SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard
When uploaded to Netflix, an episode of the educational children's show "Bill Nye the Science Guy" cut out a segment saying that chromosomes determine one's gender.
[...] While noncontroversial at the time, the 1996 segment appears to contradict Netflix's new series "Bill Nye Saves the World."
The new show endorses a socially liberal understanding of gender, under which gender is defined by self-identification rather than genetics and there are more than just the two traditional genders.
People, people, people... Say it with me: The Internet Never Forgets.
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
Netflix Edits 'Bill Nye' Episode to Remove Segment Saying Chromosomes Determine Gender
|
Log In/Create an Account
| Top
| 250 comments
| Search Discussion
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Oh, that sound of male ego. You travel halfway across the galaxy and
it's still the same song.
-- Eve McHuron, "Mudd's Women", stardate 1330.1
(Score: 2) by theluggage on Friday May 05 2017, @02:45PM (1 child)
How many old TV show Pluto as being a planet?
Whether or not Pluto is a planet is purely a matter of arbitrary terminology not a matter of scientific fact. If someone claims that the earth is flat, you can point to any number of repeatable experiments that show it isn't (unless you vote in a new definition of "earth" or "flat"). Pluto's status as a planet, however, can apparently be changed at any time by a majority vote of the IAU. Nature is not a democracy.
Science - more so than any other subject - is happy to admit when it's wrong, even if they were convinced at the time they were right.
No, in the Pluto case, they were RIGHT at the time of broadcast, because that was the definition at the time - note definition, not theory/hypothesis/conjecture. The issue is not one of scientific fact, and can be changed on a whim. It is totally different from the case where a theory has been mathematically or empirically disproven and even then Science has never felt it necessary to airbrush the old theory from the historical record. It's really worrying that so many people on both sides of the debate don't seem to understand the distinction between scientific understanding and arbitrary nametags.
This is true whether or not you agree with the IAU's decision. Maybe next year someone will force another vote at the IAU and nothing about our understanding of the universe will have changed! The whole argument is appeal to tradition vs. appeal to consequences. One side doesn't want to see Pluto "demoted" because...? the other side doesn't want a solar system of 120 planets - because...? To be fair, those arguments are only fallacious if you're debating a falsifiable fact...
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Friday May 05 2017, @06:25PM
even then Science has never felt it necessary to airbrush the old theory from the historical record.
Regardless of the Pluto issue or how you feel about it, the current definition (however arbitrary) is different. What's the crime in updating an informational documentary to reflect current known facts? Nobody that I know of is arguing for all copies of the old version to be destroyed or whatever. Nobody's arguing to eliminate the "historical record."
New editions of books come out all the time. I'm sure many dictionaries or reference books that contained information on Pluto have been altered to reflect the current definition. Why should an informational documentary be forced to stay in "stone" for all time, while a book can just be edited to reflect current information?
And no, let's not get caught up in an argument about differences in medium or how books are more easily edited. That detracts from the real issue here -- which is, I believe, some sort of stupid belief that a non-fiction film or video is an abstract "work" that must exist unchanged for all time, whereas a book can be updated to reflect the latest facts. But I don't think there's any objective basis to that arbitrary distinction, even less so than the one you're arguing about regarding Pluto.