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Science is more like a conversation.
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this post was submitted on 20 Jun 2024
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Man, NGT gets so much bullshit thrown his way. Sure, he's an annoying shitposter on Twitter, but the vast majority of the time he makes a public discussion with someone he's either one of or the voice of reason, and that sentence does definitely throw all nuance he has out of the window.
No yeah for real. I've never seen him doing anything I would really consider to be annoying, or at least, more annoying than any other science communicator, and he constantly gets shit on for being like, too cocky, but then when you push back I never get any examples of things he's actually fucked up on, just that he has bad vibes.
Well, I can't imagine why a prominent and professional black man who publicly supported the Covid precautions and vaccines would have been the target of a smear campaign.
I mean I feel like I've seen him get smeared since way way before covid was happening, like, since the 2010's at least he's been getting heat for no reason, I feel like
I don't know, even on his own podcast I found him more willing to sound right than be right. Not that he was wrong, just dropping nuance and exceptions for the sake of sounding absolute and axiomatically correct.
His words end up being easy to poke holes in if and only if you know what he's talking about. Thus I find it hard to accept what he says when I don't know what he's talking about.
Paper castles look good, but a short stone wall has a better reputation.
Sorry for my ignorance but what does axiomatically correct mean?
An axiom is a statement that is accepted to be true, usually to serve as a foundation for further arguments. I assume OP meant that NGT would often make general statements without much justification and OP perceived these statements as not nuanced / "true" enough.
.... That explains so much in my life. I need to learn more about how this works. Im do this poorly
When I say axiomatically correct, I mean something self-evident or aligned with fundamental principles. An example of something that's axiomatically correct would be: "Gravity makes things fall down" or "Lines that aren't parallel will eventually cross".
Something that sounds axiomatically correct, but isn't, would be "What goes up must come down". It sounds true, and was practically true for thousands of years, but every spacecraft relies on it being false, that things can stay up forever.
I don't have an example from NGT off the top of my head, but this sentiment is why I'm not a fan of his, despite being very into space and astrophysics.
What does up must come down isn't false, but it can be described differently enough to mean different things. How each word is defined would determine falsity(that seems like a real word but I'm not sure if it is btw) wouldn't it?
So it's not always true but it can be depending on how you interpret it?
Voyager is never coming down. Even if we wanted to bring it back, we couldn't in this century, maybe ever.
Eventually it's slagged remains will find a black hole to rest in, which is a different down at best, but even the black holes will evaporate, assuming the universe lasts that long. This fate is so far beyond the concept of down that there must be nuance in the claim, especially when talking about astrophysics.
Every interplanetary craft defies the phrase, and even orbit demands a deeper understanding. "What goes up must come down" sounds good and covers everyday life, but just like Newtonian physics it breaks down at large scales.
Something axiomatically correct would always be true (for the axioms we have taken). Perhaps you could take "On Earth" as an axiom here, but that's a very restrictive axiom that you need to specify. Thus a more nuanced take: "What goes up must come down, unless it leaves the atmosphere."
Not that I'm using axioms very rigorously. They're usually used for math things. My informal usage was to evoke the sense of absolute truth. Of a statement so obvious that it doesn't need proof. I find Tyson speaks in terms of "this is" rather than "this suggests" or "we have evidence for". He speaks like an omniscient narrator speaking a story rather than a communicator of science.
Also, 'Falsity' is a word, and I think you're actually using it correctly; it's the opposite of 'Veracity' and also a noun for a lie or untruth. "The falsity of the statement" seems right, but it's also old and very underused. I think a better word would be 'Falseness', but 'Falsity' in neat!