We have the bitch from it pushing oil over renewables
And they test Tide products
So it’s basically still around
I feel we could all use that way of thinking like if I’m right yay I’m a smart boi and if I’m wrong I’m smarter now
You learn and grow a lot more when you’re wrong than when you’re right. At least if you can accept that your position is wrong.
Exactly, too many debunkers just act like they are king shit, and have this smug attitude all about them, and it honestly just makes me want to punch people in the face.
It’s why I started saying, they’re probably isn’t a god, but talking to atheists on Reddit make me wish there was one.
Can i just have my feed just Stamets posts?
Not without destroying your sanity
Wow wtf are you hiding in every feed just waiting for an incantation to pop up and scary people minding their own business!!!???
Cool
To be fair I did make this post and they responded to it lol their comment showed up in my inbox.
See, this is why I don’t like debunking shows in general, and I find the skeptic movement to be overrated and simply draws less criticism that it deserves.
MythBusters avoided the one mistake that all debunkers make. First off, they didn’t come off as thinking that they were smarter than anyone else, they don’t mock people for believing false information, and they never bring religion into it.
They just talked about whatever misconception, then they tested to see if it worked or not
I think Jamie comes off as if he’s smarter than everyone else and is wrong most often to boot.
Well then I guess Penn & Teller’s BS series is actually the Dark Side version of Mythbusters.
Loved both of those shows. Learned how to cheat on a polygraph from the Penn & Teller show.
Penn & Teller are hacks
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What the hell happened to the proposed new series with an entirely different cast that they literally had a miniseries game show to find the talent for? They had the contest, found the new people and then just… Vanished.
No one watched and it didn’t have the same kind of chemistry. Mythbusters was a good TV show more than anyone thinks about. The cast made it happen. Along with the crew. Including the time of everyone else where the Internet was still relatively young in terms of proving myths wrong. Now there are many copies but none as popular. And regular TV is dead/dying. They had White Rabbit but Grant passed. Jamie has no interest in it. Kari is out doing things for scientific causes. Tori went back to movies. And Adam has a platform for cosplay on YouTube. I think the moment has passed.
Isn’t Kari shilling for oil now?
Adam’s youtube channel is a gem though. He’s legitimately an inspiration
Is she? I follow her IG and it’s always NASA or science related
I mean, I had heard she was getting paid to tweet about how great fracking was and how we don’t need to stop consuming oil but instead start geo engineering, but I don’t remember how long ago it was given the blur of time the last couple years have been and how much I’m remembering correctly
I agree with the chemistry of the cast and the synergy of the crew not ever likely to be the same, but I would still be down for the busting myths part and could forgo giving a shit about the actors lol. Half the gaming channels I watch are basically myth busters for various game franchises. They’re only missing the crucial part of “replicating the myth” when they fail to reproduce the myth as stated. Shit would be funny “we can’t reproduce this unless we use cheat programs.”
I don’t know. We are in a different space for consumption too. I hear what you are saying. I’m just not sure it would be successful. I would watch it too. It’s still one of my favorite shows.
If only we didnt need things we like to pass some bullshit benchmark of “success”. Just do it because you want to and if some people like its kinda nice.
Niche things are often how you find something amazing and often they arent what becomes well known.
Do most people know who Nirvana or Pearl Jam are? Yes. Do most people know who mother love bone is? No
But Kurt and Eddie spoke about mother love bone as a huge inspiration and gave credit for their own success
RIP Grant, you are missed
Like restarting the original show - 100% would Love! Remaking it as all other 2023 shows - No thanks.
I also don’t believe the modern world would allow what we had. Insurance, getting access to locations (because insurance, general costs) all those fun things.
And nobody under 30 would watch it if episodes were longer than 3 minutes. I can make fun of them because they left after the first line of this comment :)
Adam Savages one day builds are relly neat videos about building props and other things and Adam is such a nice person to listen to IMO
He is now definitely. Watching the first seasons of myth busters though, you start to understand why some people were annoyed by him.
Super fun to listen to him now though.
Yea, randomly get videos from his youtube channel when I’m researching new tools or something and they’re always neat. I don’t use youtube enough to follow channels but if I his would be one of them.
Mythbusters is good just because of how down-to-Earth and raw it is.
They show the audience what they want to see. They ask the questions the audience wants asked. They give rationales that make sense, most of them.
It’s a very human show, even if it requires a lot of science and engineering to make it work.
The producers did a fine job with it. I’m glad it’s not over-edited or following a checklist of what a show needs to be in order to be successful.
Its format and presentation fit the content like a glove.
I prefer https://explainxkcd.com/397/ because it adds explanations, references, and comments.
Uncommon XKCD L. Mythbusters experiments rarely hold up to the standards of the scientific method. Controls are basically non-existent and the experiments are regularly flawed. They DO fail at basic rigor.
Mythbustets do not meet the standards of professional science. The point is that not all science needs to be done at standard set by professionals.
I think the problem stems from the fact that “professional” isn’t properly defined anywhere. Is science valid if it wasn’t performed in a funded lab by PhD students? At what point does it become exemplary of junk science rather than hard science? Basic controls being absent means, IMO, that it doesn’t fit any proper definition of science. Motivating kids and adults to think more “scientifically” is all well and good, but promoting MB as if it represents honest-to-goodness science is bad press. Getting people excited about science, and then demonstrating a bad way to do science is counter productive.
nobody calls themselves a scientist because they watched Mythbusters, but they might get interested in it through watching it. That’s the point.
I would argue that that point is weak and of dubious merit.
I would argue you’re not worth arguing with.
Just watching you reply to every comment in this thread is cringe.
I would argue you’re just picky.
Okay. I don’t see how that refutes any of my prior statements. Promoting junk science and then defending junk science as the only way to get people interested in STEM is a flimsy debate tactic.
If you like the show you like the show. I’m not here to poo poo people’s taste in programming. But promoting it as culturally important and “it gets kids into STEM!” is disingenuous.
Getting people excited about science, and then demonstrating a bad way to do science is counter productive.
While I understand the spirit of your argument, I think you’re being a bit too pedantic in a forum where the audience isn’t primarily academic or hard science oriented.
Think of shows like Mythbusters and Bill Nye as modern day equivalents to the big “scientific demonstrations” you’d see people like Edison doing for audiences at the turn-of-the-century. They are in no way there to demonstrate an authentic experience of the scientific method because the minutiae of actual scientific research would never make good television.
That being said, Mythbusters does explain the process of how they design their experiments pretty well. A viewer who works in experimental sciences can easily spot any flaws in their methodology, and a non-scientifically inclined person would never spot them anyways.
Bill Nye taught viewers about the scientific method and regularly referenced classic experiments. Bill Nye actually taught kids the importance of rigor in doing science, and he regularly criticized junk and pseudo science in the program. But, I guess pedantry as it relates to science is a no-no now.
Oo! Oo!
Now do Beakman’s World!
Common dangblingus L, the xkcd comic literally explains why your take is lame and dumb.
No it doesn’t. It purports to know exactly what a PhD scientist who was critical in the invention of the atomic bomb is thinking. Feynman would not have advocated for the propagation of junk science.
Here are some direct quotes from Feynman regarding his thoughts on the value of science:
“With more knowledge comes a deeper, more wonderful mystery, luring one on to penetrate deeper still. Never concerned that the answer may prove disappointing, with pleasure and confidence we turn over each new stone to find unimagined strangeness leading on to more wonderful questions and mysteries —certainly a grand adventure!”
“It is true that few unscientific people have this particular type of religious experience. Our poets do not write about it; our artists do not try to portray this remarkable thing. I don’t know why. Is no one inspired by our present picture of the universe? This value of science remains unsung by singers: you are reduced to hearing not a song or poem, but an evening lecture about it. This is not yet a scientific age.”
“Hardly anyone can understand the importance of an idea, it is so remarkable. Except that, possibly, some children catch on. And when a child catches on to an idea like that, we have a scientist. It is late—although not too late—for them to get the spirit when they are in our universities, so we must attempt to explain these ideas to children.”
And the full story is too long to quote, but in one of his books Feynman recounts performing his own little Mythbusters style experiment in front of NASA to show how temperature affects O-rings when they were trying to figure out what caused the Challenger to fall apart. An experiment he performed because he was getting sick of the stacks of papers piling up as the discussion went on and all they were doing was ruminating over the minor details. In his own words:
“I say to myself, “Damn it, / can find out about that rubber without having NASA send notes back and forth: I just have to try it! All I have to do is get a sample of the rubber.” I think, “I could do this tomorrow while we’re all sittin’ around, listening to this Cook crap we heard today. We always get ice water in those meetings; that’s something I can do to save time.” Then I think, “No, that would be gauche.” But then I think of Luis Alvarez, the physicist. He’s a guy I admire for his gutsiness and sense of humor, and I think, “If Alvarez was on this commission, he would do it, and that’s good enough for me.””
A lot of his autobiographical stories are filled with examples of him doing these types of experiments, big and small, ever since he was a kid. Ones without a ton of “rigor”. The same style of experiments that Mythbusters tended to do.
So Feynman would totally agree with Xkcd here about what’s really important when it comes to science, sorry to break it to ya. He was a Mythbuster at heart.
I think the point is’t that they are rigorous. It is that that it doesn’t matter if they fail at basic rigour because you can teach that after you inspire the interest, and that is the thing you need to do to get more scientists and engineers.
Is the issue motivation? If that’s the issue, then I would argue that Bill Nye the Science Guy is a better resource for aspiring scientists.
Bill Nye is fine if you are in a country where he was broadcast and already have a predisposition towards science. That Mythbusters came at it from a pop-culture direction, and that it wasn’t aimed at children gives it a big boost.
If Mr. Wizard, and Bill Nye can claim to be science shows, Mythbusters and Crash Labs can as well. There’s a spectrum.
Bill Nye the Science Guy regularly references classic experiments and teaches viewers about the scientific method.
Did mythbusters not start with a hypothesis, decide a way to test it, and come to a conclusion based on experimental results? That’s the scientific method. It is science.
Of course it’s not rigorous, has tons of holes, is not breaking new ground, but it’s fun, and shares a scientific approach its viewers can relate to. If I wanted to know the truth beyond an urban legend, I’d probably just take an online opinion and base it on my own knowledge. That’s a horrible way to find “truth”. We’d all be better off (and happier) if we injected some Mythbusters scientific method into our decision making
Zombie Feynman literally addressed that exact point!
I disagree. Zombie Feynman completely disregarded the lack of controls and the flawed nature of their “experiments”. You can’t just whip up one ballistics gel mannequin, blow it up, and come out with a definitive answer to a question raised by folklore.
By Feynman’s own standards as a Phd Theoretical Physicist who worked on the Manhattan Project, would his Zombie counterpart’s claims exceed or fail to exceed his own metric?
No single experiment is ever going to be definitive. More rigor makes an experiment more reliable as a data point, but informal testing is still useful. It can be a “gut check”, or a launchpad for further, more formal, experimentation. Fuck around and find out is a tried and true staple of science.
Ironically the Manhattan Project’s Trinity test is a great example of this kind of testing. There was extreme uncertainty going into the test. There was no way to create a small-scale version of the experiment, no control to compare against. They didn’t know if the bomb would fizzle or ignite the atmosphere. They set it off to see what would happen, and then tweaked their future experiments and designs based on their observations.
At no point during the Manhattan Project was any plutonium haphazardly experimented on with poorly designed experiments and “gut checks”.
Ever heard of the Demon Core?
Holy fucking hell.
The beryllium hemisphere is held up with a screwdriver.
The absolute madmen.
Scientists are human and fallible.
“Professional Science” is just as vulnerable to “eh, I know what I’m doing”, bias, politics, funding, feuds, ignoring details-that-dont-fit and shortcuts, as the rest of the human experience.
That’s why we see “breakthrough discoveries” falling apart to scrutiny on a regular basis and new facts/theories are only gradually accepted into the “body of accepted knowledge” after lots of peer reviewing, reproduction, general chewing-it-over and when the old “that can’t be true” generation has retired/died.
On the other hand, quick and dirty gut-check experiments and goofing around with a new idea are a valuable way to easily check for falsification and narrow down what actual, rigorous tests might have to look like. They’re also a major source of lab accidents.
In the context of the Manhattan Project, the demon core is a perfect example of this.
They don’t, but they say least show a process of testing beliefs and they will rerun experiments based on feedback from the audience to see if they missed something.
And it isn’t like they are testing bleeding edge science. It is more teaching skepticism and inquiry on sayings and others information which have dubious veracity.
You must be fun at parties
The parties I generally attend aren’t hosting salons on how great Mythbusters is at doing science.
I’m dead now.
I’m gonna spook the salons hosted at your parties, like a proper ghost.
Mythbusters is one of my favorite series of all time, but for the love of God, please don’t revive it
Jman prob wouldn’t come back anyway.
Savage has a YouTube channel if anyone is feeling nostalgic. He takes questions about making and mythbusters. Sometimes it’s fun to hear him reminisce. I personally like his new builds more than when he’s looking back into the past.
I don’t think any amount of money in the world could bring Jamie back to a revival.
I believe Adam’s already said he’s no longer interested in filming television.
Plus, Grant has since passed away, Kari is a big oil sell-out, and Tory has been floundering around on Amazon’s streaming service for a while now
TBH I would shill for big oil too if they gave me ridiculous amounts of money.
Yeah it’s been sad seeing some influential people go into really questionable areas. I think reddit shit a brick when Aubrey Plaza went shilling for milk producers of America.
Terry Crews did a commercial for Amazon, right around the time that unionization was lifting off.
I get that you got to eat but these people aren’t without choices.
Terry Crews has also been hanging out with Joel Osteen, so that sucks too.
Being charitable, their agents are typically the ones that secure those deals, and they, being a bit more affluent and marginally more privileged than the rest of America, may not think to push back very hard on the jobs their agents line up for them. And of course their agents may even go as far as to try and convince them it’s not a big deal.
It doesn’t excuse it, but I also am willing to let it slide provided it doesn’t happen routinely after they’ve been called out.
Kari is a big oil sell-out,
I watched the video and a behind the scenes how an off shore rig works isn’t much of a sell out. Showing the behind the scenes complexity of drilling makes solar even more appealing.
Mythbusters regularly featured weapons but they weren’t shilling for the US Military Industrial Complex.
No, but getting a respected “science person” to go on camera and repeat their clean-sounding PR “Deepwater Energy” name is just one of the ways that Big Oil legitimizes their actions to the public, and I’d have hoped someone who spent a decade plus in both the entertainment and soft-science industries could’ve seen through it. It would be like if Bill Nye or Neil DeGrasse Tyson made a multi-part webseries about Clean Coal.
Regardless, it wasn’t the first time the MB cast was tricked into shilling for fossil fuels, but an episode about clean-burning diesel in 2009 is a lot less aggregious than an episode about underwater oil drilling in 2023, in my opinion.
Mythbusters regularly featured weapons but they weren’t shilling for the US Military Industrial Complex.
Not the MIC, but I have no doubt that the NRA or other gun lobbyists helped produce those episodes.
The U-2 Bomber episode was a little shilling, there wasn’t even a myth. But what were they gonna do, not take a cool ass ride to the edge of space?
Sorry, I just have to:
You’re correct on the plane type in that it was a U-2. However, that’s a photo reconnaissance aircraft - it has no bombs or other weaponry. You’re probably thinking of the B-2, which is a stealth bomber.
Shit
Hearing that about Kari is super disappointing. I thought she would go into something like joining an advocacy group to fight against climate change. Anything but shilling for oil
RIP Grant…
It was so shocking, he was only 49 years old. aneurysms are crazy… :'(
I think of it like this: imagine if one day you tested the classic Newton experiment and dropped an apple, but it DIDN’T fall down. Imagine how exciting that would be!
“Holy shit, we were wrong! Oh my god! This is great! We were so wrong!”
This is the essence of science. Being wrong is exciting because it means that you’re on to something. The way scientific theories are made is by challenging what you believe – trying to prove your idea wrong. If you repeatedly can’t prove it wrong then you’re probably approaching something that is true which continually adds to the certainty that you’re onto something. That’s what the sigma certainty means in scientific discoveries. It refers to the possible margin of error in a discovery.
The sigma certainty is essentially, 1 sigma is about 85% certain - or a 1 in 7 chance you’re wrong, 2 sigma is about 97.75% certainty - or a 1 in 45 chance you’re wrong, 3 sigma is about 99.98% certain - or about 1 in 5000 chance of being wrong, etc. It depends on which scientific field you’re in as to which level of sigma is considered enough for something to officially become an accepted theory, in Astronomy a 6 sigma is where the line is drawn which is about 1 in 500 million chance of being wrong (~99.9999998% certain).
I think people can be too proud of being wrong, to the point they don’t value being right.
In real science, a null result is a disaster because you probably can’t get the results published. And, even if you could, you might not want to publish because spending a lot of time and not being able to prove what you set out to prove looks bad.
But, on Mythbusters, they were the very best episodes. The team had a lot of common sense, so most of the time they could predict the outcomes. They still verified their assumptions, but it wasn’t that exciting. But, when the result went against expectations, they got so excited, and they worked really hard to verify they were wrong.
Mythbusters is the reason I went into STEM. On year my parents even bought me tickets to see the tour, as a Christmas present. I also still watch Adam’s YouTube channel weekly (Tested).
