Cosmos Reboot: Running Discussion Thread

11 episodes to go, he might get to 'em.

It's a shame with American TV that hosts like Brian Cox and David Attenborough don't have mainstream appeal. I understand that Cosmos is aimed at an introductory level, but during the long special effects shots and the stretched out re-enactments I'm just missing the more indepth explanations.

This latest episode was great for giving some indisputable examples of evolution, however it paled in comparison to a series like Charles Darwin and the Tree of Life or First Life. It's interesting how much better those shows rate in the UK as well.

On Fox it beat The Simpsons and matched Family Guy, that seems pretty decent to me.

I could be wrong, but he seemed to foreshadow that pretty much with the "that's for another day" line referring to the unlabeled extinction part of the fake bulding he was in.

I kinda thought he was hinting at the extinction of the human race, myself.

If he follows Sagan's lead he was.

It was definitely for the next extinction to come, whether natural or caused by humans.

Science Deniers Are Freaking out...

That'd be a mass extinction.

"The Simpsons" has been irrelevant for at least a decade.

[edit: And it doesn't surprise me that Diacanu is content to be told what he already knows by someone who agrees with him.]

I've watched plenty I've disagreed with.
It gets old.
You begrudge me one fucking show?
Damn.

Peace and quiet, too.

There already must be - with the whole "holy trinity" thing.

Saying you find it irrelevant just proves the point. I don't care for modern Simpsons either, but it still gets made.

The extinction of a species that's only been around a couple hundred thousand years would be pretty typical as far as large mammals go; I don't think humans alone going extinct would count as 'mass' extinction or would cause mass extinctions of a significant amount of other organisms - at least nowhere near the scale of the five mass extinctions.

He may be referring to our next encounter with Admiral Asteroid, deciding to take a tour of the grounds.

But I didn't interpret it as meaning that badly behaving humans were going to cause it. As heavy-handed as the show is against 'intelligent design' I'd think they'd've thrown in a line about pollution or anthropogenic global warming if they'd meant to do so.

Yeah, what I took from it was that whatever mass extinction happens next, we'll be in it.

That's why I am volunteering to do my part to prevent it by beefing up our numbers.
I submitted a plan to maroon me on an island with hot wimmens of my choice!
That's how much I love our species.

Mila Kunis is busy that weekend. With ME!

And some studies show greater biodiversity and numners of species than ever before, even after invasive species move in to an area. The idea that humans are causing disasters on the scale of the great extinctions is just the latest fire 'n brimstone sermon.

Pruffy, the antidote to crunchy hippie Kool-Aid isn't Libertarian Kool-Aid.
Just saying.

And how would you know that hippies are crunchy, hmmm?

I know i'm late to the conversation, but I wanted to chime in anyway.

That's a great question and right now, scientist don't know the answers to what you're asking. The Big Bang isn't actually a theory on how the universe came into existence, but it's a point at which we know the universe went through a change and the laws of physics began to apply. What happened at the point of the singularity or before that, we don't know.... as far as I understand, but that doesn't mean we should just start to make shit up to fill in the gaps.

right now, approximately 7% of members of the National Academy of Sciences believe in a God of some sort. This is an elite group of scientist who have been taught the the way to uncover truth is to set aside one's own personal biases and beliefs and collect empirical evidence. In the larger society, that number is almost recipricol. 93% of people believe in some creator of some sort (I'm lumping in the agnostic fence sitters). I can understand the need that one might have for a God of some sort and I've been there myself, but... extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. I look at this fact and I think, "I wonder why 100% of these elite scientist aren't atheist. Someone should do a study."

There's a much higher chance that aliens exist than any god.

This isn't about libertrianism. It's about wrapping your mind around the sheer scale of these timelines and extinctions, and realizing that human action just isn't that impressive.