Post: #1

Hipsters and the Left seem to love him.

Post: #2

(10-20-2013 12:00 PM)kbell Wrote:  Hipsters and the Left seem to love him.

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Post: #4

He's a go to opinion leader that gives them easily consumable quotes that fit into their preconceived worldview without having to pick up a book.

Post: #5

I have no idea who he is except that various idiots quote him often. It's a pity. He might actually be a smart, amiable person and we'll never know because of his rabid fans that spend their lives sucking his cock.

Related Maddox article:
http://thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cg...not_a_nerd

Post: #6

I like his podcast "Star Talk Radio."

He has over a million followers on twitter: https://twitter.com/neiltyson

Post: #7

(10-20-2013 12:03 PM)kbell Wrote:  

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Post: #9

Ben Carson wants to be the overtly political (teabag righty) version of him, stupidly claimed that Affordable Health Care Act is "the worst thing to happen to the US since slavery."

Post: #10

I was reading Tyson in Natural History magazine long before he became a television personality.

Basically, he's a good popularizer of astronomy and astrophysics. It's as simple as that.

Post: #11

He's also a prominent atheist which is one reason why many on the left like him. When such a proponent happens to be an amazingly credentialed physicist and expert of the cosmos, it lends a lot of credence to the atheism brand.

Post: #12

(10-20-2013 12:57 PM)Hencredible Casanova Wrote:  He's also a prominent atheist which is one reason why many on the left like him. When such a proponent happens to be an amazingly credentialed physicist and expert of the cosmos, it lends a lot of credence to the atheism brand.

He's not an atheist.

Post: #13

He is basically the black version of Carl Sagan.

.

Post: #14

I like that he is trying to popularize science:

Post: #15

Neil DeGrasse Tyson might or might not be a great physicist who's a nice dude, but hipsters and the left love him because he's a black guy (+1 I Have Black Friends; Am Not Racist), makes science easily consumable (+1 I Look So Smart on the Internet, +1 I Fucking Love Science), is a shining beacon of charisma in a field generally populated by losers and spergs (+1 I Don't Like His Politics But He Makes Such Great Speeches), weirdly enough you can say he's popular because he's popular (+1 Oh, You've Heard of Him, Too?).

Post: #16

(10-20-2013 01:09 PM)renotime Wrote:  

(10-20-2013 12:57 PM)Hencredible Casanova Wrote:  He's also a prominent atheist which is one reason why many on the left like him. When such a proponent happens to be an amazingly credentialed physicist and expert of the cosmos, it lends a lot of credence to the atheism brand.

He's not an atheist.

Yeah. I've seen him labelled as such, but I consider agnostics to be atheists; the point being they have an absence of belief in a deity (one being certain, the other being uncertain either way. I have seen Tyson challenge and discredit the claims of various religions, most notably the Abrahamic ones. Thanks for keeping it accurate though.

Post: #17

you guys read into shit too much

he is popular because is smart, interesting, funny and brings something that is wholly inaccessible to most down to a digestible level - on a subject that is absolutely fascinating.

Post: #18

This seems like a future:

Left/Right political thread
atheist/religion thread

Post: #19

he also has an awesome radio voice

Post: #20

Hen, the very definition of being agnostic is someone who neither believes nor disbelieves.

Of course you can have your own definition but with that kind of logic we could also consider Judaism and Christianity the same religion because they both believe in the same god.

Disclaimer: I'm agnostic.

Post: #21

Guys, are we really going to act like an astrophysicist being popular is a bad thing because some of the people who follow him are "hipsters" and "the left"?

Neil Degrasse Tyson or Kim Kardashian?

Post: #22

(10-20-2013 02:54 PM)Vicious Wrote:  Hen, the very definition of being agnostic is someone who neither believes nor disbelieves.

Of course you can have your own definition but with that kind of logic we could also consider Judaism and Christianity the same religion because they both believe in the same god.

Disclaimer: I'm agnostic.

It depends what circles you're talking in. In everyday language, agnosticism is taken to be the "on the fence" position, and atheism to be a denial of the existence of a God/Gods, but in philosophical debates these words tend to have more specific meanings.

IIRC, Agnosticism is the position that it's not possible to know whether a God/Gods exist, whereas Atheism is the lack of an active belief in a God/Gods. They're orthogonal: one is a position on knowledge, the other is a position on belief. Most Atheists are also Agnostic, in that they don't claim to have positive knowledge about the existence of God(s).

I don't know much about the guy, but I'm guessing Neil DeGrasse Tyson is an agnostic atheist like Carl Sagan, which would be one of many reasons SWPLs love him.

Post: #23

He's a pretty cool goddamn astrophysicist. What else is needed to like the guy???

Post: #24

He's very articulate and personable and knows how to make complex topics easy to understand. Michio Kaku is the same way, although his leaning is toward theoretical physics rather than astronomy. I love hearing both of them talk about science, though I still have no idea what the hell string theory is no matter how much he explains it.

Because of his unique mix of personality, articulateness, philosophy, cosmology, opinions on religion, he's definitely filling the vacuum left by Carl Sagan.

Love the video above with him explaining his views on agnosticism. I feel *exactly* the way he does.

Post: #25

Tyson isn't the problem.

"I fucking love science" is the problem.

These assholes never walked the walk. Fuck them.

People need to start questioning what we fund and what we do with the knowledge we acquire. What knowledge do we want and why. We have antibiotic resistance at the same time we have dick and baldness drugs. We have a shitload of studies of obscure shit and no energy future. We hardly know what's killing the bees but we spend how much money on other science because science is a machine.

Hipster science worshipers should fuck off. Left wing science worshipers should know that the social "science" they believe in is the same bullshit quotient as the religious beliefs of the Right wingers they despise.

"I fucking love science" is like a hetero guy being a fan of a male porn star. Instead of worshiping the guy go rail a chick like that. Oh wait they can't. Neither can the "I fucking love science" crowd.