So I have been attempting to get through "Bill Nye Saves The World" and it's been really tough. I mean more tough than I thought it would be since I actually had a decent amount of respect for Bill Nye... Yes, I said "had" because I watched this giant bag of purposely crippled puppies. Bill Nye proves even through the title that he may be a bit narcissistic, if he thought his grandiose title would intrigue people into watching and changing their minds, he should use other tactics!
"What's so bad?" I can hear someone asking. Well, he starts off with the most polarizing topic he froths at the mouth over which is climate change. His entire show was 97% of scientists blah blah blah, so that episode was a giant appeal to authority fallacy when it comes from arguments. Now I knew I would disagree with him on a lot of stuff in that episode because I am a rational human being who has looked at the data, and agree that humans are likely contributing to warming trends, but in no way have I seen any evidence that it's going to end the world. In fact, I have seen evidence that would say attempting to "fix" the "problem" would kill more people than not trying to fix it. Fixing it, requires increasing the price of energy, and in a world where energy plays a big role in economic prosperity, I would say increasing the cost of energy would significantly increase poverty.
He proceeds to cover every topic that Penn and Teller already covered in "Bullshit" but does so in way much more palatable to progressive liberals. Yes, on his show, the words "social contract" do come up and not the way Locke described it, but in a manner suggesting that people must give all their freedom up to government authority in order to achieve safety.
In his vaccines episode he correlated seat belt laws with pushing for legislation to force people to be vaccinated. Here's the problem... I feel like seat belts do a great job in saving lives, but I think legislation for them is a violation of personal liberty. If you get in an accident, you are extraordinarily unlikely to harm anyone else, it is therefore a personal choice and not able to be legislated while still claiming to defend liberty. Not getting vaccinated can cause harm to someone else, which means that it is something that could be legislated. The issue I have is he used a terrible argument that he assumed everyone agreed with to push a separate argument that was not similar at all. He does it over and over again throughout different episodes.
I had terribly high opinions of Alton Brown, and Wil Wheaton, but after seeing them on this show... I just don't know anymore. It's like the cringey nature of the show has somehow made me see the world through shit colored goggles.
That along with the "sex junk" video portion makes a lot of these episodes extremely cringeworthy. Great example: most cringey quote of the show: " I used to be a kid's show host, not anymore bitches."