Sabine Hossenfelder: Science is a Liar ... Sometimes

Decoding the Gurus

Christopher Kavanagh and Matthew Browne

Science, Leisure, Social Sciences, Society & Culture

4.2 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 12 November 2024

⏱️ 111 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this highly non-topical episode, Matt and Chris dive into the entertainingly gruff world of Sabine Hossenfelder, the German theoretical physicist and popular YouTube science communicator. Known as a joyful science curmudgeon, Sabine excels at making complex science accessible to a wide audience. Yet, there's another side to her content: one that's increasingly steeped in the YouTube algorithm’s culture-war-fueled clickbait, complete with prolific both-sidesing and even hints of her own brand of science-denialist rhetoric.

We can already imagine Sabine’s response: tone policing from establishment scolds who are trying to silence a fearless truth-teller for exposing academia’s dark underbelly. Perhaps that’s all it is—maybe Matt and Chris are aligned with BIG PHYSICS, out to quash any dissent about supersymmetry, string theory, or the academic publishing machine.

Or… maybe it’s something else. Maybe Sabine has pivoted to pander to the (so-hot-right-now) anti-establishment YouTube crowd, declaring that modern science has achieved nothing of value in 50 years and claiming that scientists (especially climate scientists) are too scared to challenge ideological dogmas for fear of jeopardizing their careers or funding.

It’s certainly one of those things.

Whatever the case, join Matt and Chris as they tackle this perplexing case of rhetorical indeterminacy, unpack YouTube audience dynamics, and delve into Sabine's unexpected alignments with Eric Weinstein and her 'sharp' critiques of Tucker Carlson.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Hello and welcome to Dakotanikouros, the podcast where an anthropologist and a psychologist
0:29.6	to listen to the greatest minds the world has to offer.
0:32.3	We try to understand what they're talking about.
0:34.4	I'm Matt Brown, calling you from the US of A. With me is Chris Kavanaugh, joining us
0:40.5	from Tokyo, Wonder of the Modern World. So big hello, Chris, from Arizona, Monument Valley,
0:47.8	where it has just started snowing. You didn't know that. It's started snowing here. It's a variable
0:52.7	blizzard out there. Winter is coming, as they say, in Westross.
0:57.4	And it's a big night.
0:58.9	It's a big night, isn't it, Chris?
1:00.3	They're counting votes as we record this.
1:03.1	By the time this goes out, it'll all be old news.
1:05.8	Everyone will either be celebrating or crying.
1:10.5	It currently doesn't look like people are going to be celebrating.
1:15.5	I was going to be happy.
1:17.7	No, no, I mean, obviously 50% of America will be happy with one outcome.
1:23.3	But I don't think the majority of our audience are going to be happy just looking at the way
1:27.8	things are currently going. So that's fun. Yeah, that's fun. That's the same. But anyway,
1:35.1	look, we're not going to let that bring us down with, you know, we all need to just focus on
1:39.7	something else for our Saturday. I'm already having to tip everybody 20% to get anything in America.
1:47.2	I'm already suffering from that. There's no reason for the politics to make me suffer as well,
1:51.5	Chris. So distract me. distract me with some guru stuff. Yeah. So we were going to look at Curtis Jarvin and Peter Thiel, and we are going to look at them.
2:05.2	But we're just taking a little bit of a jaunt away from the polemical, partisans, neo-fascist and the things, just because, you know, it's, look, we get
	...

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