Kurzgesagt (In a Nutshell)

To be fair, adding fins was cheating a bit there.

On that topic, skinwrapped whales must be pretty hilarious/horrifying too.

Edited by alekos23 on Oct 12th 2021 at 2:05:17 PM

Secret Signature

This video highlights an interesting bias: thinking that more primitive organisms (in terms of evolutionary history) must also be cruder/more savage in appearance and behavior.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

I guess the perception was biased a bit by crocs and gators mostly, since most other reptiles look goofy enough. Though that's still kinda painting a bad picture for crocodilians.

Secret Signature

Well, when the first depictions of dinosaurs were being created, we knew even less about them than we do now. Some of the problems were just going by the science of the time, like them being extremely reptilian. Others were from the simple lack of knowledge, like mixing up fossils from different species. And the whole Prehistoric Monster thing was because they were thought to be just that, primitive beasts, rather than animals that had been evolving more or less just as long as any modern one.

Of course I can't deny that inspiration from dragons and wanting to play them up as monstrous to make them more exciting probably played a role too.

I missed the part where that's my problem.

If I remember right, some of the first dino fossils discovered were some teeth from a megalosaurus and an iguanadon, both of which greatly resembled enlarged versions of modern lizard teeth which probably painted their perceptions.

I have in my room a toy dinosaur from the 80s or thereabouts, which is supposed to be a T-rex, but looks more like Godzilla, as in, a man in a lizard suit. I also have one from maybe a decade later, which already looks a lot more like what we think of as a T-rex.

Optimism is a duty.

I'm a little curious, are there any large animals with flashy courtship displays like they suggested the ceratopsians might have? I figure at that size you're mostly gonna fight other males like other large herbivores do.

Did love the colorful crest though. Might even help with intimidation.

Edited by alekos23 on Oct 13th 2021 at 6:42:04 PM

Secret Signature

My understanding was that, while paleontology had already known the tripod stance T-Rex wasn't correct for a while, it was Jurassic Park that really killed it off in the public consciousness.

I don't know of any off the top of my head, but I'd assume they're going off the idea they're more similar to modern birds than modern mammals of similar size, given the genetic relation. Though whether that's accurate, well, that's the whole point of the video. We really have no idea.

Edited by FGHIK on Oct 13th 2021 at 11:06:08 AM

I missed the part where that's my problem.

I think they found some fossilized footprints from a pair of large allosaurids who's movements resembles the mating dances of some modern birds.

Edited by Kaiseror on Oct 13th 2021 at 11:56:03 AM

All I know is, whether they are bare-skinned or covered in feathers, a T.Rex would still be terrifying thing to face in real life.

Well, even that is hard to say, really. We don't really know what their behaviour would have been like. That's also the point of the video: we tend to assume that something with big teeth and scary claws must necessarily be aggressive and scary, but that doesn't have to be the case at all. Koalas have huge claws, and you definitely don't want a hug from them, but they are not particularly scary or aggressive.

Optimism is a duty.

Not to mention sloths. It's kind of hard to look at those claws and say "Yup, those were definitely used only to hang around all day".

You Are Immune Against Every Disease

Definitely going to be getting the book.

I missed the part where that's my problem.

I ordered it this morning.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

I preordered it and got it a few weeks ago.

If you are wondering why you couldn't buy it earlier, it was because they got so many preorders they didn't have enough left for the original launch day.

Edited by Redmess on Nov 2nd 2021 at 8:33:36 PM

Optimism is a duty.

Yeah, I was told my order got delayed. Should be in next week.

It's time to feel bad about eating meat again.

Come on Kurzgesagt, you're better than comparing century emissions to yearly emissions. 8 billion is still important compared to 50 billion.

Edited by alekos23 on Nov 30th 2021 at 6:57:58 PM

Secret Signature

They've been lying to us the whole time!

...Well, they've been simplifying things for us at least, which technically means they weren't giving us truly 100% accurate information as understood by the scientific community of today.

SoundCloud

Hey, it's more honesty than you'll get from your high school textbooks...

I was never told the planets were buddies, by the way. Actually, what I was first taught about them was a lot closer to the second step.

Edited by Redmess on Dec 7th 2021 at 5:15:39 PM

Optimism is a duty.

I read all the books on astronomy that I could find in my school's library and probably watched Cosmos a dozen times or more. I know vastly more now than I did then, yet far less than people who made it their careers, and it's not just a static body of information but one that is constantly changing.

It's exquisitely important for each person to come to a realization that every source of information they will ever find in their lives is biased and/or incomplete in some way, but that this does not mean that the search for knowledge is itself futile. Rather, it is ongoing and evolving, and what we can trust is the process by which we learn.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Exactly. And it is exactly this that many people struggle with these days, because we are not naturally inclined to deal with such rapid changes in knowledge. Human minds like stable facts and clear narratives, and when these keep changing, that causes a lot of stress and anxiety.

Combine this with the Dunning-Kruger effect, and it becomes clear why there seems to be such an explosion of disinformation and conspiracies these days.

There is also the Illusory Truth Effect, where repeated exposure to false information gives the illusion of truth. This is another problem caused by the internet, where false information gets constantly repeated and reinforced.

Edited by Redmess on Dec 7th 2021 at 7:47:59 PM

Optimism is a duty.

And yet, finding clear, consistent facts is easier than ever. If people weren't trapping themselves in echo chambers and explored their assumptions a bit more. All this information is at our fingertips, I can't muster much sympathy for those that refuse to learn anything new. They choose to remain stuck in their conspiracies.

True, especially considering it's not like you need to be a rocket scientist to not actually cause harm. You don't need to know the ins-and-outs of how vaccines work to know that getting one makes you safer and makes everyone around you safer, for example.

SoundCloud

The problem is some people don't want to find the truth, they just want what they already believe vindicated.

I missed the part where that's my problem.

The issue is more basic than that. If someone walks out of the cave they've spent their entire life in and shouts into the street, "What are these vaccine things about," how are they possibly supposed to sort through the avalanche of information that comes their way or know which voices to trust?

Edited by Fighteer on Dec 8th 2021 at 3:12:30 PM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"