Like NdGT, Kaku seems to have allowed his fame to go to his head.
Neil “the ass” Tyson is barely digestible when discussing astronomy, his academic subject, for laypeople. If he just stuck there, I wouldn’t have a problem with him, even though I generally find his straight astronomy “explanations” to be overly contrived. But unfortunately, he steps way outside his lane more and more often, beclowning himself regularly. He should enter a monastery, one of the silent orders preferably 😉
Kaku and Tyson are just following the tradition established by such illuminances as Sagan, Ehrlich, Chomsky, Pauling, Hawking, and many more, where success in an obscure, minor specialty is used to elevate one into a celebrity status where one is entitled to pontificate with absolute certainty over a broad range of unrelated subjects. Einstein the arch-pacifist was their forerunner. Prior to the Age of Mass Communication, they would have been limited to phrenology or spiritualism or mesmerism or other such quackery.
I am familiar with the concept of negative work, whereby the harder the effort the more that gets broken or undone that has to be fixed. I guess the same can hold true in academia. Would you call this negative knowledge?
Like NdGT, Kaku seems to have allowed his fame to go to his head.
Neil “the ass” Tyson is barely digestible when discussing astronomy, his academic subject, for laypeople. If he just stuck there, I wouldn’t have a problem with him, even though I generally find his straight astronomy “explanations” to be overly contrived. But unfortunately, he steps way outside his lane more and more often, beclowning himself regularly. He should enter a monastery, one of the silent orders preferably 😉
Kaku and Tyson are just following the tradition established by such illuminances as Sagan, Ehrlich, Chomsky, Pauling, Hawking, and many more, where success in an obscure, minor specialty is used to elevate one into a celebrity status where one is entitled to pontificate with absolute certainty over a broad range of unrelated subjects. Einstein the arch-pacifist was their forerunner. Prior to the Age of Mass Communication, they would have been limited to phrenology or spiritualism or mesmerism or other such quackery.
I am familiar with the concept of negative work, whereby the harder the effort the more that gets broken or undone that has to be fixed. I guess the same can hold true in academia. Would you call this negative knowledge?