643
Dolph is prime human
(lemmy.dbzer0.com)
A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.
Rules
This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.
I've also heard that he gets a lot of weird people who are overly attached to the idea of him getting their fantasies crushed when they meet him. Realize that a lot of those "I met him and he was rude" people might not be completely honest about their encounters. Think along the lines of Paris Syndrome, but for a person.
Fwiw Nye does seem to be very chummy with Neil de Grasse Tyson, and that guy's issues are far more well attested to. From the smug poor media literacy, to reports of being professionally hard to work with, to his sexual harrassment allegations. I'm not especially inclined to give Nye the benefit of the doubt given the company he chooses to keep.
I saw Tyson take such a dismissive attitude toward the threats of something like AI, specifically, AGI/ASI with the flippant "but we'd just shut it off!" kind of thing, it really grinded my gears.
However, I guess I'm falling into the same trap that so many do - expecting this guy to be all things to every aspect of anything that smacks of "science" and that's just not a realistic expectation. I'll stick with him on things like the re-make/update of Cosmos and ignore his random hot takes on virtually everything else. Probably also when he's putting pen to paper vs. the hot take kind of thing on a talk show. He seems to be a frequent guest on talk shows and I remember a few being quite cringe at times.
I seem to remember a certain kind of person (usually your local WELLAXKTUALLY guy) getting butthurt about the way Sagan was being held up (in their view) as the arbiter of science or something, repeating "he's not a real scientist he's just a generalist" as a constant refrain.
Fuck it, who cares. If guys like this are good at getting whole generations of people interested in science, more power to them...science could use all the PR it can get in the age of Idiocracy.
That's the problem here though. He might be good at getting a certain kind of STEM bro into science, but his smart attitude turns away heaps more. He contributes to the perception of science as being hostile to women, at the same time as reinforcing the perception of science as elitist and exclusionary. He might've fit in well in the '90s and '00s, but unfortunately he's around in the '10s and '20s.