I absolutely loved mythbusters, but honestly I think it ran it’s course. They were kind of running out of things to test towards the end.
Also search for Streamlined Mythbusters - they’re fan-edits that remove fluff (lots of fluff in the later seasons) and rearranges the shows so each myth is played straight through before going to the next myth in the episode; instead of showing pieces of 3 different myths at a time bouncing between them.
I’ve tried to rewatch the shows but the TV format mostly just kills it for me now. Thanks that sounds perfect for modern audiences tastes.
I feel like there were tons of movie related options had they gone back that direction. Easily a whole season’s worth of action hero stunts they could break down.
Just one episode could be on Commando. Schwarzenegger ripping the seat out of a car, or killing a guy with a thrown saw blade, or impaling another guy with a thrown pipe. Would be interesting to have seen them figure out the actual force requirements.
Or carrying a tree on his shoulder. Arnold had to bust that one himself; the filmmakers thought that he could do it for real but Schwarzenegger insisted that he wasn’t that strong and had them make a prop for him instead.
A thrown pipe through a chainmail vest, through a dude, and out the other side. We gotta be historically accurate
Oh yeah. And into the boiler behind him right?
Leht off some stheam Bennett…
They could do years on Sci Fi tech, bringing down to what’s real, what’s possible. Didn’t they do a light saber at one point?
I’m watching the series Salvation and it is full of “advanced tech” that resembles reality somewhat. Imagine Mythbusters building the biggest rail gun they can, demonstrating both its potential and how it fails, and maybe even do a tour of military rail gun prototypes, then concluding with how much more the one in the show would have to be, and all the places it just wouldn’t work
The movie ones are the most boring.
the only reason they ran out of ideas back then is because social media wasn’t as big yet.
in the world of TikTok they’d never run out.
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Mythbysters walked so Ann Reardon could run
I agree. And it’s not like they didn’t try to do new shows after the original Mythbusters ended.
A lot of the success also came down to the likability of the hosts, and how the show was presented.
The white rabbit project was a good show. Though it was a bit bitter sweet because I was watching it in 2020 and hadn’t finished when Grant died. I wonder what kind of experiments he got up to in the afterlife.
They also missed a chance to educate the public about real science that uses blinded measurements and statistical analysis. Those tools aren’t always necessary, but they are incredibly powerful to answer questions where qualitative testing can’t.
instead of showing pieces of 3 different myths at a time bouncing between them.
Mythbusters is one of my favorite series of all time, but for the love of God, please don’t revive it
Jman prob wouldn’t come back anyway.
Savage has a YouTube channel if anyone is feeling nostalgic. He takes questions about making and mythbusters. Sometimes it’s fun to hear him reminisce. I personally like his new builds more than when he’s looking back into the past.
I prefer https://explainxkcd.com/397/ because it adds explanations, references, and comments.
Uncommon XKCD L. Mythbusters experiments rarely hold up to the standards of the scientific method. Controls are basically non-existent and the experiments are regularly flawed. They DO fail at basic rigor.
Zombie Feynman literally addressed that exact point!
I disagree. Zombie Feynman completely disregarded the lack of controls and the flawed nature of their “experiments”. You can’t just whip up one ballistics gel mannequin, blow it up, and come out with a definitive answer to a question raised by folklore.
By Feynman’s own standards as a Phd Theoretical Physicist who worked on the Manhattan Project, would his Zombie counterpart’s claims exceed or fail to exceed his own metric?
No single experiment is ever going to be definitive. More rigor makes an experiment more reliable as a data point, but informal testing is still useful. It can be a “gut check”, or a launchpad for further, more formal, experimentation. Fuck around and find out is a tried and true staple of science.
Ironically the Manhattan Project’s Trinity test is a great example of this kind of testing. There was extreme uncertainty going into the test. There was no way to create a small-scale version of the experiment, no control to compare against. They didn’t know if the bomb would fizzle or ignite the atmosphere. They set it off to see what would happen, and then tweaked their future experiments and designs based on their observations.
At no point during the Manhattan Project was any plutonium haphazardly experimented on with poorly designed experiments and “gut checks”.
Ever heard of the Demon Core?
Holy fucking hell.
The beryllium hemisphere is held up with a screwdriver.
The absolute madmen.
Scientists are human and fallible.
“Professional Science” is just as vulnerable to “eh, I know what I’m doing”, bias, politics, funding, feuds, ignoring details-that-dont-fit and shortcuts, as the rest of the human experience.
That’s why we see “breakthrough discoveries” falling apart to scrutiny on a regular basis and new facts/theories are only gradually accepted into the “body of accepted knowledge” after lots of peer reviewing, reproduction, general chewing-it-over and when the old “that can’t be true” generation has retired/died.
On the other hand, quick and dirty gut-check experiments and goofing around with a new idea are a valuable way to easily check for falsification and narrow down what actual, rigorous tests might have to look like. They’re also a major source of lab accidents.
In the context of the Manhattan Project, the demon core is a perfect example of this.
I think the point is’t that they are rigorous. It is that that it doesn’t matter if they fail at basic rigour because you can teach that after you inspire the interest, and that is the thing you need to do to get more scientists and engineers.
Is the issue motivation? If that’s the issue, then I would argue that Bill Nye the Science Guy is a better resource for aspiring scientists.
Bill Nye is fine if you are in a country where he was broadcast and already have a predisposition towards science. That Mythbusters came at it from a pop-culture direction, and that it wasn’t aimed at children gives it a big boost.
They don’t, but they say least show a process of testing beliefs and they will rerun experiments based on feedback from the audience to see if they missed something.
And it isn’t like they are testing bleeding edge science. It is more teaching skepticism and inquiry on sayings and others information which have dubious veracity.
Common dangblingus L, the xkcd comic literally explains why your take is lame and dumb.
No it doesn’t. It purports to know exactly what a PhD scientist who was critical in the invention of the atomic bomb is thinking. Feynman would not have advocated for the propagation of junk science.
Here are some direct quotes from Feynman regarding his thoughts on the value of science:
“With more knowledge comes a deeper, more wonderful mystery, luring one on to penetrate deeper still. Never concerned that the answer may prove disappointing, with pleasure and confidence we turn over each new stone to find unimagined strangeness leading on to more wonderful questions and mysteries —certainly a grand adventure!”
“It is true that few unscientific people have this particular type of religious experience. Our poets do not write about it; our artists do not try to portray this remarkable thing. I don’t know why. Is no one inspired by our present picture of the universe? This value of science remains unsung by singers: you are reduced to hearing not a song or poem, but an evening lecture about it. This is not yet a scientific age.”
“Hardly anyone can understand the importance of an idea, it is so remarkable. Except that, possibly, some children catch on. And when a child catches on to an idea like that, we have a scientist. It is late—although not too late—for them to get the spirit when they are in our universities, so we must attempt to explain these ideas to children.”
And the full story is too long to quote, but in one of his books Feynman recounts performing his own little Mythbusters style experiment in front of NASA to show how temperature affects O-rings when they were trying to figure out what caused the Challenger to fall apart. An experiment he performed because he was getting sick of the stacks of papers piling up as the discussion went on and all they were doing was ruminating over the minor details. In his own words:
“I say to myself, “Damn it, / can find out about that rubber without having NASA send notes back and forth: I just have to try it! All I have to do is get a sample of the rubber.” I think, “I could do this tomorrow while we’re all sittin’ around, listening to this Cook crap we heard today. We always get ice water in those meetings; that’s something I can do to save time.” Then I think, “No, that would be gauche.” But then I think of Luis Alvarez, the physicist. He’s a guy I admire for his gutsiness and sense of humor, and I think, “If Alvarez was on this commission, he would do it, and that’s good enough for me.””
A lot of his autobiographical stories are filled with examples of him doing these types of experiments, big and small, ever since he was a kid. Ones without a ton of “rigor”. The same style of experiments that Mythbusters tended to do.
So Feynman would totally agree with Xkcd here about what’s really important when it comes to science, sorry to break it to ya. He was a Mythbuster at heart.
You must be fun at parties
The parties I generally attend aren’t hosting salons on how great Mythbusters is at doing science.
I’m dead now.
I’m gonna spook the salons hosted at your parties, like a proper ghost.
If Mr. Wizard, and Bill Nye can claim to be science shows, Mythbusters and Crash Labs can as well. There’s a spectrum.
Bill Nye the Science Guy regularly references classic experiments and teaches viewers about the scientific method.
Did mythbusters not start with a hypothesis, decide a way to test it, and come to a conclusion based on experimental results? That’s the scientific method. It is science.
Of course it’s not rigorous, has tons of holes, is not breaking new ground, but it’s fun, and shares a scientific approach its viewers can relate to. If I wanted to know the truth beyond an urban legend, I’d probably just take an online opinion and base it on my own knowledge. That’s a horrible way to find “truth”. We’d all be better off (and happier) if we injected some Mythbusters scientific method into our decision making
RIP Grant…
It was so shocking, he was only 49 years old. aneurysms are crazy… :'(
Instilling the “Oh, I was wrong, THAT’S SO COOL” mindset in people is one of the best things science education can do.
And it translates to all walks of life.
There’s so much misery in the world simply from people who know nothing convinced they know everything.
“It’s not “Yes! My experiment was a success!” It’s “Yes! My experiment yielded data!””
I seem to recall Adam Savage saying this at some point.
from people who know nothing convinced they know everything.
A lot of it is insecurity. If people feel inadequate, then they may go out of their way to cover-up that inadequacy.
I think part of the blame can be put on those who will admonish someone for being wrong.
“Remember kids, the only difference between screwing around and science is writing it down.” -Adam Savage
That single quote is the core of Mythbusters, and only the original Mythbuster team truly had that chemistry to pull it off on national television.
My favorite episode is the one where they tried to turn a city bus at 50 mph to test a scene from a movie called “Speed”.
It didn’t matter how the passengers were arranged in the bus, the bus just wouldn’t turn over. In fact, the bus was more stable in a corner when ghe weight was evenly distrubuted, to the surprise of nobody with a mechanical engineering degree.
The most instructive part for me was what they did have to do to make the bus barely tip over. They had to fasten a big piece of steel plate to the roof, disable the air shocks on one side, and put all the “passengers” (barrels of water) on one side.
Thus reminding everyone that engineers know more about how to build a bus than movie writers do. Which shouldn’t be a surprise.
It’s a great show for people like you to jerk themselves off.
tf? People are allowed to like things that they like
It has nothing to do with liking things. Lol.
RIP Grant, you are missed
I don’t think you could revive Mythbusters.
I don’t think Adam and Jamie are at all interested in doing the show anymore. If it wasn’t them, you’d have to re-cast, and it would be really hard to get that kind of chemistry, while also finding people with the right technical background for the show. The Build Team members were fun, but they couldn’t do it, although they tried with projects like the White Rabbit project.
Plus, I think the world has moved on. There are plenty of YouTube channels where people build crazy things, or test myths, or whatever. But, that’s in short, 5-10 minute videos. A full hour (well, 45 minutes) of reality TV is different. Also, they tested so many myths over the years, that the only ones left are TikTok trends or gossip or whatever. Not the kinds of beliefs that go back decades.
the world has moved on
You say true, I say thankya, Gunslinger.
Mythbusters is the reason I went into STEM. On year my parents even bought me tickets to see the tour, as a Christmas present. I also still watch Adam’s YouTube channel weekly (Tested).
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What the hell happened to the proposed new series with an entirely different cast that they literally had a miniseries game show to find the talent for? They had the contest, found the new people and then just… Vanished.
No one watched and it didn’t have the same kind of chemistry. Mythbusters was a good TV show more than anyone thinks about. The cast made it happen. Along with the crew. Including the time of everyone else where the Internet was still relatively young in terms of proving myths wrong. Now there are many copies but none as popular. And regular TV is dead/dying. They had White Rabbit but Grant passed. Jamie has no interest in it. Kari is out doing things for scientific causes. Tori went back to movies. And Adam has a platform for cosplay on YouTube. I think the moment has passed.
Isn’t Kari shilling for oil now?
Adam’s youtube channel is a gem though. He’s legitimately an inspiration
Is she? I follow her IG and it’s always NASA or science related
I mean, I had heard she was getting paid to tweet about how great fracking was and how we don’t need to stop consuming oil but instead start geo engineering, but I don’t remember how long ago it was given the blur of time the last couple years have been and how much I’m remembering correctly
I agree with the chemistry of the cast and the synergy of the crew not ever likely to be the same, but I would still be down for the busting myths part and could forgo giving a shit about the actors lol. Half the gaming channels I watch are basically myth busters for various game franchises. They’re only missing the crucial part of “replicating the myth” when they fail to reproduce the myth as stated. Shit would be funny “we can’t reproduce this unless we use cheat programs.”
I don’t know. We are in a different space for consumption too. I hear what you are saying. I’m just not sure it would be successful. I would watch it too. It’s still one of my favorite shows.
If only we didnt need things we like to pass some bullshit benchmark of “success”. Just do it because you want to and if some people like its kinda nice.
Niche things are often how you find something amazing and often they arent what becomes well known.
Do most people know who Nirvana or Pearl Jam are? Yes. Do most people know who mother love bone is? No
But Kurt and Eddie spoke about mother love bone as a huge inspiration and gave credit for their own success
I still remember the cement truck explosion but I don’t remember what myth they were testing lol
Explosives to clean a cement truck. At first they tested it practically(empty-drum with just a layer of dried cement leftovers) but eventually went with the overkill scenario at the end: full-drum and real dynamite. Pretty fun episode
I believe the myth was that you could use dynamite to clean dried cement from the inside of the drum. Of course they decided to go all the way with it :P
It was revived in 2017. I think that’s all that needs to be said on the matter.
If you like this kind of content, there are loads of YouTube channels doing these kinds of ‘experiments’ they tend to be more specialised, but that’s a good thing and they often interact with each other to share expertise.
I was going to ask about some of those channels, but decided to make a post on askLemmy
Gotta throw Nile Red in there for chemistry.
Also I’m not sure what the right answer is but there should be a better format for your link so people can access it from their instance. Maybe someone who knows can chime in. Kbin always edits the display of proper links so I’m not sure the exact format.
Yea post links on Lemmy are unfortunately really hard to deal with. There are discussions on how to fix it
The current workarounds seem to be
- use an app or browser extension to handle the link for you
- link the instance and tell people to look for the post
- use a third party service to generate instance agnostic links
I use the first option for myself (Boost on mobile, InstanceAssistant on Desktop), but we really need a better solution
Yeah. Probably one of the larger items that makes going between instances a pain in the ass. Once they all have decent apps it’ll probably be better but still. Maybe even if they could have it ask “Hey you clicked this link. Do you want to go there-there or here-there?”
Love it. RIP Grant.
See, this is why I don’t like debunking shows in general, and I find the skeptic movement to be overrated and simply draws less criticism that it deserves.
MythBusters avoided the one mistake that all debunkers make. First off, they didn’t come off as thinking that they were smarter than anyone else, they don’t mock people for believing false information, and they never bring religion into it.
They just talked about whatever misconception, then they tested to see if it worked or not
Well then I guess Penn & Teller’s BS series is actually the Dark Side version of Mythbusters.
Loved both of those shows. Learned how to cheat on a polygraph from the Penn & Teller show.
I think Jamie comes off as if he’s smarter than everyone else and is wrong most often to boot.
