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when we tell stories about magic but coat those stories with a layer of "btw magic is impossible" we are saying that having power and helping people is impossible https://t.co/x6aKab5wtJ
fireballs and stuff are a tremendous distraction, and in that sense D&D may be the worst thing that's ever happened to magic your inability to throw fireballs is how you convince yourself that magic is not real and you can't have it
how are you so confident you know the laws of physics anyway it's not like you replicated all those experiments yourself or anything (apologies to the one guy reading this who actually did do that, you're a king and this tweet isn't for you)
"the laws of physics" *should* refer to your experience of pushing and pulling and bending and breaking and grasping and stretching but it *actually* refers to a specific kind of propaganda that was shoved down your throat in grade school
in the opposite direction one can attempt to egoically *identify* with the laws of physics; "i am on the side of True Knowledge about the Universe, which was revealed to me by a textbook i was told to read in high school, the True Source of All Knowledge"
no wait one sec it turns out i too am small and petty neil degrasse tyson wants Truth to be about space because he does not want to look at the earth; he wants Truth to be about the vast emptiness of the universe because he does not want to look at fullness
he wants Truth to be inaccessible to the naked eye because he does not want to look at his perceptions, he wants Truth to be about things that are far away because he does not want to look at what is near, i could go on and on and on like this really
if Truth is about physics then learning the Truth does not improve your ability to help yourself or the people around you with their ordinary everyday problems in the slightest, unless possibly it leads to some kind of career where a physics degree is a useful thing to have
that is to say, if Truth is about physics, then unless you're literally a nuclear engineer or something, learning the Truth means you get to sit smugly in your armchair and feel good about how much Truth is in your head, safe where it cannot influence your actions
your head may want Truth to be about physics but meanwhile your heart watches anime with magical girls in it who shine beams of light and love at their enemies; that is the Truth of your heart and i seriously literally mean that
@QiaochuYuan [half-heartedly] tyson's "most astounding fact" talking point is that we *are* the universe, that the matter in our bodies comes from the scattered enriched guts of supernova, there is no distinction between far away and near because we are it and it is us
@QiaochuYuan full text i'm happy to dunk on tyson for being annoying when he's annoying, but he also gets it, he doesn't not get it mostly I think he uses twitter for raw shitposting / triggering people for maximal outrage, but his sincereposts are legit imo https://t.co/6f3xPzlciv
@QiaochuYuan to be fair to your pov, tyson DOES post absolute shitfuckery, which kondo doesn't tyson is very "duality of man", at his best he is sensitive and thoughtful but he can also be snarky and dismissive etc https://t.co/quVBbFurCc
3. Neil Tyson's criticism of Richard Dawkins: "Being an educator is not only getting the truth right, but there's got to be an act of persuasion in there as well... Here are the facts, and here is a sensitivity to your state of mind. It's facts + sensitivity that creates impact." https://t.co/jGi0t1sQTw
@visakanv hmm i was actually hoping to QT a tweet i saw from him that was something like "the universe is cold and pitiless and it does not care about you" but i couldn't find it when i searched his tweets so maybe he deleted? that's more the kind of stuff i'm responding to