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Thomas comments on Curiosity, Adam Savage, and Life-Extension - Less Wrong
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Comments (19)
This guy's attitude seemed unscientific to me, from the beginning. He is all about special effects, more or less spectacular. They are his perspective and want to tell his story through them.
This is true, but
Even if we all love Mythbusters and acknowledge the good they do, they can still have more and less scientific episodes, and we can still praise or bemoan those differences.
Isn't Thomas's point precisely that, in this episode, no experiment is done? If Mythbusters fails at testing myths, what use is it?
What Wix said!
Mythbusters is entertainment, not argument. A big part of the appeal of the show is just blowing stuff up with lots of explosives, just for the fun of it. Even if they never tested myths, if Jamie and Adam hosted a show called Blowing Stuff Up for the Fun of It, would at least have the value of being entertaining.
However, Mythbusters is doing its part to raise the sanity waterline. Adam Savage is only half of Mythbusters, of course. But, in this Discovery show, he's a minor -- but still mainstream -- celebrity communicating the idea that death is not inevitable to a far wider audience than Eliezer or the Singularity Institute could possibly reach, at least right now. This is huge. Death is not inevitable! LessWrongers may forget how much of a shocking message this is to the general population, but now it's on basic cable! Who else is doing anything like this?
The notion we might treat aging as a disease might not have mainstream so much in the general public but aging research's status in the academy has risen quite considerably the last decade and efforts to create therapies to directly battle aging are not (that) frowned upon. Take this Nature Insights for example, I at least wouldn't be that surprised if the academy's attitude towards aging will seep out to the general public in just a few years, but then I might be a bit overoptimistic. . .
Isn't Costanza point just that Mythbusters challenge peoples beliefs and that's a good thing, even if it tends not (at least in this episode) to be so scientific?
Lost purpose. You can challenge people's beliefs by espousing a randomly-selected religious dogma; it's quite likely they won't agree with it. That wouldn't be a good thing, however; and it doesn't become good just because you agree with the conclusion. That way lie the Dark Arts.
... he labels himself a SFX guy by trade. So that really shouldn't be all that surprising.