Can You TRUST Science Popularizers? Joe Rogan & Brian Keating Debate

why is it that scient that there are science popularizers like we don't have like UFC popularizers we don't have movie popularizers we don't have Tik Tock popularizers but we have this whole class of people called science popular and I'm all four I've talked to Neil degrass Tyson Mitch I've talked to these people it's Brian Cox Brian Green but the thing is we as scientists have been given this incredible script the script of nature or of God if you will um we have this incredible uh present and we are so bad at communicating what we do and worse than that we don't feel like it's Our obligation I I always joke and maybe it's not even a joke scientists have a moral obligation to communicate what they do to the people that fund them but they also have you know just common sense if the public gets turned off to science because the scientists say ah I am too specialized For You Joe I can't break it down for an every man to understand what I do is very I should stay in the lab because we need people that just stay in the lab and I always joke like how do you know a scientist is outgoing have you ever heard of this one no they look at your shoes when they talk to you that's very funny but if I don't teach my students these things if I don't teach them look part of the soft skills that will get you farther in life and all the noble laurates that I've talked to they all have that in common they're not just awesome and the top Elite killers of science Joe they're incredible communicators persuaders salesmen sales women because you don't just make a great idea and everyone accepts it you have to convince people editors peer reviewers funding agencies and you're in a complex battle against the world's other killers and what if you're just a little bit better than them because you have learned that it's important for you to communicate to your bosses to your funding agents such that we don't have this Elite that the general public can't understand so they just defer to whoever's you know uh whichever way the wind's blowing and we have what we've had for the last few years well don't you think that the reason why you have so many science influencers or science Educators is because science is way more complicated than all those other things I don't know is it yeah of course it is it isn't is it it is and isn't do you know the difference oh I don't want to say it like that I'm GNA say there's a difference between complex and complicated okay so a complicated thing is building a 787 Dreamliner that's freaking complicated there's over 700 million you know parts to it there's a supply chain there's you know like after that people don't know how to build a pencil like there's no one person have you heard that like that knows how to get the graphite and the wood and the Eraser and the metal and the paint there's no one person that has so something as simple as a pencil could be considered comp but complicated means if you follow it my PhD thesis if you follow it you will build a polarimeter that's capable of measuring the cosmic microwave background's polarization like there's just it's just linear steps there's complexity like if you try to make a sand pile and have exactly the same number of grains of sand or if you want to have this particular thunderstorm that's brewing in the plains of Austin Texas tonight um that is a complex system that is a system that is not capable of being described by a finite number of steps it may have properties it may have phases it may have building phase dissipating phase hail whatever but and it may have commonalities but like the butterfly effect the flapping of the you cannot replicate the sensitivity to the initial conditions that then lead to a complex event Science can be both complicated and complex but there's just no there's no way around this if you can't explain it to somebody who is not an expert you have failed at a certain level because just imagine if you were working like do you think it's complicated to be um to be an accountant at a top 10 accounting firm is that yeah so imagine your boss this the CFO of that company comes and says JY Joe Rogan um what you've been working on what I've been working on is very complicated it's very sophisticated it's very complex it's very you won't understand it that's the implication you're insulting the person I'm insulting the general public if I say I can't explain to you why this is the freaking absolute coolest thing in the world to do and if you didn't pay me or Gavin Nome my boss your former Governor if he didn't pay me to do it Joe I would do it for free in other words we are so animated by it but why don't we do it because actually it's the converse of what you said communicating to the public is hard to sign it's not the science that's hard to do it's to learn how to distill it and teach it to I've had over 2,000 students in my career I don't think I'm the best teacher but I think I can do a good job enough to take somebody who was a lay person and now they're an expert and now they're teaching down the street from me down the street from you here and they're much better and smarter than I am how did that happen if I didn't dedicate some time to it but what scientists will say is no I want to study worm holes it's not really that important that's the subtext what Neil degrass Tyson it's not that important what he's doing he can't do real this is this this is the rap I'm not saying I believe this but this is the rap you know he he is not a real scientist and he won't say he's not doing research he doesn't have students but he's not really a scientist the way that I Brian keing am a Scientist because he's not actively in the trenches because if he were he wouldn't have time to go out that's BS I'm sorry that's BS well what I meant is that it's complicated to do um in terms of like expressing that to people and there's so many things to cover there's so many things and you also have to Captivate people's attentions yeah I mean I don't I don't think it's and there's also various fields of science that you I mean try explaining String Theory to regular people you can do it you can but I mean it's very complicated right do Eric Weinstein can do that he can talk to people oh he'll put you in a coma he will put you in a coma he I'll say keep it simple for me help me out and he'll on purpose just well that's called the that's a bias called the expert effect like you're so smart you just don't realize what it was like like you can do things in the gym I'm sure like you don't even know that you're doing them but to teach it to me would be impossible right because it's just like encoded in viscerally into your DNA by this point I think I could teach you you could teach yeah you if your body moves normal I could teach you what would happen if the public cut cut off SCI if they said we don't look what happened the last couple like we don't know who to believe we don't know where is the ground truth who do we believe I hear defund science yeah we're going to defund science so you're unemployed by the way I only have the job I have now and like building some weapon because we're not at War right 60 years ago in Oppenheimer you you'll watch it you know like they took the killers of s and they were all in the desert in Los Alamos and they were squirreled away and they didn't tell anybody and the same thing was going on in London and England working on radar and the same thing was going on in in MIT and it's it's just we serve at the pleasure of the public as scientists and when too few of us realize this and too few of us view it as a moral obligation to communicate back to the public and so therefore we have this industry of science popularizers and some people make quite a good living out it

Channel: Dr Brian Keating

Views: 594,541

Keywords: Dr Brian Keating, into the impossible, brian keating, cosmology, Big Bang, Theory of Everything, Theories of Everything, Experimental cosmology, Brain Keating, Into the impossible Podcast, Scientific interviews, exploring the universe, Universe Facts, Scientific podcasts, space news, Brain keating, Eric Wienstein, Space, Physics, Eric Weinstein, Joe Rogan, Joe Rogan Experience, Bryan Keating, David Grusch, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Brian fox, Brian green

Id: yEabY6XWTvA

Length: 7min 3sec (423 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 15 2024