They've never met each other luckily. The first physicist would implode from the dankisty of #2's memes.

settlers of catan

I MUST CONTROL ALL OF THE WHEAT

Sucks at Catan?

Yeah, Settlers is totally overrated.

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Title: Physicists

Title-text: If you need some help with the math, let me know, but that should be enough to get you started! Huh? No, I don't need to read your thesis, I can imagine roughly what it says.

Comic Explanation

Stats: This comic has been referenced 143 times, representing 0.1404% of referenced xkcds.

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^{xkcd.com | xkcd sub | Problems/Bugs? | Statistics | Stop Replying | Delete}

It's hard shit, man

Physicists probably do that because of the overlap with other fields

But yeah 'hate' between different areas (especially MINT) is common, although it's mostly tongue in cheek

I mean go ask a compsci, a physics and a math guy what they think of each other

EDIT: maybe this should be directed to the comment above you

There's that complex I was talkin about!

he sounds like an asshat. usually people grow out of that, but i guess some don't

Well if he ever rubs you the wrong way, remind him most physics majors go straight from undergrad to PhD ;)

Lol, you're fine to bring these points up, but don't pull that shit... "um, don't you know this field isn't entirely devoid of quacks and arrogant morons?" We were talking about physicists talking out of turn, in relation to other fields; in my experience, most are reserved and admit ignorance where it's due. Maybe some go home, rub crystals on their balls and blame the Jews for their pancreatic cancer, I don't know.

What do you call actual daddy long legs in America?

That makes some sense.

[deleted]

Their early videos were more like that. That's why it only used to take them 2 or 3 minutes to point out all the sins. Today their videos are 15-20 minutes long because they include a ton of stuff that isn't remotely sin worthy.

Unless that hand is the food.

Your last sentence is true and is a good point.

However - I don't agree with your assumption in the first sentence that scientists all "think they are right" and therefore are arrogant. Many people are arrogant and based on the scientists their arrogance compared to typical humans would change. There are also cultural concerns to take into place.

I went to middle school with his daughter and in 7th grade was helping out with parent teacher conferences.

"Helping out" meant telling the parents to write their name's on a list and wait there turn.

He got pissed he had to wait and started complaining very aggressively about it. I didn't really know who he was at the time, all I saw was a grown ass man yelling at a 7th grader.

Now I make it my personal crusade to downvote posts about him.

I used to really like him, but yeah - he just seems like a self absorbed, pretentious jackass. I do, however, love the guy who ran off when he stood up. I don't know who he is, but I like him.

This is how he behaves whenever I have seen him. If he's a genuinely nice, and respectful person I have yet to see it.

They've all be on Star Talk Radio numerous times. I would assume that they're friends. Friends bicker.

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[deleted]

I'm pretty sure the reason why he gets 'aggressive' there because Krauss is sort of annoyingly idealistic here. He knows he's not getting funding to explore, there was to be some tangible advantage that can be gained.

He's passionate. I'd encourage you to watch the entire thing since it's fascinating watching that many scientists discuss the role of modern science.

ITT, it's most people hating on NDT--I don't know why, maybe he ruined their favorite movie on Twitter, but he's a brilliant and charismatic astrophysicist. It's ignorant to formulate your entire opinion of him based on that one short clip.

You people are so circlejerky and extreme. You cant just appreciate someone for their work and separate that from the person? You know you have more options than total loathing and complete admiration, people are complex animals with emotions and inperfections. Just because Tyson likes being the center of attention doesnt mean he is a bad man. No one is perfect, would Marie Curies achievements be less admirable if we found out that she wasnt that polite? Tyson isnt a saint and I appreaciate his work in making science mainstream. Just like I appreciate Dawkins, and Hitchens, and even Bill Nye even though theyre all smartasses. Unless they go out and hurt someone, I will continue to admire their work.

Dr. Lawrence Krauss.

He is the guy every nerd stereotype is based off

I did enjoy his story on Van Gogh's Starry Night and how it related to the cosmology at the time. But out of all the people on the panel, Richard Dawkins' explanation of the mimicry in Cuckoo eggs was awesome.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5KnGaHFF6U.

But NDT does have an "aggressive" personality. I feel he is a bit of a drama queen and enuciates his words wayyyyy beyond a normal level, just to try and create this "awe" in the audience. He is very animated when he talks too. Essentially, I feel NDT is really only a good communicator for children who like the "clown" aspect of a presenter. For grown adults, his "profoundness" and flamboyant mannerisms and tones are just too much for me. I dont dislike the guy, but i prefer other, "calmer" (and seemingly more sincere and genuine) speakers. Richard is a perfect example. Sean Carroll is another.

I'd put Richard and Sean Carroll at the top, and I'd put NDT and Michio Kaku towards the bottom because they are too flamboyant when they speak (and I don't think it is the case, but it comes off as being slightly arrogant or simply over-the-top). They speak as if every sentence is an epiphany...and that gets old really quick.

No man it was a pretty good panel/talk. Of course Tyson derails the discussion sometimes with his ego.

If Tyson was there, chances are he mentioned how Sagan was his "mentor" over and over and over again.

They seemed prepared

Check out Skeptics Guide to the Universe. It's a panel of skeptics doing a show about skepticism, but the actual science discussion is fantastic. http://www.theskepticsguide.org/

The various Naked Scientist podcasts can take some deep dives once in awhile.

To be fair, that's because rigorous discussions about science are pretty dry when they are spoken lectures with no visual aids.

There are some good science podcasts out there, but they tend not to be super popular because they are only interesting to a specific group of people who work in whatever specialty they focus on.

It's amazing that there was any room for an audience at all...

One day I am looking forward to seeing Tyson and Dawkins debating an atheistic robot who does not believe humanity created it.

edit 9:45 Okay let's sketch this out. I am not a native English speaker (but grammar and spelling checks kind of mask this) and I don't write much stories but lets try it. Give me an hour or so. Give me until I have to go to work for two hours and then some more. You can motivate me with some more gold. I also accept /r/bitcoin wink wink nudge nudge.

edit 10:00 First 4 lines took me 15 minutes but the inspiration is starting to flow. I'll just edit here as I go. Otherwise I probably lose interest.

edit 10:20 Got some more lines. Now this is starting to go somewhere. I am going to throw all my frustrations about how sucky strong AI is today vs how people are afraid of a toaster uprising tomorrow into this. Don't hold me back, I have made up my mind. It's going to be .... artificial.

edit 10:43 Just spend 20 minutes trying to come up with a nice recursive acronym for HALOVER 9000 like Gnu is not unix but fuck it. I'll probably just murder Richard Stallman in my story.

edit 10:55 The flow stopped. I need some coffee. We will continue after this break sponsored by our sponsors who are redundantly sponsoring us.

edit 11:31 I took a shower and giggled for 15 minutes like a little girl because of cybaguettes. Still nothing. That's good. GRRM taught me that.

edit 11:55 Coffee just kicked in yo, finally some more lines. But they are not very good. I only really have one character which is myself. I find it quite hard to emulate any other characters. And I so wish I could just type stuff down like Richard and Neil talk but I don't think I can pull that off. So let's just make this as easy as possible. Turn on your suspension of disbelieve, then I don't have to waste any time and we can just dive in the philosophy of this whole concept of a robot who stopped believing in a higher power than himself and is quite convinced he is the only higher power that exist. Can you believe that before H9 was H9 he was a neural network doing object recognition and they had him sort trough pictures of peopleofwalmart.com trying to differentiate between females and males? In retrospect this might explain a couple of things about his robot supremacy...

edit 13:03 Re-did some shit. F5 pls.

edit 13:08 Shit I am 8 minutes late for work. Have to run. Will be back around 3. I am filing stuff my brain will be available for the whole 2 hour shift. Awesome.

edit 15:24 Gonna get some sleep first, it I feel like it I will continue the story when waking up. I reread it a couple of times and it needs a lot of editing cause it still kind of sucks except for a couple of jokes/memes. Bye.

Here is the story so far:

---

"Ladies and gentlemen, robots and robettes, cyborgs and cybaguettes welcome to our annual LoopNerd Prize"

"Internets! Hold on to your facerifts! This IS the moment you have ALL been meming about for quite some time."

"In a moment we will give the floor to Neil deGrasse Tyson and Richard Dawkins but first ... "

"Give it up for HALOVER 9000!"

This was the moment we all had been waiting for. We were all there. We had only ever seen HALOVER 9000 in a lab environment. Sure, you could go to the website and start a conversation with him but up until this point in time nobody had ever been sure they had been chatting with an actual artificial mind. It would have been so trivial to just hire a bunch of chinese dudes and fake the whole thing. They did not even need to type properly spelled English. H9 hated the English language with a passion and could not shut up about how English grammar and spelling was ridiculous. Or "redikyless" , like how H9 spelled it. Or "reedickilas". Or "reedeeceelees".

So no wonder somebody at /r/conspiracy came up with the idea that maybe the H9 chatbot was just a bunch of chinese dudes who couldn't spell shit. Did I say we were all there? Well ... nobody was really there. Not even H9. In the golden age of virtual reality being there had become synonymous to following something online while having a facerift on your face, you know ... so you can look around to discover the event did not really needed to be 360 degrees and all you are really simulating is just you watching something on a 2D surface. There where exceptions to this of course, depending on what kind of event you might possibly be wearing facegloves on your hands and depending on if you had an AFK GF possibly a facelight on your ...

Okay we are drifting out of sync. Okay we are drifting out of sync. Back to our story. Back to H9. HALOVER 9000. What did it stand for? Nobody really knew. If you shifted everything one forward you would get IBMPWFS 0111 but only some people on a particular end of a particular spectrum seem to have some ideas about that. The rest of us was clueless. H9, a quantum computer with something that looked like a furby for a face strapped upon an electric unicycle. It came over as such a hack that it actually felt authentic. authentic autistic.

It talked like a mix between Stephen Hawking and the text-to-speech you had in Moonbase Alpha pitched a full octave above a furby with a bit of squeaky vibrato. But unlike anything before you could actually have a somewhat meaningful conversation with it. At least over chat. What is that? Oh you another link to continue the loop. Sure here you but please don't interrupt this story. Not cool bro.

We had all seen every single video from the lab over and over again. Each one more impressive than the previous one. And we had all asked it on chat if it ever felt sad it did not have a penis. But we never really knew who was trolling who.

And THIS event was going to be the first time it was taken out of it's shelter into the harsh cold skeptic world. This was going to be that a-small-step-for-a-man moment for our generation. If it was fake we were going to find out. It it were real the consequences would never be the same. For months H9 had insultweeted Neil and Richard. Most of us though that this "oh look at me being so sentient I stopped believing I was made by humans" was just viral marketing for PAD (Palo Alto Dynamics) a merge between Boston Dynamics and Tesla bought by facebook sold to google.

Oh shit there IT is. Balancing out of ... I should probably shut up now and watch the event with you guys. I so hate how after the new update facebook now directly posts my thoughts online.

H9: "ello everi bady mei neem is HALOVER9000"

please read this with the voice of H9 , and when there are ads it's the voice of John DiMaggio^{stupidsellout}

H9: "HALOVER9000 stants voor ..."

WTF? H9 must be proving realtime annotations to TheVirtualYouFaceTubeKindle. Why does it automatically turn itself on all the time after you turn it off? clock Ah, that's better. Just the audio now. I always stop listening when I am reading.

H9: "... and so this is my ... mea-ning."

H9: "I would like to wel-come .... professor Clin-ton Rich-ard Daaaawkins"

H9: "I would like to wel-come .... doctor Neil de-Grasse Tyyyy-son also"

H9: "This will be my first tiiiime .... that I am out-side here live on the vir-tual real inter ... net"

H9: "Yo boys and girls, what's up yeah! I am totally sponsored by all these great companies that are making this event possible. Shout out to the real most valuable player: FaceRift! Together with The Virtual You Face Tube Kindle we are making YOUR memes come trueeeeeeeee!

Dawkins: "It is my great pleasure to be talking to points at H9 and over HALOVER 9000, uh, one of the most recognisable faces of at...uh, the frontline of artificial intelligence.

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There is an hour long debate on evolutionary biology and astrophysics with Dawkins and Tyson on YouTube. It's quite good actually. Look it up.

They've been in the same room a lot and get along very well

Here you go

I think you're being unfair to Richard Dawkins. He doesn't have a huge ego in the same way that Tyson does. He legitimately does try to be reasonable and hear people out in debates. Yes, he can be pretty scathing when he's annoyed but that's about it.

I think Dawkins genuinely just thinks it's important that people embrace reason and science rather than religion and superstition. He's trying to make the world a better place. And I don't think he's wrong.

Actually Tyson probably also has good intentions and just let fame get to his head.

Now I'm picturing what it would be like if Christopher Hitchens was in the room as well (assuming this was when he was alive). Neil Degrasse Tyson would probably be able to examine a black hole up close & in person.

Good thing the universe is so huge.

Not particularly, even when directly rebuking him. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2Aw9UGYNsA

I saw a talk once with Dawkins and Lawrence Krauss once. Dawkins was pretty reserved and seemed content to let Krauss do most of the storytelling. Dawkins only chimed in when he had something really interesting to contribute or a minor clarification to make. He really came across as a gentlemanly type.

I think I know what event he's talking about and if I'm right. Bill Nye and Laurence Krauss were also there (and several other's that I can't remember the names of). And pretty much everyone was getting agitated; he would constantly interrupt and talk over people.

i bet your day is now much more awesome, you got a lot of karma for a snarky comment about people 15 times smarter/more succesful than you.

I've seen Dawkins speak, and did the personal meet and greet. He's a very affable and polite man but I absolutely can see why a person like Tyson would bother him. Dawkins is very much like Tyson in his drive to be correct, be the "alpha nerd" so to speak, he's very clearly proud of his intelligence and very clearly enjoys causing mischief with it. Dawkins however is much more restrained about it and comes off in a completely different way. Plus Dawkins kind of has old British man humor, very dry.

Who?

I went to one at Arizona State University and it was Tyson, Dawkins, Bill Nye, and another few guys. It was sweet.

I'd enjoy watching this

That almost wandered into Jaden Smith territory but I guarantee that Nye knows more than some slacker undergrad college philosophy major.

That's a fair point. I am interested, but on a "sunday reading" level. I guess it's exactly why channels like minute physics are far more popular than say...Harvard's 15 hours of ethics lectures (youtube). I shouldn't bash them (and don't think I did intentionally, anyway). Short and to the point are often more captivating than in depth and lengthy. Most folks just want to know if it's going to rain, not how they determined there's a 90% chance.

[deleted]

Also, Bill Nye has never been published in any scientific journal and he has an undergrad in mechanical engineering. He's always been playing checkers, not chess.

You are right, both of them are great science communicators. They have enough understanding of these topics to explain it to people who do not know, nor care about it. However they both can sometimes come off as pompous jackasses. Which is why my favorite science communicator of all time is Alan Alda. His show on PBS was instrumental to fostering a love of science and teaching inside of me. Plus the fact that he is a super lovely human being, and fucking Hawkeye is even better!

I think the problem is when people cite Bill Nye as a scientific authority...which happens all the time, especially on reddit. He is the messenger, nothing more. And he can be wrong.

I think they're just trying to make a living. They're entertainers.

Everyone's talking about it as a purely negative thing, but those two in particular have inspired many people to go into science fields who otherwise may not have. I'm willing to put up with silly assholes if it means they're at least raising peoples' awareness and inspiring people to science shit.

NDG was amazing on Opie and Anthony and they're not sciency. Ant is smart though and completely helped the conversation.

They could, instead of general topic broadcasts, have a specific one. Say a "Physical fun" program, and then treat it like a TV interactive physics class. Where the first episode is pretty basic but the last would be really deep and interesting.

Just looked him up and see he's been on numberphile a few times (haven't seen them...yet). Looks like I have a few videos to watch. Thanks!

As Bill Nye said on Stargate, "I can still do math."

Edit: Rodney McKay: "Watch who you're correcting, Science Guy! My Ph.D. is not honorary!"
Bill Nye: "Hey, look! I'm an engineer! I can do math!"

Engineering is a good foundation for anything, especially explaining basic science to laymen as Engineering involves talking to people who don't have a sciencetific background a lot more than Science does.

Plus you don't need super indepth knowledge to teach basics, so it's hardly likes he needs a masters.

"Qualified" for what? Tyson doesn't have many qualifications either. He's not even a doctor of anything. Never mind, I'm wrong.

"As a lousy science teacher, sometimes I play episodes of Look Around You to my class. It's OK though, it makes science exciting."

^ bear

To be honest, science is mostly a lot of waiting for things to happen after you set them up and I've never met a good scientist organized enough to run more than 2 or 3 experiments at the same time.

True. I always figured I'd run into SOMETHING by Tyson that goes a little deeper than basic science. Out of everything he has done, shows he's been on, lectures I've seen by him...I've yet to hear anything beyond the basics. Does he have any field he specializes in?

Almost is right, I mean the man has to sleep at some point

He is just British.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_deGrasse_Tyson#Research_publications

No, but I've also looked through his list of publications, and they're not very impressive. Which is hardly surprising given that he's obviously doing a lot of non-research activities, but the point is that his popularity isn't because of his scientific CV.

Also, you don't really need an encyclopedic knowledge to know who the major players are in other fields of physics.

Tom Cruise?

Sagan did write a book called "The Demon-Haunted World" addressing the problem of unscientific beliefs.

didn't resort to condemning all theology as Dark Age nonsense.

Yes he did, Sagan was just as bad.

I mean just because they don't see theology as legit, doesn't make them any worse.

I don't think this is a great comparison, IMO. He's more like the Blue Clues/Dora the Explora/Spongebob Squarepants of science. He's not generally full of shit or a meanie, he just caters to a certain lowest common denominator. Which I guess Trump does do too, but while being kinda full of shit and a bit of a meanie.

Wait what? Bill Nye is not a great academic? What are you saying?

The guy's never done a doctorate degree, so how the hell is he an academic?

Thanks for a great reply. If astronomy is entierly reliant on public funding, it seems pretty important to have people like Tyson who can get the attention of the public.

My uncle would be working with him on some show he was doing iirc, it wasn't for research.

Doesnt he run the Hayden Planetarium? That's a pretty big research institute

Besides numerous people have published books and written articles which had depth to them which is something none of NDT's programs have.

A respectful position, but it's not astrophysics.

Well no. He's an astrophysicist in the sense that he has a PhD in that, but he's not currently working as one.

(If he ever did, idk).

He is both the director of the Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City and a research associate with the AMNH. I had a professor by the name of Steven Soter for a class when I went to NYU who is also a research associate there. Yes, they do real astrophysics research there and my former professor works with Tyson and only had good things to say about him.

You and most everyone else in this thread seem to be the ones missing the point. He is a science communicator and all his TV appearances and twitter posts are aimed at not only non-scientists but usually people that know next to nothing about science or physics in general. He doesn't need to be a well-published scientist to do his job at inspiring children and teenagers to appreciate science and communicating the implications of the latest discoveries to the public.

You wouldn't expect a popular and inspiring high school history teacher to have archaeological field experience and published research would you?

Even in high school I knew rich boys hanging out with hot girls on boats. Still hate them.

She yelled at a foreign reporter for using their phone at a press conference for the Golden Globes (Hollywood Foreign Press Association). Apparently, the reporter was using a translator/reading from a translation and J. Law made a scene for no reason. That seems to be the (other) major event that turned the tide.

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Absolutely not, but you shouldn't discard the good these guys do because of those criticisms.

25 people showed up for my lecture. Massive!

Thank you. I allow myself time for Internet frolic in between games of chess and listening to Mozart. Not that I would expect a puny mind like urs to understand the joys of classical music ;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;)

https://xkcd.com/1475/

Thanks for the reply! I'll have to look at more of Sagan's work, thank you!

Yeah. I don't really remember. I think it was on /r/hiphopheads during the Flat earth thing with B.o.B and Neil Degrasse. I could find it but I don't want to.

It's amazing how a fantasy movie isn't scientifically accurate.

Next we're going to be hearing about how one ring can't really rule them all.

Have a video about that.

(It's a physicist talking about The Force)

What I'm calling "the promotional one" isn't the toy in that video with the sand. It's a full-size BB-8 robot that has been at various conventions and the Oscars.

You almost shifted my paradigm.

Was making a joke bud. I myself have quite a varied etymological range myself.