PBS is having a Stephen Hawking explains the Universe shit that's everything I hate about modern day "science" shows

PBS is having a Stephen Hawking explains the Universe shit that's everything I hate about modern day "science" shows.

- Ridiculous stunts that are poor analogies to scientific concepts
- Participants involved in those moronic stunts are pulled aside to comment on the situation like it's a god damn reality show
- Excessive CGI everywhere
- Topics explained at a glacial pace for rednecks to understand
- Cameras zoom in, zoom out and fast-forward, slow-down like an action movie
- Literally every trick in the book to make drooling morons pay attention

If the average moron isn't interested in science and history, don't force them with all this prop comedy and special effects. If they can't sit through the original Cosmos, they don't deserve to know. Television is already spoonfeeding concepts to them, so how much harder do we have to try to educate people? To hell with them and to hell with PBS.

P.S. Just because Stephen Hawking has his voice and likeness in the show doesn't make it a work of genius. He was a guest star in Zombie Simpsons.

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how does dumb people learning effect you in any way shape or form?

I have no idea what this show you're talking about is.

But what is your problem with this?


Sounds like they're doing stunts as analogies, which may be poor so afterward they try going a bit more into explaining the concept so that there isn't a misunderstanding about what is meant with the scientific concept.

If they're often working on a green screen set they probably feel like they need to fill the empty space with something while the people are talking about something educational so as to keep people's attention focused.


Maybe they want to make sure a larger audience can understand what's talked about?


Padding and/or trying to add excitement when talking about a relatively dry subject.


So what?


Stephen Hawking seems to like popping in to do work on a lot of shows just for the hell of it. Likely helps to draw some more eyes to the show so that some people learn something that might be vaguely educational.

who gives a shit

the way you teach is important. the closest analogy i can get is videogames, unfortunately.

lets say you begin a game on the hardest difficulty setting, and for the purposes of this example you have never played another game similar to it. to you the hardest setting is "normal," as you have never known any different. having mastered the game on the hardest difficulty, to play on easy mode would be a cakewalk, and may possibly bore you because it requires so little effort on your part.

another example would be that i am taking a class in latin, and my professor taught us to memorize the 3rd conjugation before the first and second without explaining why. later on, he tells us that the third conjugation is traditionally placed last, as it is the most difficult, but he figured if you learn the hardest one first, it makes the easier ones all that much easier because you have already mastered the harder one, and have no been decieved by the easiness of the other two.

so by dragging out the most basic concepts to a child-like level of understanding, you make the more difficult stuff that much harder to comprehend. im not OP BTW.

i can understand that but all he has to do is NOT watch the show, it isnt like MS television is for people like him anyway.

how the fuck is Hawking even alive anymore?

most people live 3 or 4 years after their ALS is discovered. Hawking's been going for almost 50 years

probably the same way magic johnson is still around.

who dat?

a basketball-american who has had HIV for the last 20 years and by all outward appearances is healthy.

If you want a good science show you should match Ian's videos. He does great explanations of stuff.

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He's a synth.

As an astrophysicist, I hate all of the pop-sci garbage out there. It it often worse than useless, and gives people a very poor, distorted understanding of what is actually going on. I cringe when I hear anyone outside my building say the phrase "dark matter".

The problem is, physics research is a career that requires you to be at least somewhat passionate about it, and it's natural for people with a passion for something to want to share it with others. However, physics (and most of STEM in general) is simply not something that can be properly explained to the average person in a TV format. It's inherent in the subject matter. Most of the audience will probably never be able to understand it, and those who could still won't get anything from a few hours of television. Science inherently builds on what came before; even radical ideas like heliocentricism and quantum mechanics can only be properly taught with the context of prior theories.

Quantum mechanics has received an especially grievous treatment in the media. It is a simple and unavoidable fact that QM requires an understanding of both the preceding classical theories and numerous mathematical tools. There is a reason Quantum 1 isn't offered until third year at my uni, and it's because even for students who study physics and math full-time, it's fucking hard. But it's always a major topic for pop-sci shows like this one because when you wash out the subtleties and the underlying framework, it makes for attention-grabbing talking points.


And then there's the Dunning-Kruger effect. It's usually invoked when idiots overestimate their capabilities, but in this case the other half of the effect is significant: physicists often underestimate how stupid other people can be. They tend to be overly optimistic to the point of naivete, and assume anyone can understand if only it's presented in the right way to make them try.
So they simplify, dramatize, whatever they can to try and succeed. But they rarely realize that it's not their approach that's stopping them, but their audience.

Isn't Stephen Hawking basically the George Lucas of physicists?

Goddamn this is so true. The average person lacks the spark or at least the free time to ever learn about something just because they want to, and not because it will make them money.

Fucking THANK YOU.

The only "sciency" show I see on TV anymore has special effects on top of everything like a Lucas-remastered Star Wars movie, and you know eventually Michio Cuckoo is going to waltz out in front of the camera to restate that "guantum physics = anything is possible".

I was only able to get through the reboot of Cosmos because the concepts and history was explained in a straightforward manner.

Took 5 seconds to google. Look at all that Avatar hologram shit.
Exactly, the amount of time they take setting up some dumb reality show stunt we have to watch strangers enjoy could be spent explaining the concept clearly.
They're not.
They're wrong to want this. The "larger audience" is full of retards that don't watch PBS anyway.
See above. If the masses couldn't sit through science class when they were kids, why cater to them now?
It's a bad precedent. Going after the Michael Bay Transformers audience just frustrates people actually interested, and the masses won't care either way.

thank god that normans are so scared of the word philosophy that they immediately tune out and it dosent have a similar type of bottom-feeder retards that the empirical sciences tend to get.

Reminder that most of modern science is a religion without the self awareness of being a religion.

Sure thing user.

Stephen Hawking is a literal puppet. Nothing he says is from him, he has handlers that do the talking for him. He was incapacitated when he was younger and used as a mouthpiece for the establishment's theories.

I always come away with these things feeling like I've learned some vague shit, yet simultaneously learned nothing at all.

Physics isn't that hard to learn, but you need to bury yourself in books in order for that to happen, not sit in front of a goddamn TV.

have you ever come across female physics students who are cute like Rose?

Remember that one video about WW2 guns I think it was and after talking about the weapon for a bit they showed off a shooting montage complete with D-D-D-DROP THE BASS dubstep?

It's not about educating the public it's about getting them excited about science. You know why NASA's budget sucks ass? Because the public doesn't give a shit about space anymore so they don't want their money "wasted" on putting cameras on mars. Even if these shows are vapid and not horribly inaccurate who gives a shit? As long as it gets Joe Sixpack to vote for politicians who will fund science programs its a win. Without shows like these the only "science" education people get is anti-vaccine nonsense.

Who the fuck advertises their science spending to the point where joe sixpack would care though? Outside of maybe Canada, a shitbackwards colony where real politics goes to die.

but that is a waste of money

Yeah, I tried to get into this show Wednesday and it just pissed me off. Reality television needs to fucking die.

And Stephen Hawking has no business explaining evolution. Get an actual fucking biologist.

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PBS science shows aren't for dumb people, they're for children. science shows for children shouldn't be action movies, it's not good for them.

You are a walking parody.

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I honestly wish you would get polio

Exactly.

Do we really need Stephen Hawking narrating anything? Even if it's about black holes? The man's robot voice is sometimes incomprehensible.

You really need to eat a shotgun.

actually scratch that, I really wish you would get lockjaw

(((learning)))

check em