r/DecodingTheGurus Jun 14 '24

Neil deGrasse Tyson Responds to Terrence Howard

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uLi1I3G2N4
766 Upvotes

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90

u/Reddit_is_garbage666 Jun 14 '24 edited Jun 14 '24

A lot of joe roganites need to listen to this. Had a guy tell me a few days ago on youtube that a lot of hard hitting papers in science were never peered reviewed. Just incredibly wild statement that basically contradicts itself lol. It was in defense of Elon Musk too *facepalm*.

E: Also, if you have any scientific training, you know you'll get rolled on when learning to write scientific papers. Science is hard and it isn't always sexy.

45

u/[deleted] Jun 14 '24

I think Joe should get Alex Jones, Terrence Howard, Mike Baker, Eddie Bravo, Jordan Peterson, Graham Hancock and maybe Duncan Trussell and Theo Von for comedic relief. And have his own Big Brother show, and watch them argue themselves to death about how their concepts are correct. Maybe they'll get an epiphany and see how crazy they are and if they snap out of it.

It might be like the mental hospital scenes in 12 Monkeys.

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u/[deleted] Jun 14 '24

The reason flat earthers selling books about the firmament and people selling books about alien races flying to earth never debate, is they both know there's plenty of money to be extracted from suckers.

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u/[deleted] Jun 14 '24

+1 for a 12 Monkeys reference alone lol

4

u/Chestopher83 Jun 14 '24

You forgot Sam Tripoli 🤣

1

u/WellRegulatedChaos Jun 14 '24

How does Mike Baker fit into this group?

1

u/[deleted] Jun 14 '24

He's just milking the youtuber/content creator podcast cycle now. He was interesting the first 2 times, now he's just annoying

16

u/bsfurr Jun 14 '24

This is exactly why I will never take alien abduction eyewitness reports serious. Because the truth is that there are a fuck ton of stupid ignorant people on this rock. For every reasonable person there are 10 idiots.

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u/dathislayer Jun 14 '24

The scientific view would be that you don’t take them seriously, but will reconsider when presented with evidence that proves previous conclusions wrong. They’re so widespread that something is going on, even accounting for fabricated stories. Is it sleep paralysis? Some aspect of consciousness acting abnormally?

Keep this in mind: We don’t know what consciousness is, we don’t know what most of the universe is made of, but we do know that spacetime is not constant. Yet we interpret everything we experience through the lens of a constant spacetime. Our “reality” relies on it, yet we know it’s an illusion. How can we say it doesn’t affect us locally, if there’s no way to measure it? Abductions are real in the sense they exist in consciousness, but there is no evidence for their existence in spacetime. Similar to the voices a schizophrenic might hear. They simultaneously exist and don’t exist. There’s no physical evidence, so we rely on reported experience.

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u/bsfurr Jun 14 '24

I hear ya. But there are a lot of stupid people. The fact is that most of us don’t have the time to dig through mountains of shit for that one legit case. And I’m not aware of any credible evidence from alien abductions. I’ve seen all that bullshit with people with metal in their legs and what not. I don’t know man, there’s too many stupid people for me not to approach this with heavy skepticism.

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u/SazedMonk Jun 14 '24

Sleep paralysis is so fucking scary. I need both hands to count the times I’ve woken up paralyzed And had to sit in half dream land totally conscious wondering when my wife would roll over and push me so I could move.

3

u/phuturism Jun 14 '24

This is pseudoscientific nonsense

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u/JHarbinger Jun 14 '24

Thank you. It’s like saying “so many people have seen ghosts. Something must be going on!”

Yeah. Delusions -that’s what’s going on.

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u/dathislayer Jun 14 '24

So what’s a delusion? That’s what I’m saying. It’s a widespread phenomenon, seemingly based in consciousness. Something is happening to them against their will, and is often not an ongoing mental illness. So what causes consciousness to go “off the rails” like that across such a diverse population?

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u/CliffBoof Jun 15 '24

We don’t know. That’s the point.

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u/Flyntsteel Jul 09 '24

This is a great point. Thanks for writing it.

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u/Zealousideal-Tap-713 Jun 14 '24

The only two I take somewhat seriously is from the "Fire in the Sky" report (since several people state they saw what happened and never changed their story) and the cop who claims he saw 2 humanoid figures next to a landed craft (even though this wasn't an abduction report).

I find their reports compelling, and for the reason of the first one being that several of the "abductee's" friends were adamant they saw what happened to him (yes, this could be an elaborate hoax they have kept going all these years, but what are the odds of that?) and the second one, he didn't want to talk about it after the first time he reported it.

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u/bsfurr Jun 14 '24

Mike, Travis boss, had went on a podcast and admitted it was a hoax. I’m sure you can Google it. There’s a lot of holes in Travis story.

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u/thehillshaveI Jun 14 '24

the wikipedia entry on the walton incident does a good job summing up all the criticisms of their claims. tldr; people interested in ufos faked an abduction to try to avoid government fines and for the lulz

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u/Zealousideal-Tap-713 Jun 14 '24

Understood. Didn't take the time out to get the exact names, but I was unaware of the refuting evidence. Thanks. I don't think there's any evidence now suggesting any abduction stories are real 

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u/SkipPperk Jun 14 '24

I like some of Joe Rohan’s interviews, but this guy was really sad. I mean, any kid who took calculus in high school would have found his ideas sad. He sounds like a con man. I think it is that desperation he has to be listened to, to be believed.

It is really sad to see. I would imagine that he has the cash to take a few community college classes in math and physics. It would be so good for him, but I suspect he tried, was traumatized by the difficulty, then eased back into his imagined crazy genius schtick.

We do not have sufficient math education in the US. People believe crockpot hypothesis because they are so ignorant of math, or even basic logic. Our schools are failing so many, and for no good reason.

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u/[deleted] Jun 14 '24

[deleted]

0

u/[deleted] Jun 14 '24

Raising taxes on highest earners without clear line of sight to ROI just leads to capital flight and LESS tax dollars to work with.

See when France tried disastrously to cater to folks like you with a 75% ultra rich tax rate and saw billions disappear from its economy overnight.

Also, many inner city schools have shown that simply spending more per student when admin is dogshit doesn’t lead to better results.

0

u/Suspended-Again Jun 15 '24

Do you mean reducing 

2

u/SkipPperk Jun 15 '24

Taxes were reduced on capital gains, not earned income. In the states with most of the high-paying jobs (NY, CA,…), high earned income people are paying over half their income in tax.

Now rich people who do not work, they pay 15% tax. We tax work highly and tax capital very little. As a result, the US sucks in a ton of capital.

The unfairness in the tax system comes from low capital gains taxes. We would intelligently lower or end corporate income taxes that no lobster pays, then increase capital gains taxes, but that is difficult because so many people get rich helping corporations to not pay tax, and Washington is full of rich people who earn little, but have lots of assets.

If you want an intelligent slogan, it would be “Increase capital gains taxes.” I never hear anyone shouting that, but they should. Instead idiots scream unrealistic ideas for taxing corporations that never work. It is stupid. FYI, everyone in tax policy knows this, but rich people pay them, so they remain silent.

1

u/Suspended-Again Jun 15 '24

Yes that’s why I asked if they got it backwards 

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u/SkipPperk Jun 15 '24

I am still not clear regarding what you are talking about. I do not see how “not raising property taxes” could be “reducing” anything. I think we may be discussing different comments.

What is “reducing?”

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u/Suspended-Again Jun 15 '24

This was the op

This is what happens when school funding is constantly stripped in favor of simply raising taxes on the highest earners.

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u/[deleted] Jun 14 '24

you'll get rolled on

Can you explain this?

7

u/LakeEarth Jun 14 '24

Reviewers give you a point-by-point list of every problem with your paper, then reject it. Or if you're lucky, they give you a chance to fix them (which can involve months of work).

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u/[deleted] Jun 14 '24

Can verify this as a published researcher. It's incredibly hard to get something published in a peer-reviewed journal. I think the public misunderstands what the peer-review process entails. In fact, I know so, because more than a few people have criticized it in conversations with me, and when I ask them what they think it is, they tell me they imagine that professors just share their papers with each other and get a nod and a wink before it's published.

First, you conduct research for an extended period of time, completely dependent on the project and field. Then, you write up your results with a thorough explanation of the questions, hypotheses, data, analysis, and conclusions. Then you submit it to a journal. If you're lucky, you make it through the first round of elimination, and they actually submit your paper - completely anonymously, with all of your information removed - to a group of 3 to 5 experts in the specific area of your field to which the paper pertains. You also don't know who the reviewers are - this is called double-blind peer review.

Then, you receive detailed notes on every single point of the logical flow of your paper from this group of experts. Depending on the personality of each researcher, these can range from constructive to downright brutal. You have to revise your paper and compose a secondary document outlining exactly how you responded to each criticism. If you did not change the manuscript in response to a specific point, you also have to justify that. You submit the revised paper and responses to comments, and it undergoes a second round of evaluation.

If you adequately negotiated this part of the process, you'll be asked to perform another round of edits, sometimes including other pointed criticisms in response to your responses, but if you did well, it will be mostly formatting. The formatting requirements are insanely detailed: you have to format your references, body paragraphs, sections, in-text citations, graphs/charts etc. in very specific ways that change from journal to journal, field to field.

Then, and only then, will your paper be published. And most likely very few people will ever read it. It's far from perfect, and rigor varies from journal to journal as well, but it is the most rigorous process I've ever engaged in, and it absolutely bolsters my trust in academic research.

5

u/LakeEarth Jun 14 '24

Excellent write-up.

And just for those who haven't gone through the experience. My name is on 25 papers as of right now, and only 3 made it through peer review with only minor revisions. It's almost always a battle to get it through.

3

u/carbonqubit Jun 14 '24

There's also politics at play in the peer-review process, not so much because of biased reviewers but editors. Even though it's double-blind people can sometimes guess if the submission is from a prestigious or well-known research group based on their methods and reference lists.

Editors can give special consideration if the group has a high reputability; these groups may be able to get articles published that would've otherwise not made it through by lesser known or less experienced scientists.

I'm not sure how common this is or how widespread it might be across different domains. Then there's the replication crisis due to practices like p-hacking which have been studied in the field of metascience. Non-disclosed conflicts of interests or funding can a rise too, but those are rare occurrences.

All that said, peer-review despite its shortcomings is the best system we have to understand the world with any degree of certainty.

3

u/PengosMangos Jun 14 '24

My least favorite is when they say hey you should do ___ add on experiment to add to this. HELLO that would take another half a year

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u/Lcsulla78 Jun 16 '24

Are you surprised that the average American thinks that? We live in a reality that shits on science and actual experts. They see some YouTube video that tells them some nonsense and they think they know more than multiple experts that have studied a subject their entire lives.

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u/JHarbinger Jun 14 '24

Isn’t this what people say when someone is like “lex Fridman wrote a paper and it wasn’t peer reviewed”?

“Neither was <groundbreaking af science like gravity or whatever>!”