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The worst part is that it's factually untrue.
Hold anything up to your mirrors and look at it from the side. The item never actually "touches" itself because the glass is in the way. The reflection is on the backing that's behind the glass.
And even more technical (and thus where I'd imagine a scientist's mind would actually go), let's say you remove the glass and just have the reflective backing. The moment you touch it, no photons are transmitting because light can't get in there to make the image, nor can that image even be observed. So all you're doing is kissing the backing. It "looks" like it from the aspect you can observe, but I would have hoped that a self-proclaimed scientist could differentiate between reality vs what amounts to partial observation.
For someone who's supposed to be smart... he says the dumbest fucking shit that screams "I'm smart" but in the 15-16 year old way... what I used to see on Myspace profile headlines. I wish "experts" would stick to their actual fields of expertise and shut the fuck up about everything else. It's hard to take them seriously about their actual field when they are provably stupid in others. Especially when they put themselves out there in the public the way that he does at what seems every possible opportunity.
The one that comes to mind immediately was when he tweeted: "FYI: An airplane whose engine fails is a glider. A helicopter whose engine fails is a brick."
Forgetting that he could have just looked up literally any resource about helicopters to know that it wasn't true. He seems to do a lot of "thinking" rather than a lot of learning these days. It's the same stench as the sovcit folks reek of.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=y4Nc9PvmEt0&t=1m11s
While I get the premise of this "show"... he says one thing that stuck out to me "You shouldn't follow me if you want to learn about astrophysics" @ about 1:11 for those the timestamp in the link doesn't work. I've wondered if that's because he doesn't want to out himself as being stupid in his own field too. Not to say that he IS stupid... but I wonder when the last time he's actually conducted any amount of research on something has been. If that was in the 90's... Then he needs to retire the "scientist" moniker and call himself what he currently is... an influencer, or at best "educator"... which I'm only quoting because if someone takes him as an educator then they'll be mystified when they see him get weird shit wrong that he speaks as if he's knowledgeable on. I also wonder how much of his research actually still stands. But I'm not the person who can discern that.
Another example tweet of his "If there were ever a species for whom sex hurt, it surely went extinct long ago.”
WHAT? THE FUCK? For a good chunk of the HUMAN population (specifically women, though to a much lesser extent even men... [frenulum tears are a thing]) sex is a painful act. The guy looked at his own experience and couldn't for a second imagine how that's not the case for everyone. Forget looking at any other species on the planet... even looking at our own we see that this is completely fucking wrong. Now look at other species and you'll see shit like the praying mantis and some spiders that kills and eats the male during copulation. Cats with barbed penises. Ducks with literal corkscrew shaped penises (where females have literal mazes as a mechanism to allow rape and still have a choice in which partner will sire offspring). Look up "Antechinus" too... the males copulate until death and the details of how they die is just sad.
I haven't been able to take this man seriously for a very long time outside of "well he's an entertainer".
Edit: But this is shitpost community... so I'm sure me taking this somewhat seriously in my rant will equate to downvotes. I accept it.
You know, I find it the absolute peak of irony that this sounds like something that Neil Degrasse Tyson would say about someone else:-).
You know what, I can appreciate that. The difference though is that I don't claim to be a scientist or leading expert in any of the fields I talk about. I also don't tend to portray myself as an educator on ANY field... except for when I'm in the actual classroom teaching (which I don't do anymore due to administration politicking, and I was in the field of IT). And when I converse online, I do it as a literal "rando on the internet". Without my potential qualifiers in the vast majority of cases which doesn't imply actual knowledge in anything.
This is part of my problem with him. He's viewed as this amazing educator and scientist... That will put people off from questioning his assumptions/statements by default because as kids you're taught to listen to teachers/educators. And he put himself in that position so I have no sympathy for it.
I have similar hangups with Bill Nye the "Science" Guy. Who's only qualifications are Mechanical Engineer at Boeing. Yet for some reason people treat him as some amazing scientist in completely unrelated fields. When he's not. And because he's built that reputation and put himself adjacent to actual science for so long that nobody questions the nebulous and crazy shit that he says anymore.
Nye's anti-nuclear stance being a prime example, flying in the face of what actual scientists have been talking about for decades (though debate-ably, now nuclear might be too late to the party to significantly help anymore. Though I think we should still be doing nuclear personally). Or claiming that he knew anything about Quantum Entanglement and through QE, time-travel because of blackholes... Also don't forget that he was a willing spokesperson for Exxon to talk about how drilling oil is safe. Forget that it's one of the most dangerous jobs on the planet, and burning any oil in any form simply isn't safe and even pushed the "clean burning" (rather than less dirty burning) fuel, which as a by-product even releases more radiation than nuclear does (going counter to his actual complaints about nuclear in a huge way).
I dunno. I'm just tired of being "educated" by people with no qualifications. And when I bring up the obviously wrong things I see... all I see is the masses in love with the characters.
Oh yes, and if that is how you interpreted what I said, then thank you for taking it in stride and responding in a good-natured way. But if you go back and re-read it... I feel like what I said had a lot more to do with him than you pointing that out about him:-).
i.e., he is pretentious, claiming to "know" things, but (seemingly?) lacking in the area of humility, or even just precision, which is to know and express clearly where one's own knowledge ends and instead one's lack of knowledge begins.
And that is exactly what Tyson has built up his career around trying to tell people! e.g. "you don't know shit!" (while ignoring the limitations of his own sphere of knowledge)
In point of fact though, YOU know where your knowledge ends, i.e. have humility, thus it is quite obvious that you are nothing at all like Tyson:-P. 😅
I suppose what I am saying - and I may not express myself clearly here but I will try:-D - is that Tyson is correct: for people in a LEADERSHIP role (like scientists & educators), rather than blurt out whatever thoughts first come to our mind, we would do well to think it through and stfu with our interjections of things that go beyond the plain and simple facts. The weird part is, he made his career out of doing precisely the opposite of that! He blurts out his own thoughts about their thoughts, and people loved that "drama" so he just never stops.
He is a victim of his own success in a way, except as you say, he is the one who stepped up into that role, not you or I.
I'd say you can still kiss your reflection since just about everything emits photons. Just not always in the visible spectrum.
I’d say you can still kiss your reflection since just about everything emits photons. Just not always in the visible spectrum.
And mirrors don't reflect every photon on every spectrum either. Quite contrarily... many forms of glasses/plastics (and the backings layered on those materials) are completely transparent in many wavelengths.
But see this is [one of] my point exactly. If he left some caveat like that in the damn tweets (because he should understand the caveats)... People who are actually interested but don't know might catch an on and actually try to learn the science about it. Rather than the nonsense he just tweets. People who view him as "an expert" will take it at face value... and not question it. He should be leading future scientist to actually understand and learn. Not this drivel.
Edit: [one of]... I should clarify that it wasn't my only point. But just the one that the specific mentioned tweet should have also been doing if he really wants to be an "educator".
If we're being super pedantic about it: mirrors don't need glass (or anything else) over the reflective surface. Through most of human history, mirror kissers wouldn't have experienced that separation. And thus there was no bad luck (just to bring it back around to shitpost territory).