Science Memes
Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!
A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.
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- Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
- Keep it rooted (on topic).
- No spam.
- Infographics welcome, get schooled.
If you are here asking: "Is this a science meme?"
Probably, yes. We use the Dawkins definition of meme: a replicating idea, not just an image macro with a fact on it. A good post here doesn't need to teach you something. It needs to make you ask something: who, what, where, when, and especially why or how.
Science isn't a filing cabinet of facts, it's a conversation. For example, a photo of an eel or other localized wildlife counts because most people never see one, and wonder is the first step of inquiry. A car meme counts if it makes you curious about what's under the bonnet. If you want to talk about something you noticed in the world, chances are someone else wants to talk about it too.
We moderate for vibe, not category. Pruning is light, especially where a post creates interesting discussion. Experimenting is encouraged.
See the pinned paper on Shitposting as Public Pedagogy if you want the academic case for why this works.
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He is a really interesting case. He is a real, actual, published theoretical physicist. But his popular science persona made him a bit weird. For example, in this video, alongside Roger Penrose and Sabine Hossenfelder, he looks like a sci-fi hype-man.
Yeah, I remember him on Art Bell back in the 90s and early 2000s. He's never shied away from trying to inject real science into the pseudoscience crowd. Just because he's willing to be brave enough to keep a discussion grounded in reality doesn't mean other guests invited to some event he didn't organize necessarily color his character. It's the risk of being a science communicator - you want to communicate real science to people that normally don't want to hear about it.
To be fair to a counterpoint, string theory hasn't panned out mathematically as he probably expected, so he has a bit more time to get into all sorts of things these days. I'm more so surprised he hasn't retired yet.
Sabine Hossenfelder isn't really a good foil for someone that likes to portray that they are an expert on topics that are actually outside their expertise. Here's a good video on why she is more similar to him than you would think: Youtube.
From my perspective, her takes on anything outside of undergrad physics are pretty shit, so forgive me if I don't see having her involved as a good thing.
Yeah. I stopped watching her long ago. But I really like Penrose, so I watched that video for him.