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Comment by dbingham | Hacker News Reader

I feel like this might have more to do with modern social media and celebrity culture, especially Twitter culture, than with Tyson himself. It's toxic. It's really hard to move in that realm with out adopting some of its sensibilities and tone.

In Tyson's defense, the new Cosmos was damn near perfect and had none of the elitism that I detected. Just a love of knowledge and history.

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Tyson is intellectually underwhelming and doesn't seem to understand the limitations of his own knowledge. He's made his fame for speaking with the mannerisms of a preacher; and for remaking (in science a necessity) the Carl Sagan classic. He's already being forgotten by mainstream culture, which is not worse for it.

> he doesn't seem to understand the limitations of his own knowledge

He does. When he has a decent Scientific guests on his podcast, he is very deferential but when he is alone, he is very elitist.

> He's already being forgotten by mainstream culture, which is not worse for it.

I disagree. Out of all pop-sci educators there's three that just about everyone who likes science knows: NDT, Bill Nye, and Carl Sagan.

>Tyson is intellectually underwhelming

Only to intellectuals.

He may not have been a great researcher, but his ability to explain to the common person (impromptu) is a lot better than Hawking's. Other than Sagan, I cannot think of anyone that good. Their styles are different, but both are/were great.

A season 2 of the Cosmos reboot is under development BTW. :)

The new Cosmos had way too much animation. Hopefully season 2 is without Seth McFarlane so we can get some inspiring science without cartoons (which detracts from the inspiring quality, imo).

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