Kurzgesagt (In a Nutshell)

I'm most amazed by the natural reactor thing.

Optimism is a duty.

Today it's about the best way to do an interstellar war. Hint: FLASHY and fast.

Secret Signature

Today's video is about Black Dwarves/Iron Stars (right?), what, no Proton Decay disclaimer?

Secret Signature

The existential despair is blunted by the fact they've basically covered all this before.

Nach jeder Ebbe kommt die Flut.

The Brown Dwarf slander has gone too far! Why can't we all just coexist in the heat death of the universe?!

Kurzgesagt goes into the harm caused by the internet.

SoundCloud

I understand the sentiment, but it doesn't seem to address the fact that there are some people you shouldn't get along with.

Yeah, and it also doesn't take into account that people who were civil to interact with could be causing harm in other ways.

I take more issue with this video than I think I've ever taken with any of their previous ones.

Edited by ShinyCottonCandy on Nov 29th 2023 at 11:38:16 AM

SoundCloud

I think that's the unfortunately bitter price of trying to both simplify a complex issue and reach as broad an audience as possible. There are many people who hold untenably immoral opinions and beliefs, but who can actually be persuaded to change their ways by not immediately antagonizing them; I'm reminded of this news story I had read during the George Floyd protests about how a white supremacist was frozen in his tracks when the black guy he was screaming bloody murder at him pointedly shouted "WHY DO YOU HATE ME?!" (or something to that effect), and the white guy could only react in confusion and admit that he frankly does not know, ultimately walking away without further issue (and hopefully planning to do a lot of soul-searching).

I think that's what Kurzegesagt are trying to do here: attempting to reach those among the believers in objectively wrong/horrible opinions that still retain enough rationality deep down that could be the vector for inducing them to self-analyze and realize on their own how wrong they were, and start to change their ways accordingly.

Edited by MarqFJA on Nov 29th 2023 at 8:21:54 PM

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

I think the fact that both of you immediately jump to the worst possible counterexample is actually part of the problem this video describes. Most people, even those online, are not part of those extreme groups.

Also, as this video points out, Americans are particularly primed to think in extremes about the other side to begin with.

Optimism is a duty.

It's arguably even worse here in the Middle East, both due to local factors and the collective or nationally unique traumas of the region's interactions with the Western world after the fall of the Ottoman Empire, the last time that any polity that's "native" to the region ^note for a somewhat loose definition of "native to the Middle East"; we typically go by "Middle East = Arab world plus Turkey and Iran" as far as I can tell was a great power. It's extremely hard to get past the prevailing assumption that it's in the blood of every non-Muslim to hate and betray us, and that the examples to the contrary are always anomalous and the tiny minority within their respective groups.

Edited by MarqFJA on Nov 29th 2023 at 8:47:34 PM

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

Since the American system was brought up. Considering one side made it clear that they support the removal of environmental protections in the name of short-term profit, termination of women's reproductive health, and destruction of rights for minorities and LGTBQ people, is an extreme reaction towards them not warranted?

Depends on what you mean by "extreme".

Optimism is a duty.

At the very least, not an assumption of being willing to have a good faith discussion.

Not Three Laws compliant.

You mean there is a general ban on political discussions now?

Optimism is a duty.

Political discussions belong in OTC. If those discussions get contentious or uncivil, we prohibit them completely.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Fair enough.

Optimism is a duty.

Three ways to destroy the universe. Being heat death, the big rip, or the big crunch. The most likely one is heat death, which is good, because it gives us the most time with this universe, as well as providing us with the possibility of preserving consciousness somehow.

Optimism is a duty.

When I was growing up, the Big Crunch was believed to be the universe's fate, since dark energy hadn't been discovered yet — or at least it wasn't confirmed. I do kind of like the idea of it endlessly recycling itself, even if I won't be around to see or experience that.

Let's be honest: as much as I'd like to know that consciousness and civilization will outlive the stars and endure until the very last black hole evaporates, I'm not going to see that happen.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

I can't help suspecting that forces we don't yet understand will interfere with all three of these scenarios long before they have a chance to play out.

That's a fair assumption, it'd be pretty arrogant of us to assume we really know what will happen to the entire universe over incomprehensible time scales, when we've only existed briefly on one tiny rock.

I missed the part where that's my problem.

That's a form of popular misrepresentation of the science involved. It's true that we don't know everything about how the universe works - not by a long shot. But we don't just have a few hundred years of data to work with; we have billions of years of data. Our telescopes can detect signals from as long ago as a few hundred million years after the Big Bang. This allows us to paint a picture of how the universe evolved from a very young age, all the way to the present.

It is possible that our models of how the universe evolves are incomplete. In fact, it's certain: this is the "crisis in cosmology" that is at the core of Kurzgezagt's video here. We just don't understand the large variance in observed values for dark energy between the cosmic microwave background and galaxy redshifts. If its value changes over time instead of remaining steady, we could get a Big Crunch or Big Rip.

While it's reasonable to say that we don't know exactly what will happen, it's less reasonable to say that there might be some undiscovered phenomenon that changes things completely. The universe is not likely to spontaneously turn into kumquats (but if it does, that's not a complete unknown: it's encompassed in the Boltzmann Brain hypothesis).

Kurzgezagt lists only a small fraction of the potential fates of the universe. Vacuum decay, bubble-universe intrusion, proton decay, conformal cyclic cosmology, and many more possibilities exist in the field of scientific thought. In fact, the channel has made videos on many of these already.

Most of the "what if" ideas that one may find around the social media landscape are fringe or wackjob hypotheses that have no testability and are the product of scientific skepticism, not real science.

Edited by Fighteer on Dec 12th 2023 at 4:18:23 AM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

How does your immune system react to tattoos?

Turns out, it's basically fine. Just don't use toxic ink.

Optimism is a duty.

just dont tell the immune system about eyes..

New theme music also a box