You know what, I can appreciate that. The difference though is that I don’t claim to be a scientist or leading expert in any of the fields I talk about. I also don’t tend to portray myself as an educator on ANY field… except for when I’m in the actual classroom teaching (which I don’t do anymore due to administration politicking, and I was in the field of IT). And when I converse online, I do it as a literal “rando on the internet”. Without my potential qualifiers in the vast majority of cases which doesn’t imply actual knowledge in anything.
This is part of my problem with him. He’s viewed as this amazing educator and scientist… That will put people off from questioning his assumptions/statements by default because as kids you’re taught to listen to teachers/educators. And he put himself in that position so I have no sympathy for it.
I have similar hangups with Bill Nye the “Science” Guy. Who’s only qualifications are Mechanical Engineer at Boeing. Yet for some reason people treat him as some amazing scientist in completely unrelated fields. When he’s not. And because he’s built that reputation and put himself adjacent to actual science for so long that nobody questions the nebulous and crazy shit that he says anymore.
Nye’s anti-nuclear stance being a prime example, flying in the face of what actual scientists have been talking about for decades (though debate-ably, now nuclear might be too late to the party to significantly help anymore. Though I think we should still be doing nuclear personally). Or claiming that he knew anything about Quantum Entanglement and through QE, time-travel because of blackholes… Also don’t forget that he was a willing spokesperson for Exxon to talk about how drilling oil is safe. Forget that it’s one of the most dangerous jobs on the planet, and burning any oil in any form simply isn’t safe and even pushed the “clean burning” (rather than less dirty burning) fuel, which as a by-product even releases more radiation than nuclear does (going counter to his actual complaints about nuclear in a huge way).
I dunno. I’m just tired of being “educated” by people with no qualifications. And when I bring up the obviously wrong things I see… all I see is the masses in love with the characters.
Oh yes, and if that is how you interpreted what I said, then thank you for taking it in stride and responding in a good-natured way. But if you go back and re-read it… I feel like what I said had a lot more to do with him than you pointing that out about him:-).
i.e., he is pretentious, claiming to “know” things, but (seemingly?) lacking in the area of humility, or even just precision, which is to know and express clearly where one’s own knowledge ends and instead one’s lack of knowledge begins.
And that is exactly what Tyson has built up his career around trying to tell people! e.g. “you don’t know shit!” (while ignoring the limitations of his own sphere of knowledge)
In point of fact though, YOU know where your knowledge ends, i.e. have humility, thus it is quite obvious that you are nothing at all like Tyson:-P. 😅
I suppose what I am saying - and I may not express myself clearly here but I will try:-D - is that Tyson is correct: for people in a LEADERSHIP role (like scientists & educators), rather than blurt out whatever thoughts first come to our mind, we would do well to think it through and stfu with our interjections of things that go beyond the plain and simple facts. The weird part is, he made his career out of doing precisely the opposite of that! He blurts out his own thoughts about their thoughts, and people loved that “drama” so he just never stops.
He is a victim of his own success in a way, except as you say, he is the one who stepped up into that role, not you or I.
