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 :)
The elephants and mice episode is also my favorite non-explosion myth. I can’t believe it’s actually true.
I definitely recall the myth and it being busted but I don’t remember if they explained why the elephants are afraid of mice, though. What was the explanation?
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
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
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.
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
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.
It was revived in 2017. I think that’s all that needs to be said on the matter.
If you like this kind of content, there are loads of YouTube channels doing these kinds of ‘experiments’ they tend to be more specialised, but that’s a good thing and they often interact with each other to share expertise.
I was going to ask about some of those channels, but decided to make a post on askLemmy
Gotta throw Nile Red in there for chemistry.
Also I’m not sure what the right answer is but there should be a better format for your link so people can access it from their instance. Maybe someone who knows can chime in. Kbin always edits the display of proper links so I’m not sure the exact format.
Yea post links on Lemmy are unfortunately really hard to deal with. There are discussions on how to fix it
The current workarounds seem to be
- use an app or browser extension to handle the link for you
- link the instance and tell people to look for the post
- use a third party service to generate instance agnostic links
I use the first option for myself (Boost on mobile, InstanceAssistant on Desktop), but we really need a better solution
Yeah. Probably one of the larger items that makes going between instances a pain in the ass. Once they all have decent apps it’ll probably be better but still. Maybe even if they could have it ask “Hey you clicked this link. Do you want to go there-there or here-there?”
Yeeeeah, no, that’s weird. Discovery rebooting it with different people would almost certainly suck, if you just want to hang out with that sort of engineery-makery-SFXy content there’s tons of ways to do it now and Savage is a successful youtuber in that space. Pair it with Imahara’s hearbreaking passing and that just sounds all kinds of depressing.
I’d sure love it if Discovery wasn’t actively burying the old episodes, though. That’d be nice.
discovery reviving it with different people would almost certainly suck
No need to say “almost certainly” because Discovery did that exact same thing six years ago and it did suck.
Fascinatingly they actually ran a televised competition to see who the new hosts would be.
It would be cool if they got certain, specific people. I would pay to watch it if Allen Pan were hosting, and he got to pick the rest of the hosts
I can only imagine how insane that show would be if Allan brought on William Osman and Kevin (backyard scientist) to bring that full “meth engineering” vibe to doing science.
My dream Mythbusters would be Allen Pan and Grady Hillhouse as the hosts, with Jabrils, Michael Reeves, and Simone Giertz as the build team. I feel like that covers all the bases. The funny guy and straight man hosts, and the computer guy, adrenaline addict, and levelheaded smart woman build team, with frequent guest hosts William Osman, Kevin Backyardscientist, Nigel Braun, Alex Apollonov, and James Hobson
There are so many people with such dense resumes and existing fanbases, and Discovery hired two, uh, guys. No offense to Jon and Brian, I just like everyone else named in this comment better
“Remember kids, the only difference between screwing around and science is writing it down.” -Adam Savage
That single quote is the core of Mythbusters, and only the original Mythbuster team truly had that chemistry to pull it off on national television.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
I prefer https://explainxkcd.com/397/ because it adds explanations, references, and comments.
Naah, they’d never recapture the magic. Bring back similar shows like junkyard wars and battlebots.
Battle bots is still going on. They have new seasons every year. There is a large break in between for rebuilds and try outs.
I’m personally addicted to the smaller battle bot leagues like NHRL.
I love how creative ant and beetle weight battles are. Folks show up with literal pieces of trash attached to a motor and make havoc.
I’d really like to see a BattleBot league with a lower budget.
For example there are car racing leagues with a strict spending limit of $2,500 or so. This is enforced by allowing any racer at any time to request trading vehicles and the other driver must oblige.
Yeah would be sick if I could pay $100 and be equally matched. Ant League is certainly cheaper, but then it gets silly because you have people with kits or plastic bots, against custom titanium bots.
Like this here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_E5ckRtBJ4c
First match is against a really nifty bot that has a really large plastic pushing wedge, and it did really good with its pins and control, and hits on its wedge did jack all because it just bounced around and didn’t transfer the force to the main body. Like its wedge just worked as a great crumple zone.
But against a super optimized metal bot it still was a doomed battle.
Then the bot Temper probably costs as much as a car. That thing is sick, but oh boy does it look expensive.
Did you see Dutch Oven? Holy fuck that’s the scariest robot I’ve ever seen!
You mean the tiny robot that MELTED the arena??
Yes, yes I have.
Scrapheap Challenge! Found some of it on youtube :D
Isn’t there a current bot-fighting league? NHRL or something like that? They keep popping up in my YouTube recommendations, but I haven’t done a deep dive into them.
Unfortunately they can’t bring Grant Imahara back :'(
Instilling the “Oh, I was wrong, THAT’S SO COOL” mindset in people is one of the best things science education can do.
And it translates to all walks of life.
There’s so much misery in the world simply from people who know nothing convinced they know everything.
from people who know nothing convinced they know everything.
A lot of it is insecurity. If people feel inadequate, then they may go out of their way to cover-up that inadequacy.
I think part of the blame can be put on those who will admonish someone for being wrong.
“It’s not “Yes! My experiment was a success!” It’s “Yes! My experiment yielded data!””
I seem to recall Adam Savage saying this at some point.
RIP Grant…
It was so shocking, he was only 49 years old. aneurysms are crazy… :'(
I don’t think you could revive Mythbusters.
I don’t think Adam and Jamie are at all interested in doing the show anymore. If it wasn’t them, you’d have to re-cast, and it would be really hard to get that kind of chemistry, while also finding people with the right technical background for the show. The Build Team members were fun, but they couldn’t do it, although they tried with projects like the White Rabbit project.
Plus, I think the world has moved on. There are plenty of YouTube channels where people build crazy things, or test myths, or whatever. But, that’s in short, 5-10 minute videos. A full hour (well, 45 minutes) of reality TV is different. Also, they tested so many myths over the years, that the only ones left are TikTok trends or gossip or whatever. Not the kinds of beliefs that go back decades.
the world has moved on
You say true, I say thankya, Gunslinger.
“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.
Adam and Jamie couldn’t even stand each other.
That goes around a lot, I haven’t seem proof they actively disliked each other, they just weren’t friends.
From the way Adam talks, it really does sound like it was more they were good at working together but not friends more than they didnt actually like each other.
In fact, I’ve seen Adam say that they were colleagues. Nothing more, nothing less. He’s specifically talked about how the producers wanted to piss in their ears about each other to start drama (like every reality show) and they shut that shit down right at the beginning
And Grant Imahara isn’t answering his phone.
deleted by creator
They got on each-other’s nerves, but they knew they worked well together, and they had a lot of respect for each-other. They both knew that the other one was key to the success of the show.
They didn’t want to spend time together outside the show, but I don’t think that means they couldn’t stand each-other. I’ve certainly had co-workers who I respected who I had no interest in hanging out with outside of work.
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.
Didn’t they stop because they ran out of myths that wouldn’t give people explicitly dangerous information like their bomb recipe
