Damn, this review hurts for a couple of reasons, but it really shouldn’t. When people say stupid, hateful, hypocritical things, they should be rebuked and their errors made public, right? Especially when they have so amply demonstrated that they are deserving. But sometimes the criticism is so savage that I can feel a faint echo of the pain.
The well-regarded video essayist Shaun has a new target, and just eviscerates a group of people over the course of FOUR HOURS (admission: I’ve only made it halfway through it so far). The people are the authors behind Krauss’s new book, The War on Science, and the video runs on for so long because he thoroughly debunks each and every one of them. Krauss himself gets thoroughly demolished, but then it goes on to document the terrible opinions of Christian Ott, Richard Dawkins, Steven Pinker, Jerry Coyne, and more. I get briefly mentioned and for a second I was terrified that I was going to get shredded, too, but fortunately Shaun is agreeing with my position.
If ever I have to go up against any of the authors, I’m going to have to review this video again and take notes, because no one emerges unscathed.
Wow, that was really brutal…and accurate.
Anything less than an actual beating with a broken bottle is an act of mercy.
‘Sympathetic pains’ reminds me of a Legal Eagle video where he was talking about lawyers who had used ChatGPT to write a filing, and it filled the filing with hallucinated case cites. As part of this he defined the term ‘fremdschämen’ as basically sympathetic embarrassment for someone else’s situation… and later on in the video after describing the way the judge had ripped these lawyers a new one, including their supervisor who had signed off on the filing without actually reading it, he just shook his head and said ‘fremdschämen, man… fremdschämen’.
Just who is this?
I only started watching this. Since I am already acquainted with the subject matter, it’s really funny to see Shaun setting up punchlines for later in the video. “Who is this person pictured with Lawrence Krauss”. I think I know who, lol.
Ye non-existent gawds! That needs to be a series eg part I, II, III maybe IV & V not a single clip in my view. It sounds good & Shaun is good but just.. Four hours FFS! Wow. Too. Long.
[Or you could exercise some discipline, and watch chunks at a time at your leisure, StevoR]
How funny- I was just listening to that video and his glancing mention of you brought back memories of binging through your blog archives. Happy to see you’re still fighting the good fight!
Naturally, I too thought it was pretty harsh. Of course, sexual assault is not good, but technically, the Elevatorgate incident is not sexual assault. Of course it may be insensitive, but it’s not something illegal or anything. I didn’t find the parts about Steven Pinker and Jerry Coyne though.
What I really did like was the bit about The Listener Letter, where the wording in the original report seems to have been very ambiguous, and possibly a straw-man argument was made.
I listened to it twice, first on Patreon, when I was washing windows, and the second time today, when I was having a post-flu-vaccination body ache and fever. Shaun is excellent.
#8 drdrdrdrdralhazeneuler: no, nobody claims Elevatorgate is a case of sexual assault. As has been explained countless times, including in Shaun’s video, it refers to the wave of misogyny, entitlement and abuse when a woman points out something makes her uncomfortable and asks to please not do that.
I must have missed Jerry Coyne’s fall to the dark side. Or maybe I’m confusing him with someone else? I had him mentally filed away as just a developmental biologist who’d written a couple good books; the sort of pop-sci stuff that’s interesting in its own right and also happens to provide tidbits that might incidentally torpedo a creationist argument or two.
Maybe I had him mixed up with Neil Shubin?
Neil’s still OK, right? I sure hope so.
the whole saga is a “clown makeup tutorial” meme all-time hall of fame contender, easily