There's also another animal/dog documentary that I've watched recently that puts a finer point on this realization. The secret to survival and evolution is cooperation. For instance, not all dogs evolved the same way in this documentary. Some were more nuturing, some were more problem solving. For the focus of the documentary the challenge was to match the dog with a human that had a need they could address.

I think somewhat egotistically humans underappreciate how we have also been goaded by our "pets" into our own evolutionary journey. Most of the subjects of that documentary would not be alive if it were not for those dogs.

It's much like how many plants have accidentally found that a great means of propagation is to produce a compound that is both a great chemical warfare agent against other plants and microbes and also tastes interesting to humans or makes them feel funny.

That just makes it even more interesting. Have we been selectively modified to think dogs are cute? If I showed a toy poodle to a caveman, would he also want to put it in a little bag with only its head poking out?

An amusing quip, but since you brought Neil up- his takes on veganism are generally disappointing and facile.

As are his takes on almost everything.

True, the guy is has somewhat banal views. Guess he still has an audience.

> the guy is has somewhat banal views

...on some things, because he's only human, and some pretty solid views on other things :)

That's a very broad claim. Can you elaborate?

Two things. He's obviously an expert in astrophysics but his explanations are condescending and "well actually", like he is trying to convince you how smart he is. That's given him a reputation as a blowhard online.

Outside of that field, his takes are your typical "genius in one thing believes he's a genius in everything". Someone even made a list of his mistakes: https://hopsblog-hop.blogspot.com/2016/01/fact-checking-neil...

One of his tweets that HN will love: "Obama authorized North Korea sanctions over cyber hacking. Solution there, it seems to me, is to create unhackable systems."

Thanks for the list!

I agree that the fundamental thing here is:

> "genius in one thing believes he's a genius in everything"

No disagreement here, and sadly I think this is an unfortunate part of human nature.

Other than that, I'd say the person who wrote that list has a beef with Tyson, there's a mix between honest mistakes and debatable things, a lot of nitpicking (with a dose of cherry-picking), and ultimately this doesn't prove that "most of [Tyson's] takes" are mistaken. I agree that some things he says are dumb (like the cybersecurity tweet you mentioned) but I wouldn't dwell too much on them. "Cosmos", in all of its incarnations, is amazing. Of course, I'm not arguing the script is his, but his delivery and screen presence are solid.

I see Tyson commented on that blog, and some of what he says makes sense (e.g. picking on his colloquial use of "exponential" seems a bit mean spirited, though he could have been more precise; some people misunderstand the spirit of his comments on scifi movies; etc). In general, his replies in that blog to what at some points amounted to personal attacks left me the impression that Tyson knows how to gracefully and politely handle flamebait.

I did not notice he commented on the blog so thanks for pointing it out.

His response was impressive I agree, he has matured. You can see that from his initial response to the Bush quote (claiming his memory is infallible, and then condescendingly talking about "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" when the burden of proof is on HIM) vs. his comment where he said he'd made "inexcusable errors"

Full disclosure I'm not American so my main exposure to this guy is his tweets and occasional Reddit threads about how much they hate him.

I'm also not American (well, I am South American), and I wouldn't count Reddit threats about how much people hate someone else as evidence of anything (other than Reddit being Reddit) :)

Some of the comments in that blog, pushing back against the blog post, say more or less what I think about this.

> my main exposure to this guy is his tweets

In that case, I wholeheartedly recommend the sequels to Sagan's "Cosmos", "Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey" and "Cosmos: Possible Worlds". I think they have the potential to make you like Tyson!