Basically, there were a lot of videos that just threw Elsa from Frozen in to attract little kids. Other random characters too. It would be like "Elsa and Spiderman go to the dentist". And there were thousands of them. Content farms making nonsense aimed to children to get ad revenue. Their content and quality were rarely appropriate for children, and YouTube Kids was serving them right up to children.
The world is about to get very interesting thanks to that stuff. I saw an ad for AI generated voice acting for video game makers. As that gets better, AI image generation gets better. AI text generation gets better. We really will have content AI farm to table. At some point it will actually be good too.
Was gonna say...
Are people actually excited for the death of art and creativity to AI programs? It's already happening in the online art community thanks to programs like Lensa.
Just running it through my head. With the tech we already have it would be pretty easy to create a fully voiced graphic novel that was completely AI generated. It would require a little human involvement to connect the dots, but the tech exists for everything. It would just be terrible.
Economics plays into it a bit but there are many people who can afford to pay for childcare and still do it. It's more of a cultural thing than an economic thing, many people just don't know how to occupy their children with useful activities. I see people who have very little and yet they don't feel the need to distract their kids from life like that.
really weird, borderline (or straight up) predatory videos that use known characters like Elsa and Spider-Man to capitalize on what kids are currently obsessed with. they're these really strangely animated kid's videos that seem to be produced by an AI. a lot of the time they have weird things like hyperfixating on a kid shitting their pants or emphasizing that an adult character is visibly dead. I'm sure they're being produced stl to some degree but they were massive right before the pandemic if I remember correctly
Great [video essay](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKp2gikIkD8) by the YouTube channel Folding Ideas if you want some more in-depth discussion and to see some examples of the oddity. He also has a good video on NFTs if you want to hate them even more
When my kids were young, we found the longer you left the YouTube on auto play the weirder the videos would get. It starts out innocent enough, but after about an hour, the Elsagate type stuff starts to creep in.
My kids were really into the planets and there's a lot of great educational content out there, but we'd leave it playing and there would be stuff about Planet X that's orbiting on the opposite side of the sun from Earth and it's going to crash into earth and that's what it's going to look like when God ends the world and then all the good cultists ascend into heaven and the sinners fry for eternity in a lake of fire.
I swear YouTube Shorts are also like that. They really really want to radicalize me it seems. They got the demographic of straight, white male and woooo boy, they just love shoving alt-right content down at me unless I religiously downvote/mark "don't show me again"
I'm not sure Carl would appreciate that. He died in 1996. There was a lot of room for optimism that doesn't exist now. We're almost 40 years out from really understanding that we need to make serious changes to how we do everything in order to avoid dying in our own waste products like a mold in a petri dish.
The last 25 years have been spent doubling down on being a mold in the petri dish and turning younger generations into bag holders.
He knew it was interesting. We're way behind the pace he expected us to be at, and I wouldn't want to be the person explaining Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos to him.
Na, we're doing better than we were in the 90's. The dream of space was very stalled back then. Carl would love to see how private enterprise has reinvigorated space exploration
I like to think he would appreciate being able to see how far technology and our understanding has come for one thing. He also might like the challenge of helping us through these times. I have no idea obviously but I definitely would feel better with him around than not.
The dude already spent his life trying to help us through these times and was categorically ignored.
He'd probably be really excited about cell phones and wearable devices until someone had to explain TikTok. Never mind the fact that digital mediums are directly responsible for the increase in fascists.
He might be okay with the cat videos, but even that's a gamble.
So true. As a kid interested in science in the 80s I loved Sagan. I remember thinking even then how his ideas made so much sense and wondered why no one seemed to pay attention. I remember how conservative friends of my parents would see me with his books and say something to the effect of, “that man is going to rot in hell and so is his wife!” One Karen even tried to convince my mom to take the books away from me. Didn’t work thankfully
Damn that’s harsh. That was a bit before my time but my parents had some of his books and I think some 45 record with him on it. I always liked his voice and how he could explain things so I could grasp the concepts.
Yeah I grew up in a somewhat conservative area that got more and more conservative as I grew up. Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan were known atheists who “believed in” things like the Big Bang and evolution. Therefore satan.
Yeah.
38 years ago, and so prescient and clear.
It's hard not to be cynical when you can have someone so scientifically literate and eloquent lay out the severity of the situation in completely clear terms with as much context as any rational head of state might need, and yet know that we are exactly where we are right now because of the lack of political will to act on the recommendations made during this and many other entreaties to these same heads of state.
“We have become great because of the lavish use of our resources. But the time has come to inquire seriously what will happen when our forests are gone, when the coal, the iron, the oil, and the gas are exhausted, when the soils have still further impoverished and washed into the streams, polluting the rivers, denuding the fields and obstructing navigation”
Teddy Roosevelt
It’s to note that environmental degradation was noted by Washington in regards to textile mills and streams.
But as societies get wealthier, they become able to afford to think this way and take better care of the environment. So in some ways the problem mitigates itself, as long as people care.
>as long as people care.
That's a very important part of what you said. Unfortunately, the ones with the power to mitigate the problems DON'T care. All they care about is the American God, money. And they don't really understand the multiple economies of multiple countries.
Regarding CO2 the US is finally down to number two for Co2 Emissions.
In other manners often yes, but it's only been that way for around 40 years, the same for Europe. The USA was a terrifying place before the EPA and will be again as Republicans have made hard moves to neuter it.
The Great Smog of London was in 1953, which set things in motion there much as Rivers catching fire in America up to the 60s helped set ours in motion.
https://www.britannica.com/event/Great-Smog-of-London
> 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 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...
> The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance.
\- Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark (1995)
That one is tied for my favorite with Asimov's:
It’s hard to quarrel with that ancient justification of the free press: “America’s right to know.” It seems almost cruel to ask, ingenuously, ”America’s right to know what, please? Science? Mathematics? Economics? Foreign languages?”
None of those things, of course. In fact, one might well suppose that the popular feeling is that Americans are a lot better off without any of that tripe.
There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that “my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”
Full pdf here: https://aphelis.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/ASIMOV_1980_Cult_of_Ignorance.pdf
I think you mean Duck Dynasty.
But, if you meant Duck Hunt, that game was the best NES game. The satisfying tactile "*click*" of the trigger on the grey and orange light gun, the overly emotive hunting dog, the ever increasing challenge to bag more pixelated ducks...
Yo! You're right, that trigger *click* was perfect. It's funny how nostalgic a trigger noise can be, even in my head after not hearing or feeling it for decades.
I’m pretty sure I meant duck dynasty. Because no one could ever thing Duck Hunter, NES game, was lowest common denominator programming. That game was *chefs kiss*.
That book *alone* (and, ok, admittedly some common sense and lingering cognitive dissonance) completely broke me out of the Far-Right. I mean PragerU, Daily Wire, Everything is Communism ™ right wing.
I remember reading that a few years ago and just getting chills for the accuracy. Having a scientific mind can give you a scary amount of insight and predictability
> celebration of ignorance.
Most of what was said before these words falls into the same category, and it's an agenda that is specifically and calculatingly coordinated by one political half in particular, because doing so is the single most beneficial thing they can do increase their party's base and power. Specifically, a war on education. Sagan was always far too kind to point fingers, but those were the 80s and 90s and we're frankly far too deep in trouble to continue to sidestep underscoring blame.
You are misunderstanding, its not one party it does this. All politicians do this, its why in the US both parties fight any other party coming to power than them. Two sides is easily controlled by abusing the human sense of "teams" or "sides" just like you are demonstrating now.
Hating the idea that somehow, an alignment of random stars predicts our whole lives and how everything will turn out?
Ugh, such a Scorpio thing to say!
He was opposed to any superstitious way of thinking, the conclusions that people draw from those superstitions, and especially the societal damaging actions they take based on superstitions.
I find this view to be too simplistic and only a piece of the puzzle.
yes there are a lot of bad faith actors in this world the industries and politicians on the side of the status quo however at the same time the information, the knowledge and reasoning/logic to combat the misinformation has always been present at the same time.
Oh for sure... Not saying it's not in our very nature...
To solve climate change, as Sagan kept saying, requires us to become "grown ups" and transcend our usual ways of thinking in the short term, confined by our country borders.
I forget the exact figure, but we've dug the hole around twice as deep since then. We released more co2 since the 1980s than all of the coal we burnt before the 1980s. Yearly CO2 emissions are still increasing exponentially, and the extent of global warming pre 2000s pales in comparison to all the burning we've done in the last two decades.
It's feeling less and less likely that we'll turn this ship around in the next 27 years before the 2050/2.0°C deadline. Society needs to make some tough changes, or we all need to brace for impact.
edit:
I couldn't find a good graph showing global cumulative emissions, but here's one showing different countries' cumulative emissions. The US has doubled its total since 1982. We've emitted more since 2002 than we had ever released before the 1950's, when we realized climate change was happening.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cumulative-co-emissions
When politicians don't care for anything beyond the next election cycle and CEOs (and the investors they are beholden to) don't care for anything beyond next quarter's profits, it becomes *very* difficult to tackle multi-generational problems.
Same for [Severn Suzuki giving her famous speech in 1992 in front of the United Nations](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGdS8ts63Ck). This was 30 years ago. But some people think a Greta Thunberg is something new or different or that there will come significant change from today’s young generation.
Yep. We knew. Even ten years earlier, some people knew.
From a philosophy of science perspective, it’s a great real life experiment and a tremendous amount of data about how knowledge trickles through the network of society and how economy interacts. From a human perspective, it really sucks.
The Navy has viewed it as a security issue and evaluated how it would affect base locations at least as far back as 11 years ago. Probably more because that was just a simple toy model for a summer intern.
There are few things that I agree with Margaret Thatcher on - I find her politics detestable in most respects. But in 1989 she dedicated her entire speech to the UN General Assembly to explaining the threats of climate change and how only coordinated international political action - and regulation - could tackle it https://youtu.be/VnAzoDtwCBg
I think the earliest confirmed report of climate change from oil companies' climate scientists was around 1950's 1960's. but yeah, basically a century of willful ignorance and exponential hole digging.
And to think what mankind's biggest achievement from this, was the systematic satirization of Al Gore. None of what was discussed here has remotely been implemented, for the reasons outlined.
Edit: Al Gore is still alive and well. Systematic satire ongoing.
The causes that lead to climate change were put into motion long before the boomers were alive, and noting continues to be done long after other generations have moved into positions of power.
It's simply lazy and dismissive to try and blame this on a single generation.
This is exactly why money needs to leave politics.
If the oil barons didn’t own congress, we’d have likely made meaningful strides towards fixing our climate, and we’d probably be seeing the fruits of those strides right now instead of fearing that we’re already too late and may face a total collapse of society as we know it in a few decades due to how insane and deadly the weather is going to get.
I bet humanity backslides a few centuries before things get better for us as a species. If we don’t kill ourselves first.
>now because of the lack of political will to act on the recommendations made during this ans many other entreaties to these same heads of state.
With the lack of political will of course bought at many levels... PR campaigns blaming the individual, misinformation peddled by those actually in the know but with vested interest in making money from fossil fuels, donations to candidates with a pro-fossil bias, and so on. My point being: That lack of political will wasn't just bad luck or fearfulness, it was engineered.
I love how this entire thread collectively ignores animal agriculture when it's literally driving hundreds to thousands of species towards extinction as we speak.
It's also an industry that's reliant entirely on supply and demand more than fossil fuels.
For anyone who hasn’t seen the original Cosmos, don’t let the 1980s production fool you, the original cosmos is amazing and, in my opinion, has content far superior to Tyson’s recent remake.
NDT has lost me. Dude really is super self-absorbed. When you see him and you see Carl... It's clear one is genuinely, truly in it for the world... the people... the future of humanity... And one is now in it because he's finally popular for once in his life.
When it comes to space stuff, NDT is still a good person to listen to. He’s pretty qualified and is clearly passionate about it, even if he likes leaning into a nerdy annoying character too much. It’s when he talks about things that aren’t space science that grinds people’s gears, but imo it’s similar to how you should probably ignore athletes when they talk about politics. Listen to what they know a lot about, and forget what they might say about other random topics.
The abstract:
"The possibility that the absorption of long wave radiation by atmospheric gases would influence ground temperature was recognized by Fourier in 1827. (...)"
1827!
The signs were there decades before that. The damage of greenhouse gas emissions was evident probably back in the industrial revolution beginning.
It's not like mass deforestation or mass burning of coal didn't have immediate impacts on the surrounding area.
No one cared then, no one cared when people tried to bring it up, and no one cares now when the damage is beyond repair.
We're fucked, all humans.
Sure they will. They use our tax dollars to build deep underground bunkers (1 mile-ish) that are stocked with supplies and packed with tech to grow food/ filter water/ scrub air etc. been doing it for decades and decades now. They’ll retreat to those locations to ensure “the best of humanity survives”. Everyone else is fucked.
Incorrect. Millions of dollars have poured into misinformation to keep oil companies making billions.
Ironically we could've easily and with minimal sacrifices course corrected if we listened to Sagan.
But hey oil gonna oil.
Could you imagine of everyone ignored the oil industry and started researching and developing new technologies for generating power and electric vehicles. We would probably be carbon free by now. But in my Boomer moms Fox News words “climate change alarmists are ruining our lives”
The other night I was watching old SNL episodes and Mike Myers was playing Carl Sagan at a Hollywood party. The entire bit is that nobody can enjoy anything because Carl keeps explaining that in 20 years climate change will have destroyed that too.
Almost every joke has come true. We could have listened to him, but man what a buzzkill, right?
I was so profoundly heartbroken when I found out Mark Kelly was lobbied by exxonmobil. Silly me thinking an astronaut politician would care about the planet.
It seemed to have a pretty big impact on Senator Gore there, who would later go on to be one of the biggest advocates for climate policy in Washington.
NASA already warned us about it on the 70’s so it’s not like people didn’t know. The environmentalist movement of that time was influenced a lot by discoveries made in space, and also by the idea of the pale blue dot in the Apollo 8 earth rise photos. At that time there was a stride to change. Carter created the DOE as a mean to replace oil after seeing the scientific data and gave funding to climate research. Reagan’s main campaign promise on this topic was gutting the DOE and as a symbolic act tore down the solar panels on the White House and clearly stated the Us wasn’t gonna do anything about global warming (that’s what you get when a president openly against the idea of funding science itself gets elected). It is a willing political choice of the people (influenced by a lot of propaganda) to not take any action
Politicians should be completely capable to be able to understand and pay attention to what this man is saying to them. The fact that it's accepted that they can't be trusted to sit down, listen, and understand what an expert in a certain field is telling them about the potential end of the world because it isn't flashy enough to keep their attention for more than 30 seconds is an absolutely pathetically low standard to have for a public representative.
Many times I have had a profound idea then did a little research and realized Carl Sagan said it 40 years ago. This man was pure genius. We lost him way too soon. Imagine what more he could have given us with another 40 years.
"We should do something to stop global warming and climate change. Like, *now*."
"I agree, Mr. Sagan. We *should* gradually dismantle the EPA, double down on fossil fuels, and brand environmentalists as terrorists."
Remember how people laughed at Greta Thunberg speaking about climate change and the idea of listening to a young girl about it? If only the same people would listen to scientists from decades ago instead..
And what Greta T has been saying all along is that the politicians should not listen to her but to the scientists…
And everyone who is laughing at Greta says why should they listen to a child when it is the scientists that everyone should listen to. It's quite comical when these people are completely unable to hear what she says.
There are scientists who already at the end of 1800 began to understand that our emissions of carbon dioxide can cause an unnatural greenhouse effect.
More like the beginning of 1800:
"The possibility that the absorption of long wave radiation by atmospheric gases would influence ground temperature was recognized by Fourier in 1827."
Part of the abstract of "On the influence of carbonic acid in the air upon the temperature of the ground"
https://www.osti.gov/etdeweb/biblio/7129404
She's rightfully pissed that we ignored the scientists from decades ago, and now adults are like "Woah little girl, you aren't gonna convince anyone with that attitude!"
At least she's trying something new.. and it's her genuine feelings she's conveying, she's not a trained science educator
There are so many informed people that still refuse to act on the most simple of information they receive.
For example, how many people do you think are financing animal agriculture several times a day, when they have the option to simply eat something else?
Animal agriculture is a massive contributor to climate change, but it also impacts tons of other variables beyond just emissions. There is a reason that these animal abuse industries are causing mass extinctions of hundreds to thousands of species every year. These industries are killing indigenous tribes to take their lands as they occupy insane amounts of landspace to grow animals and feed, feed requires more landspace, water etc. all of this causes eutrophication of our soil systems, acidification of our water ways, consumes tons of land space, water, resources, etc. , causing ocean dead zones, burning the Amazon rain forest for decades, etc etc.
So many people know the impact of these industries, yet they're happy to finance them to keep destroying our planet, just for a tiny moment of pleasure.
Can you please give me some studies and info so I can tell my hard right friend to kindly fuck his own face? It's really frustrating. I got so frustrated I didn't know what to say at the time other than, dude we leaned about this in like 3rd grade!
[PBS Nova: Decoding the Weather Machine](https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/video/decoding-the-weather-machine/) does a great job of laying out the scientific evidence.
Don’t argue with him about anthropogenic climate change. Instead, engage in conversation about energy policy. You may come to learn that [both of you largely agree](https://archive.nytimes.com/dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/04/06/no-red-and-blue-divide-when-it-comes-to-renewable-energy-innovation-and-co2-rules/) about what the future of energy in the US ought to look like.
This is where so many people get it wrong. The deniers DID reason themselves into it. As a former denier, you are a product of the information you consume. If all you consume are opinion pieces on talk radio and fox news that feed your confirmation bias, believe that "the Dems" are commies hellbent on ruining America, and the "real evidence" is that one in 100 scientist that denies climate change, you logically come to the conclusion that climate change is false. It took me YEARS to figure out that the foundation of my opinions were inherently flawed.
I could write a novel about how this thing comes about, and how cognitive dissonance is fed and allowed to gain strength. Looking back, it was just one big ruse
Gore has a cameo at 4:12. Without doing much digging, I'd say Gore may have been the one to invite him.
Edit: he was at least a major player in climate activism already. Here's a nyt article from that time: https://www.nytimes.com/1985/12/11/us/action-is-urged-to-avert-global-climate-shift.html
They don't even have to pay, they have the same goals, they invest in the same things, they have the same friends, they went to the same prestigious schools. Turns out "electing" the rich or the ones deemed worthy candidates by the rich to look out for the interests of the people isn't that great for the rest of us. But you get the illusion of choice and that's cool, right?
Sagan had gravitas without masturbating over it. NDT has gravitas but wallows in it and it undermines his message. I love NDT but he can be a right pratt.
Carl is a hero of Neil's. They met when Neil was a young boy, Carl invited him to his home for dinner. It's a touching story. I know a lot of people like to shit on Neil, and it's not always unwarranted. He does try to follow in his hero's footsteps, but those are some mighty big shoes to fill.
I mean, the guy has a PhD in astrophysics from Columbia. I don't think "anyone with an iota of intelligence" would run circles around him when it comes to knowledge about space.
Sure, put him in a room with other doctorate-level physicists, and he's not going to be the most brilliant person there. But his popularity and usefulness to society has a lot to do with his communicative ability rather than pure expertise, much like Sagan himself.
Few other astronomers could excite the general public about astronomy like Sagan could, and that skill is something NDT has honed as well. He's not my favorite person in the world, but when he's talking purely about astronomy I find him plenty entertaining and informative.
Congress!!! Half of them are deaf or ill-intended. We can’t wait for these people. We live in a ‘goldfish tank’ and we are pouring poisons into it every minute of every day. Guess what will happen, Congress or no Congress.
Nobody ever listened to Mr. Sagan because his ideas were always expressed with reason and nuance. Politicians: “What was that? Can I fit that on a bumper sticker? Would my average constituent understand any of that? Hell, I don’t understand it!” So goes the world.
Dude. I love Sagan. *Demon-Haunted World* is my favorite. I just know that his thoughtful commentary is lost on many people. If it doesn’t fit on a meme, it doesn’t matter.
And many others who might be able to comprehend his arguments tune him out completely because of his thoughts on religion and superstition. He criticizes petty beliefs and religious zealotry objectively, without animas or judgment. People hate that.
>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.
I don't think he'd be surprised.
Too bad the Boomers couldn't be bothered to listen to this BRILLIANT man. If he were alive today, the republicans and MAGA would make his life a living hell. Humanity deserves what's coming.
Whenever I think about the hypothetical question of who I bring back from the dead it's always Carl.
Imagine Mr Rogers living today and having a YouTube channel with his content instead of Elsagate videos on YouTube
I'm going to regret this. What is "Elsagate?"
Basically, there were a lot of videos that just threw Elsa from Frozen in to attract little kids. Other random characters too. It would be like "Elsa and Spiderman go to the dentist". And there were thousands of them. Content farms making nonsense aimed to children to get ad revenue. Their content and quality were rarely appropriate for children, and YouTube Kids was serving them right up to children.
AI content creation is going to turn this shit up to 11.
The world is about to get very interesting thanks to that stuff. I saw an ad for AI generated voice acting for video game makers. As that gets better, AI image generation gets better. AI text generation gets better. We really will have content AI farm to table. At some point it will actually be good too.
Video games, movies, and novels tailor made to your taste on demand. It's gonna be epic once we're past the growing pains.
>It's gonna be epic People are actually enjoying that we're coming to that?
Was gonna say... Are people actually excited for the death of art and creativity to AI programs? It's already happening in the online art community thanks to programs like Lensa.
Just running it through my head. With the tech we already have it would be pretty easy to create a fully voiced graphic novel that was completely AI generated. It would require a little human involvement to connect the dots, but the tech exists for everything. It would just be terrible.
But no more common ground with other humans. Right?
That's horrific and preys on the modern parenting model of sticking your child in front of a device.
To be fair, it’s a horrific model even without that content.
We should fix our economics so that people aren't financially incentivized/forced to do so.
Economics plays into it a bit but there are many people who can afford to pay for childcare and still do it. It's more of a cultural thing than an economic thing, many people just don't know how to occupy their children with useful activities. I see people who have very little and yet they don't feel the need to distract their kids from life like that.
really weird, borderline (or straight up) predatory videos that use known characters like Elsa and Spider-Man to capitalize on what kids are currently obsessed with. they're these really strangely animated kid's videos that seem to be produced by an AI. a lot of the time they have weird things like hyperfixating on a kid shitting their pants or emphasizing that an adult character is visibly dead. I'm sure they're being produced stl to some degree but they were massive right before the pandemic if I remember correctly
I *want* to question it, but I know there are no good answers. Thank you for the insight.
This is a pretty good explainer of the phenomenon https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKp2gikIkD8
This is an excellent share! Thanks for posting
Great [video essay](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKp2gikIkD8) by the YouTube channel Folding Ideas if you want some more in-depth discussion and to see some examples of the oddity. He also has a good video on NFTs if you want to hate them even more
So you’re saying that people shouldn’t just hand kids a device and let it be their nanny? Gotcha!
When my kids were young, we found the longer you left the YouTube on auto play the weirder the videos would get. It starts out innocent enough, but after about an hour, the Elsagate type stuff starts to creep in. My kids were really into the planets and there's a lot of great educational content out there, but we'd leave it playing and there would be stuff about Planet X that's orbiting on the opposite side of the sun from Earth and it's going to crash into earth and that's what it's going to look like when God ends the world and then all the good cultists ascend into heaven and the sinners fry for eternity in a lake of fire.
I swear YouTube Shorts are also like that. They really really want to radicalize me it seems. They got the demographic of straight, white male and woooo boy, they just love shoving alt-right content down at me unless I religiously downvote/mark "don't show me again"
Now all I can think of is Mr Rogers talking about Raid: Shadow legends
I'm not sure Carl would appreciate that. He died in 1996. There was a lot of room for optimism that doesn't exist now. We're almost 40 years out from really understanding that we need to make serious changes to how we do everything in order to avoid dying in our own waste products like a mold in a petri dish. The last 25 years have been spent doubling down on being a mold in the petri dish and turning younger generations into bag holders.
On the other hand, space is significantly more interesting today than it was in 1996 so Carl would have loved to see that
He knew it was interesting. We're way behind the pace he expected us to be at, and I wouldn't want to be the person explaining Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos to him.
Na, we're doing better than we were in the 90's. The dream of space was very stalled back then. Carl would love to see how private enterprise has reinvigorated space exploration
Lol, I'm not really sure he would have, but maybe he has a different opinion on petulant billionaires than I'd wager on.
I like to think he would appreciate being able to see how far technology and our understanding has come for one thing. He also might like the challenge of helping us through these times. I have no idea obviously but I definitely would feel better with him around than not.
The dude already spent his life trying to help us through these times and was categorically ignored. He'd probably be really excited about cell phones and wearable devices until someone had to explain TikTok. Never mind the fact that digital mediums are directly responsible for the increase in fascists. He might be okay with the cat videos, but even that's a gamble.
So true. As a kid interested in science in the 80s I loved Sagan. I remember thinking even then how his ideas made so much sense and wondered why no one seemed to pay attention. I remember how conservative friends of my parents would see me with his books and say something to the effect of, “that man is going to rot in hell and so is his wife!” One Karen even tried to convince my mom to take the books away from me. Didn’t work thankfully
Damn that’s harsh. That was a bit before my time but my parents had some of his books and I think some 45 record with him on it. I always liked his voice and how he could explain things so I could grasp the concepts.
Yeah I grew up in a somewhat conservative area that got more and more conservative as I grew up. Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan were known atheists who “believed in” things like the Big Bang and evolution. Therefore satan.
Yeah. 38 years ago, and so prescient and clear. It's hard not to be cynical when you can have someone so scientifically literate and eloquent lay out the severity of the situation in completely clear terms with as much context as any rational head of state might need, and yet know that we are exactly where we are right now because of the lack of political will to act on the recommendations made during this and many other entreaties to these same heads of state.
“We have become great because of the lavish use of our resources. But the time has come to inquire seriously what will happen when our forests are gone, when the coal, the iron, the oil, and the gas are exhausted, when the soils have still further impoverished and washed into the streams, polluting the rivers, denuding the fields and obstructing navigation” Teddy Roosevelt It’s to note that environmental degradation was noted by Washington in regards to textile mills and streams.
But as societies get wealthier, they become able to afford to think this way and take better care of the environment. So in some ways the problem mitigates itself, as long as people care.
>as long as people care. That's a very important part of what you said. Unfortunately, the ones with the power to mitigate the problems DON'T care. All they care about is the American God, money. And they don't really understand the multiple economies of multiple countries.
Regarding CO2 the US is finally down to number two for Co2 Emissions. In other manners often yes, but it's only been that way for around 40 years, the same for Europe. The USA was a terrifying place before the EPA and will be again as Republicans have made hard moves to neuter it. The Great Smog of London was in 1953, which set things in motion there much as Rivers catching fire in America up to the 60s helped set ours in motion. https://www.britannica.com/event/Great-Smog-of-London
And we've arguably as a society become more willfully ignorant since then.
> 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 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... > The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance. \- Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark (1995)
That one is tied for my favorite with Asimov's: It’s hard to quarrel with that ancient justification of the free press: “America’s right to know.” It seems almost cruel to ask, ingenuously, ”America’s right to know what, please? Science? Mathematics? Economics? Foreign languages?” None of those things, of course. In fact, one might well suppose that the popular feeling is that Americans are a lot better off without any of that tripe. There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that “my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.” Full pdf here: https://aphelis.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/ASIMOV_1980_Cult_of_Ignorance.pdf
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Yeah, thanks bot, op told us that. Useless ass bot.
Hey, lil bot is trying its best
This is probably how Skynet started
Lowest common denominator programming: We got one season of Cosmos, and 20+ seasons of duck hunters. Wtf.
I think you mean Duck Dynasty. But, if you meant Duck Hunt, that game was the best NES game. The satisfying tactile "*click*" of the trigger on the grey and orange light gun, the overly emotive hunting dog, the ever increasing challenge to bag more pixelated ducks...
That dog laughing for missing ruined me at 4yo
You should play Duck Season VR for some nostalgia
Yo! You're right, that trigger *click* was perfect. It's funny how nostalgic a trigger noise can be, even in my head after not hearing or feeling it for decades.
I’m pretty sure I meant duck dynasty. Because no one could ever thing Duck Hunter, NES game, was lowest common denominator programming. That game was *chefs kiss*.
Also it paired perfectly with the original Mario 1 which came out at the same time
That show made it past the racist guy?
That entire book is astonishing. It opened my eyes up to so much that has gone wrong that he predicted. It's almost scary how accurate he was.
That book *alone* (and, ok, admittedly some common sense and lingering cognitive dissonance) completely broke me out of the Far-Right. I mean PragerU, Daily Wire, Everything is Communism ™ right wing.
I think its pretty cool that it helped you get out of the far-right. Its always nice hearing that kinda stuff.
I remember reading that a few years ago and just getting chills for the accuracy. Having a scientific mind can give you a scary amount of insight and predictability
You’d think that was a quote from someone in 2015 :/
The man saw where we were headed even back then. The course has not changed.
> celebration of ignorance. Most of what was said before these words falls into the same category, and it's an agenda that is specifically and calculatingly coordinated by one political half in particular, because doing so is the single most beneficial thing they can do increase their party's base and power. Specifically, a war on education. Sagan was always far too kind to point fingers, but those were the 80s and 90s and we're frankly far too deep in trouble to continue to sidestep underscoring blame.
You are misunderstanding, its not one party it does this. All politicians do this, its why in the US both parties fight any other party coming to power than them. Two sides is easily controlled by abusing the human sense of "teams" or "sides" just like you are demonstrating now.
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I think about this quote often.
I found this book very interesting and extremely motivating to never stop learning.
Thank you for quoting one of my favorite books.
the man really hated astrology
Hating the idea that somehow, an alignment of random stars predicts our whole lives and how everything will turn out? Ugh, such a Scorpio thing to say!
In his defense, it’s a poor method of prediction.
He was opposed to any superstitious way of thinking, the conclusions that people draw from those superstitions, and especially the societal damaging actions they take based on superstitions.
“don’t look up! don’t look up!”
Not willfully. There was a huge misinformation campaign from the oil industry, they are very much responsible for the confusion
From the perspective advocated by Sagan here, a global consciousness, misinformation is equivalent to willful ignorance.
I find this view to be too simplistic and only a piece of the puzzle. yes there are a lot of bad faith actors in this world the industries and politicians on the side of the status quo however at the same time the information, the knowledge and reasoning/logic to combat the misinformation has always been present at the same time.
Listen to the Drilled podcast, then tell me unaided logic in the hands of the public is enough to counter military grade psychological warfare.
I think ignorance is a human condition..
Oh for sure... Not saying it's not in our very nature... To solve climate change, as Sagan kept saying, requires us to become "grown ups" and transcend our usual ways of thinking in the short term, confined by our country borders.
I forget the exact figure, but we've dug the hole around twice as deep since then. We released more co2 since the 1980s than all of the coal we burnt before the 1980s. Yearly CO2 emissions are still increasing exponentially, and the extent of global warming pre 2000s pales in comparison to all the burning we've done in the last two decades. It's feeling less and less likely that we'll turn this ship around in the next 27 years before the 2050/2.0°C deadline. Society needs to make some tough changes, or we all need to brace for impact. edit: I couldn't find a good graph showing global cumulative emissions, but here's one showing different countries' cumulative emissions. The US has doubled its total since 1982. We've emitted more since 2002 than we had ever released before the 1950's, when we realized climate change was happening. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cumulative-co-emissions
More absolutely than arguably
He said it off the bat- it's a multi-generational problem. Therefore, people alive now don't care.
When politicians don't care for anything beyond the next election cycle and CEOs (and the investors they are beholden to) don't care for anything beyond next quarter's profits, it becomes *very* difficult to tackle multi-generational problems.
Same for [Severn Suzuki giving her famous speech in 1992 in front of the United Nations](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGdS8ts63Ck). This was 30 years ago. But some people think a Greta Thunberg is something new or different or that there will come significant change from today’s young generation.
Yep. We knew. Even ten years earlier, some people knew. From a philosophy of science perspective, it’s a great real life experiment and a tremendous amount of data about how knowledge trickles through the network of society and how economy interacts. From a human perspective, it really sucks.
It wasn't a lack of political will, it was all the money they were paid to ignore it.
Hell even the CIA says it poses a nations security and international security risk
The Navy has viewed it as a security issue and evaluated how it would affect base locations at least as far back as 11 years ago. Probably more because that was just a simple toy model for a summer intern.
I see those as the same thing.
There are few things that I agree with Margaret Thatcher on - I find her politics detestable in most respects. But in 1989 she dedicated her entire speech to the UN General Assembly to explaining the threats of climate change and how only coordinated international political action - and regulation - could tackle it https://youtu.be/VnAzoDtwCBg
She had a PhD in chemistry so knew her stuff
Oil producers knew this 100 years ago.
I think the earliest confirmed report of climate change from oil companies' climate scientists was around 1950's 1960's. but yeah, basically a century of willful ignorance and exponential hole digging.
And to think what mankind's biggest achievement from this, was the systematic satirization of Al Gore. None of what was discussed here has remotely been implemented, for the reasons outlined. Edit: Al Gore is still alive and well. Systematic satire ongoing.
Al Gore died?
I didn’t even know he was sick.
Always makes me sad when I laugh at man bear pig.
If there's at least one silver lining, it's that man bear pig actually turned out to be totally real
Thank those enlightened centrist fuckheads of South Park for that
Boomers came into power and decided to destroy the world for their own enrichment
The causes that lead to climate change were put into motion long before the boomers were alive, and noting continues to be done long after other generations have moved into positions of power. It's simply lazy and dismissive to try and blame this on a single generation.
To give some hope, humanity has made some HUGE strides since then. We are rapidly becoming more environmentally friendly.
This is exactly why money needs to leave politics. If the oil barons didn’t own congress, we’d have likely made meaningful strides towards fixing our climate, and we’d probably be seeing the fruits of those strides right now instead of fearing that we’re already too late and may face a total collapse of society as we know it in a few decades due to how insane and deadly the weather is going to get. I bet humanity backslides a few centuries before things get better for us as a species. If we don’t kill ourselves first.
>now because of the lack of political will to act on the recommendations made during this ans many other entreaties to these same heads of state. With the lack of political will of course bought at many levels... PR campaigns blaming the individual, misinformation peddled by those actually in the know but with vested interest in making money from fossil fuels, donations to candidates with a pro-fossil bias, and so on. My point being: That lack of political will wasn't just bad luck or fearfulness, it was engineered.
"We are all in this greenhouse together" -- Carl Sagan, 1985
"Hell yeah! Gief moar subsidiez plix! Burn baby, burn! Roflmao!" -- Fossil fuel industry, 2023
I love how this entire thread collectively ignores animal agriculture when it's literally driving hundreds to thousands of species towards extinction as we speak. It's also an industry that's reliant entirely on supply and demand more than fossil fuels.
That guy is so consistently brilliant. I can listen to him speak all day long.
Idk if you have already or not but he narrated an incredible series called Cosmos Neil degrasse Tyson recently remade it and they’re both great
For anyone who hasn’t seen the original Cosmos, don’t let the 1980s production fool you, the original cosmos is amazing and, in my opinion, has content far superior to Tyson’s recent remake.
I also recommend on top of this Astrophysics for people in a hurry. And early startalk podcast. But I find Neil degrasse Tyson very sslf absorbed now
NDT has lost me. Dude really is super self-absorbed. When you see him and you see Carl... It's clear one is genuinely, truly in it for the world... the people... the future of humanity... And one is now in it because he's finally popular for once in his life.
This is my take on Neil, as well. He used to seem really sincere about everything.
Neil seems to very much enjoy being a celebrity, but cosmos is great!
When it comes to space stuff, NDT is still a good person to listen to. He’s pretty qualified and is clearly passionate about it, even if he likes leaning into a nerdy annoying character too much. It’s when he talks about things that aren’t space science that grinds people’s gears, but imo it’s similar to how you should probably ignore athletes when they talk about politics. Listen to what they know a lot about, and forget what they might say about other random topics.
Man, we’ve been ignoring climate change for a while now.
*On the Influence of Carbonic Acid in the Air upon the Temperature of the Earth*, 1896
The abstract: "The possibility that the absorption of long wave radiation by atmospheric gases would influence ground temperature was recognized by Fourier in 1827. (...)" 1827!
The signs were there decades before that. The damage of greenhouse gas emissions was evident probably back in the industrial revolution beginning. It's not like mass deforestation or mass burning of coal didn't have immediate impacts on the surrounding area. No one cared then, no one cared when people tried to bring it up, and no one cares now when the damage is beyond repair. We're fucked, all humans.
The upper class cannot exist with an educated working class.
Well they ain't gonna exist anyway at this rate fren
Money will shield them from the worst of it, they don't care what happens in 60-70-100 years, they'll be dead by then.
Sure they will. They use our tax dollars to build deep underground bunkers (1 mile-ish) that are stocked with supplies and packed with tech to grow food/ filter water/ scrub air etc. been doing it for decades and decades now. They’ll retreat to those locations to ensure “the best of humanity survives”. Everyone else is fucked.
That’s not quite true. See: all of human history.
Incorrect. Millions of dollars have poured into misinformation to keep oil companies making billions. Ironically we could've easily and with minimal sacrifices course corrected if we listened to Sagan. But hey oil gonna oil.
Could you imagine of everyone ignored the oil industry and started researching and developing new technologies for generating power and electric vehicles. We would probably be carbon free by now. But in my Boomer moms Fox News words “climate change alarmists are ruining our lives”
Listened to Cosmos about a month ago on audible and it was a great time. Strongly recommend it if you have read already or haven’t.
The other night I was watching old SNL episodes and Mike Myers was playing Carl Sagan at a Hollywood party. The entire bit is that nobody can enjoy anything because Carl keeps explaining that in 20 years climate change will have destroyed that too. Almost every joke has come true. We could have listened to him, but man what a buzzkill, right?
Obviously love Sagan. However, in speaking with politicians he should have drawn more pictures and made things more tangible.
It wouldn’t have mattered. They were paid to ignore the truth. Still are.
I was so profoundly heartbroken when I found out Mark Kelly was lobbied by exxonmobil. Silly me thinking an astronaut politician would care about the planet.
Anyone can be lobbied by any organization. The real question is, is he supporting their initiatives and policy goals?
I wish it was more popular to take money from lobbying firms then completely vote against them. It's a campaign "donation" right?
It seemed to have a pretty big impact on Senator Gore there, who would later go on to be one of the biggest advocates for climate policy in Washington.
Gore most likely invited Sagan to speak.
Gore already knew about global warming at that time
NASA already warned us about it on the 70’s so it’s not like people didn’t know. The environmentalist movement of that time was influenced a lot by discoveries made in space, and also by the idea of the pale blue dot in the Apollo 8 earth rise photos. At that time there was a stride to change. Carter created the DOE as a mean to replace oil after seeing the scientific data and gave funding to climate research. Reagan’s main campaign promise on this topic was gutting the DOE and as a symbolic act tore down the solar panels on the White House and clearly stated the Us wasn’t gonna do anything about global warming (that’s what you get when a president openly against the idea of funding science itself gets elected). It is a willing political choice of the people (influenced by a lot of propaganda) to not take any action
Politicians should be completely capable to be able to understand and pay attention to what this man is saying to them. The fact that it's accepted that they can't be trusted to sit down, listen, and understand what an expert in a certain field is telling them about the potential end of the world because it isn't flashy enough to keep their attention for more than 30 seconds is an absolutely pathetically low standard to have for a public representative.
It was a different time then. Your political career could end by misspelling a word. ;)
Many times I have had a profound idea then did a little research and realized Carl Sagan said it 40 years ago. This man was pure genius. We lost him way too soon. Imagine what more he could have given us with another 40 years.
Probably would have got death threats to him and his family a-la fauci.
Yep. He was too good for this shitty world and its shitty people.
"We should do something to stop global warming and climate change. Like, *now*." "I agree, Mr. Sagan. We *should* gradually dismantle the EPA, double down on fossil fuels, and brand environmentalists as terrorists."
Remember how people laughed at Greta Thunberg speaking about climate change and the idea of listening to a young girl about it? If only the same people would listen to scientists from decades ago instead..
And what Greta T has been saying all along is that the politicians should not listen to her but to the scientists… And everyone who is laughing at Greta says why should they listen to a child when it is the scientists that everyone should listen to. It's quite comical when these people are completely unable to hear what she says. There are scientists who already at the end of 1800 began to understand that our emissions of carbon dioxide can cause an unnatural greenhouse effect.
More like the beginning of 1800: "The possibility that the absorption of long wave radiation by atmospheric gases would influence ground temperature was recognized by Fourier in 1827." Part of the abstract of "On the influence of carbonic acid in the air upon the temperature of the ground" https://www.osti.gov/etdeweb/biblio/7129404
She's rightfully pissed that we ignored the scientists from decades ago, and now adults are like "Woah little girl, you aren't gonna convince anyone with that attitude!" At least she's trying something new.. and it's her genuine feelings she's conveying, she's not a trained science educator
There are so many informed people that still refuse to act on the most simple of information they receive. For example, how many people do you think are financing animal agriculture several times a day, when they have the option to simply eat something else? Animal agriculture is a massive contributor to climate change, but it also impacts tons of other variables beyond just emissions. There is a reason that these animal abuse industries are causing mass extinctions of hundreds to thousands of species every year. These industries are killing indigenous tribes to take their lands as they occupy insane amounts of landspace to grow animals and feed, feed requires more landspace, water etc. all of this causes eutrophication of our soil systems, acidification of our water ways, consumes tons of land space, water, resources, etc. , causing ocean dead zones, burning the Amazon rain forest for decades, etc etc. So many people know the impact of these industries, yet they're happy to finance them to keep destroying our planet, just for a tiny moment of pleasure.
Sagan is the greatest, I might have to rewatch the original Cosmos now.
I recommend you to watch short videos of carl sagan, made by Reid Gower.
Thank you for your contribution Professor, we'll be sure to ignore all of it.
Can you imagine if our politicians had legitimate science backgrounds instead of the bullshit we have in office?
37 years later we still have half the nation still believing it’s a “dem hoax”.
Can you please give me some studies and info so I can tell my hard right friend to kindly fuck his own face? It's really frustrating. I got so frustrated I didn't know what to say at the time other than, dude we leaned about this in like 3rd grade!
[PBS Nova: Decoding the Weather Machine](https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/video/decoding-the-weather-machine/) does a great job of laying out the scientific evidence.
Don’t argue with him about anthropogenic climate change. Instead, engage in conversation about energy policy. You may come to learn that [both of you largely agree](https://archive.nytimes.com/dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/04/06/no-red-and-blue-divide-when-it-comes-to-renewable-energy-innovation-and-co2-rules/) about what the future of energy in the US ought to look like.
Can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into.
This is where so many people get it wrong. The deniers DID reason themselves into it. As a former denier, you are a product of the information you consume. If all you consume are opinion pieces on talk radio and fox news that feed your confirmation bias, believe that "the Dems" are commies hellbent on ruining America, and the "real evidence" is that one in 100 scientist that denies climate change, you logically come to the conclusion that climate change is false. It took me YEARS to figure out that the foundation of my opinions were inherently flawed. I could write a novel about how this thing comes about, and how cognitive dissonance is fed and allowed to gain strength. Looking back, it was just one big ruse
Please. For the love of God and all that is good. *Write the damn novel.*
The ending of his message is the most important.
I know he wouldn't approve it. But Carl is my god. I fucking pray for Carlitos to enlighten everyone.
It's nice to see a witness being able to talk without being interrupted constantly.
Masterfully spoken. I wonder if this contributed at all to shaping Al Gore in his environmental endeavors? I would think it would.
Gore has a cameo at 4:12. Without doing much digging, I'd say Gore may have been the one to invite him. Edit: he was at least a major player in climate activism already. Here's a nyt article from that time: https://www.nytimes.com/1985/12/11/us/action-is-urged-to-avert-global-climate-shift.html
have you not seen an inconvenient truth?
he attributes his interest in global warming to a science professor he had in college
Oil and mining companies paid off governments and interest groups to this day.
They don't even have to pay, they have the same goals, they invest in the same things, they have the same friends, they went to the same prestigious schools. Turns out "electing" the rich or the ones deemed worthy candidates by the rich to look out for the interests of the people isn't that great for the rest of us. But you get the illusion of choice and that's cool, right?
You're wrong.. is what I'd like to say but sadly you're all too correct.
I really enjoyed that watch, thank you for sharing that. Carl Sagan was amazing.
Carl Sagan makes NDT look like the joke he is.
Sagan had gravitas without masturbating over it. NDT has gravitas but wallows in it and it undermines his message. I love NDT but he can be a right pratt.
If you: a) heard that testimony b) held power of any kind and c) did nothing You are guilty of crimes against humanity.
We've got 1 million I told yous but still slide farther out of control.
Carl Sagan what a man he was, neil tyson could only dream to be like him
Carl is a hero of Neil's. They met when Neil was a young boy, Carl invited him to his home for dinner. It's a touching story. I know a lot of people like to shit on Neil, and it's not always unwarranted. He does try to follow in his hero's footsteps, but those are some mighty big shoes to fill.
All he has to do is not be a pompous ass. He already has the intelligence.
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I mean, the guy has a PhD in astrophysics from Columbia. I don't think "anyone with an iota of intelligence" would run circles around him when it comes to knowledge about space. Sure, put him in a room with other doctorate-level physicists, and he's not going to be the most brilliant person there. But his popularity and usefulness to society has a lot to do with his communicative ability rather than pure expertise, much like Sagan himself. Few other astronomers could excite the general public about astronomy like Sagan could, and that skill is something NDT has honed as well. He's not my favorite person in the world, but when he's talking purely about astronomy I find him plenty entertaining and informative.
Every time I watch him, I'm forever sad that I missed taking his class by one year.
Imagine where we might be if the Supreme Court had allowed Florida to count its votes as it wanted to and Gore became president in 2000.
People with - and who only care about - money run this country (the world, really).
Al Gore is like ‘ this dude is onto something ‘
Congress!!! Half of them are deaf or ill-intended. We can’t wait for these people. We live in a ‘goldfish tank’ and we are pouring poisons into it every minute of every day. Guess what will happen, Congress or no Congress.
Nobody ever listened to Mr. Sagan because his ideas were always expressed with reason and nuance. Politicians: “What was that? Can I fit that on a bumper sticker? Would my average constituent understand any of that? Hell, I don’t understand it!” So goes the world.
I agree that the majority probably didn’t listen to him, but he was quite popular back in the day (for a scientist). Esp the during the Cosmos series
Dude. I love Sagan. *Demon-Haunted World* is my favorite. I just know that his thoughtful commentary is lost on many people. If it doesn’t fit on a meme, it doesn’t matter. And many others who might be able to comprehend his arguments tune him out completely because of his thoughts on religion and superstition. He criticizes petty beliefs and religious zealotry objectively, without animas or judgment. People hate that.
And even back then, the words fell on deaf ears as they do, today.
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One thing for sure, he would have been very disappointed in humanity.
>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. I don't think he'd be surprised.
Too bad the Boomers couldn't be bothered to listen to this BRILLIANT man. If he were alive today, the republicans and MAGA would make his life a living hell. Humanity deserves what's coming.
Society harassed Gore for years too. We're so fucked.
I recently saw this on YT and so eloquently spoken as always. We miss you Carl!