistake.

  • The original old English forms of these words were pronounced with "k"

  • sounds.

  • K-nife, k-night, k-nee.

  • But that's a bit of a mouthful to say and because reading and writing weren't as

  • common hundreds of years ago,

  • people just pronounced words the way they want to do, regardless of spelling.

  • Spelling is fun. Warren G knows what I'm talking about. In the fourth

  • verse of his "What's Next", he asks what's next.

  • What's next, what's N-X-E-T

  • Spelling isn't the only thing

  • we get wrong. The history of science is a graveyard

  • of dead an abandoned ideas. Fritz Machlup coined the phrase

  • "Half-life of knowledge". The amount of time it takes for half of the knowledge

  • within a field

  • to be superseded by new, better ideas or to simply be shown

  • untrue. Donald Hebb famously

  • estimated that the half-life of knowledge in psychology

  • is just five years.

  • Humans are awesome, don't get me wrong, but we tend to believe that what we currently

  • think we know about the universe

  • is reasonably correct, even though statistics

  • aren't on our side. Previous generations

  • incorrectly thought the exact same thing about what they used to think was true.

  • My favourite examples of the ubiquity of mistakes are production

  • errors in popular songs. They're like

  • humbling Easter eggs, just waiting to be found. For instance,

  • Buffalo Springfield's "For What It's Worth".

  • 26 second in the "be" in the lyric

  • "beware" is clipped, as is the "p"

  • in "people" at 1:24 minute. Once you hear the mistake,

  • it's tough to unhear it. In "Hey Jude"

  • Paul McCartney misses a cord. And if you listen closely you can clearly hear him

  • say

  • "F***ing h*ll". Seriously, it's in the actual song.

  • Go listen to it. In fact, there's an entire website that chronicles

  • mistakes in Beatles' songs. Take a look at this

  • 700-year-old prayer book. A monk

  • wrote it on fresh, clean paper.

  • I'm kidding, of course. He scraped the ink off an older manuscript, cut the pages and

  • rotated them before

  • writing all over them. A mistake? Well,

  • kind of. Recent multispectral images

  • of the prayer book have revealed that the old manuscript he

  • erased was a previously unknown copy of a work

  • by Archimedes. It was called "The Method"

  • and laid out the heart of calculus thousands of years

  • before Newton and Leibniz. If that one monk

  • hadn't erased that one book, would we be

  • hundreds, thousands of years mathematically and technologically more

  • advanced today

  • than we currently are? It's hard to say.

  • All that is certain is that we would continue to make ridiculous mistakes,

  • like

  • the Mars Climate Orbiter. This 327.6 million dollar expedition

  • burned up in the red planet's atmosphere because

  • when calculating flight manoeuvres NASA used the agreed-upon metric units

  • while Lockheed Martin used the imperial system.

  • This is Neil Armstrong taking humankind's first steps

  • on the Moon. It's about the best footage

  • we have. The original tapes containing the highest quality recording

  • of that moment have been lost. They were probably

  • recorded over by later test missions. Ten years ago

  • Sergio Martinez became lost in the woods while

  • hunting outside of San Diego. Hoping to attract the attention of

  • rescuers, he lit a small fire.

  • But that fire quickly got out of control and became a giant Cedar Fire.

  • It destroyed 300,000 acres of land,

  • 2,322 homes and killed

  • 15 people.

  • The man carrying a wounded soldier in this painting, based on a photograph

  • taken during World War I,

  • is Henry Tandey, an English recipient of the Victoria Cross.

  • Four years after the event in this image Tandey caught a wounded

  • German soldier in his gun sights. But rather than kill the man,

  • Tandey took pity on his wounded state and spared his life.

  • The German he allowed to live was

  • this man. Later the man whose life he spared wore his mustache

  • shorter but still had the same name,

  • Adolf Hitler. In 1918

  • did Henry Tandey miss a chance to kill Hitler? Detailed researchers found that

  • the exact

  • days their units were in the same location don't quite match up.

  • The story is apocryphal but what is known

  • is that Hitler owned a copy of the painting

  • of Tandey, and in 1938,

  • when meeting with Neville Chamberlain, Hitler pointed to Tandey

  • and told Chamberlain: "That man came so close to killing me

  • in 1918 that I thought I should never see Germany

  • again." So, who's wrong?

  • Maybe Hitler confirmed the story

  • merely because he hoped to make up extra evidence that providence had kept him

  • alive to pursue his goals.

  • Either way, someone

  • is mistaken. Missed opportunities

  • are a bummer. Obsessing over them is not healthy but regret

  • is a powerful emotion. How do you deal

  • with regret, with guilt?

  • Can you? In the early morning hours on a bench outside a hotel in Anaheim this

  • summer

  • Ze Frank told me something I am going to paraphrase.

  • I love this metaphor. Stuff in your past

  • is like a carving on the bark of sapling. Over time,

  • the scar, the carving won't go away.

  • Because of the way trees grow it won't go up or down much either, it'll just

  • stay right where it began. It might even get darker.

  • But it won't get bigger. You, however,

  • can. You can keep growing, doing more things, more branches,

  • being more things. The wound won't get smaller but you can make it a smaller

  • part

  • of who you are. Maybe regrets

  • are like that. They stick around forever

  • like arborglyphs. Or maybe they make like a tree

  • and leaf.

  • A red or purple leaf in the autumn. As days get shorter

  • and chlorophyll production decreases, the yellow

  • and orange carotenoids, which are always in leaves,

  • appear as the green fades. But red and purple leaves

  • are the interesting ones. As winter approaches it would seem to be a good

  • time for trees to conserve energy but some trees

  • do the opposite. Instead of giving up, they spend

  • extra energy producing anthocyanins

  • to turn their leaves red and purple hues.

  • These colours protect their leaves from sun damage before their nutrients can

  • all be

  • used and may also be a defence against insects looking for

  • a parasitic home. A way for the tree to tell the insects: "Yes,

  • I am in part dying but not without a fight.

  • I am still very much vital."

  • Drought and even turn a kit applied by man

  • can bring about these colors prematurely. When you look at beautiful

  • autumn colours, you are looking at stress.

  • But the bigger the fight the trees put up, the more energy

  • they put into their defences at the very end, the more brilliant

  • their colours will be. Winter

  • will eventually come. But scientifically,

  • the brightest, deepest, most remarkable colours

  • come from not giving up too easily

  • or quickly.

  • And as always,

  • thanks for watching.

Hey, Vsauce.

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