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Prophetic words from Carl Sagan
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmamPItLdOY
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View Reddit by tommos – View Source
[ad_1]
Prophetic words from Carl Sagan
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmamPItLdOY
[ad_2]
View Reddit by tommos – View Source
Carl Sagan is my favourite human to have ever lived and this video is a perfect example of why.
he’s not wrong. at all.
Take a look at all the K-12 classes that were cut over the past 50 years and you’ll see the deliberate manifestation of Segan’s fears.
I can only wish I were as eloquent and relevant as Carl was, and still is today.
As I age, I keep my “educated-citizen scientific” way of thinking but feel increasingly battered down by our collective ignorance. In the 60s and 70s Carl Sagan on TV was as respected as David Attenborough is now. I don’t think he’d get a fair hearing now. His Cosmos series motivated me so much as a kid.
GOP wants stupid manipulatable voters. They’re purposely sabotaging public education institutions. Keep voting GOP if you want to live like Russians in 10 years. Better yet, just leave and go to Russia while the rest of us try to salvage what’s left of America.
Another video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGanLUnjoPI
Our Carl Sagans are too far in between. That man was a treasure.
There’s a Netflix miniseries that was just released called The Pentaverate.
It’s a show regarding a group of five individuals who got together in 1347 and determined that the black plague was spreading through infected rats, but how religion was like “No. Black plague spreads because God gates you”.
Anyways, since 1347 there’s always been these five people, who are considered to be nice guys, who have been the guiding hand of society.
Without going into the details of it, the show goes to great lengths to demonstrate how technology can be used for bad if the wrong people leverage it.
It’s also one of the few shows in which Netflix tests a feature called “Flix Pix”, which attempts to leverage an AI of sorts to blur out nudity, which I thought was neat.
He says “if we are not able to ask skeptical questions, to interrogate those who tell us something is true, to be skeptical of those in authority then we’re up for grabs by the next charlatan etc .”
This kinda back fired during covid though.
The irony of the thing is that confirmation bias guarantees that even the most anti-science watchers could still pick his words out of context and use them as propaganda.
Unpopular opinion. Carl Sagan is a brilliant role model when it comes to science and his effect on American society was fantastic. The issue is that if you were in a comfortable job, with a future in America, then you could revel in all the great mysteries of the universe. But if you worked in coal, or manufacturing, or any job that was being outsourced to other countries, then Sagan’s commentary had nothing to offer. I think a lot of us “intelligent” citizens just downplayed the horrible, soul crushing events that led to so many people losing their sense of place in history/culture/country, and when they talked about it they were called stupid/bigots/backwards and told everything is amazing because a few Americans got to the moon. Well, the GOP realized this and built their power base on these ignored and disillusioned citizens. We can’t go back to calling them stupid again. It’s not fair and it doesn’t get anyone anywhere.
Boy, you can’t really upvote this enough, can you? “Skeptical interrogation” is the heart of science, and the people at Twitter and FB and the “Disinformation Governance Board” want to tear your heart out.
When know a little bit about science and nothing more, they get duped into things like Q-Ray bracelets. Ionization of electrons to cure my cancer? Sure sounds smart sign me!
Everyone should read what he and Ann Druyan [wrote about the abortion debate](https://scrapsfromtheloft.com/society/on-abortion-carl-sagan-ann-druyan/).
We (the world) truely are in Dark Ages: massive inequalities, wars, pandemic(s), crumbling of institutions and infrastructures, tribalization along every conceivable line, criminality on the rise, dying ecosphere, death of critical thinking, domination of chasing feel good meaningless escapism, loneliness and less and less real social connection, nihilism…
Please add and pile up to this list…
One of the common pitfalls I see with modern “skeptics” is that they misses half of what skepticism is supposed to mean. Yes it’s important not to just blindly believe something you see or read without evidence, but it’s *equally* as important to acknowledge that once you’ve seen the evidence then you need to accept as much as the evidence shows.
Far too often you’ll see self-proclaimed skeptics that are stuck in the “denialism” stage and will never move to the “acceptance” stage when the evidence appears.
This is most common with climate “skeptics” but you can see all sorts of denialists in, say, the /r/science comments section pretending to “just be skeptical”.
Carl Sagan, The [Mr.Rogers](https://Mr.Rogers) of sience!
Unfortunately, a lot of the educational efforts of Sagan were negated by “skeptic” becoming an identity and a foxhole to put yourself in instead of an intellectual ability anyone can learn in different degrees. This tribal division is part of what makes it easier to right wing populists to isolate science informed discourse from their followers.
I’m not blaming self righteous “skeptics” (I blame neoliberalism, because it has always led to fascism), but the cultural divide is part of whats going on and “skepticism” is now part of it.
There’s skepticism and there’s flat earth level of skepticism. Wish those skepticism went towards religions.
There is absolutely no comparison between Carl Sagan and NDT or Bill Nye. None.
In fact, we have not had someone that communicates science and existential concepts as eloquently and clearly as CS since his passing. The world is a worse place without him.
Respect
Small tangent re: how far we’d veered off in 25 years : “*Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990*” would not pass today. Republicans would just be straight up saying, “*Why should small business and taxpayers bear the burden of erecting ramps and handrails for extremist democrat socialists who get disabled in dildo accidents and abortions? You want to raise taxes on the working people to help some hussie be comfortably wheeled down from a Planned Parenthood surgery after she killed like 9 babies? Not on our watch*”.
A MAGA hat would listen to this, agree with Carl then claim this is why they support Trump and why they are questioning the vaccine.
It doesn’t count as scientific skepticism unless if it’s something that you believe in to begin with. If you disagree with someone, of course you’re going to be skeptical of them. That’s a natural reaction, yet so many people treat it like they’re so enlightened just because they happen to disagree with a public figure. The way the scientific method works is that you question your *own* hypothesis. If you’re just starting with the conclusion that this person is wrong and cherry picking evidence that supports that conclusion, you aren’t being skeptical at all.
I’m not afraid of question I can’t answer, I’m afraid of answers I can’t question.
Don’t believe your lying eyes, trust us, I mean, the science!
This may be true, but in an increasingly technological society how much can the average person actually get educated on the astoundingly sophisticated issues the world is facing? Should everyone be ready to speak intelligently about the threat of autonomous weapons systems? Or CRISPER? Who the hell has the time?
I miss him so much. In a perfect universe Earth would have a panel of great minds who advised the people. He would definitely be on the panel representing the sciences.
Dropping this here. It is from Demon haunted world.
“Science is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking. I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time — when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.”
Here’s the full interview for context. It’s a great listening experience. https://youtu.be/U8HEwO-2L4w
Full interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8HEwO-2L4w
You’ll see this manifest on so many topics — climate changes, GMOs, vaccines, nuclear power.
After reading the book Cosmos, he is one of the single people living or dead who I most respect and admire and would have liked to have met.
If only our elected leaders in any way shape or form resembled people like him.
Unfortunately, some people heard this and decided it meant, “Never believe anything, no matter how well-tested and established,” which then became, “Since all things are equally unbelievable, everything is an opinion,” and finally, “My truth is just as good as your truth,” which is the opposite of the intended meaning. Science is inherently skeptical, but it does seek conclusions and establishes the best-evidenced possible theory. There’s a difference between “question everything” and “don’t believe evidence.”
Antivax people would point to this and say “SEE! We’re just asking questions!”
Here is the full interview with Charlie Rose
https://youtu.be/U8HEwO-2L4w
Holy crap, I’m pretty sure this is the first time I’ve seen this, but I frequently tell people that, “Science is more than a body of knowledge, it’s the ultimate way of discovering truths about the universe.”
The really messed up thing is that his own language was weaponized against what he believed in. Today day the “skeptics” are the people least likely to think for themselves and just parrot their chosen demagogs.
Here’s the thing. Yes, we must question authority. But then we must be willing to accept the proof that authority presents when that proof is true. Anti-vaxxers, COVID deniers, and Climate change deniers wear skepticism as a badge of honor. Great, be a skeptic. But when study after study demonstrates that vaccines are safe, COVID mitigation is important, and CO2 is through the roof and getting worse, we must be willing to lay that skepticism aside.
As I age, I keep my “educated-citizen scientific” way of thinking but feel increasingly battered down by our collective ignorance.
“…to be skeptical of those in authority…” – had the population in the territory formally known as the RF had such approach, the KGB-rat would have never seized power…