Am I the only one who isn't happy with some of the ''Inventions'' that he is coming up with? To me there just to sci-fi. Some are just to much for a simple topic. None of them are really impressing or even interesting. He is just asking the wrong people to evaluate and truly think about his work in the end. When science fiction fans are not other scientists, Yes there is always an exception to every rule. But if there was scientist in that audience, cameras or not they would have challenged him.
Are you talking about Michio Kaku's show? There's already a thread about it somewhere. My problem with it is that it does seem to diverge too much more from a popular point of view instead of getting down to basics. It's more of show explaining Hollywood science. I much prefer Phil Plait's approach with his show.
I think you're misconstruing the purpose of the show. The "inventions" are merely a semi-fictionalized way of talking about cutting-edge physics concepts. They're not meant to be taken seriously as actual inventions. And Kaku isn't an inventor, he's a string-field theorist and science popularizer. He's not coming up with "inventions" that he needs to present to other scientists for approval. The theories he's talking about are the work of other scientists to begin with, and the whole "invention" conceit is just a way of explaining those theories to the audience in a way that's supposedly entertaining. Just talking about the abstract physics of, say, an Alcubierre metric would lose or bore the general audience, so the writers of the show have Kaku pretend he's "designing a starship" as a more entertaining way (theoretically) of discussing the underlying ideas. Although I think it's a pretty bad idea for a show. Clearly the producers are trying to emulate what Carl Sagan did in Cosmos: using the trappings of science fiction to present scientific concepts in an entertaining way. But Sagan did it better. He made it clear that his "starship" and "time machine" were just metaphorical constructs, imaginative vehicles for exploring ideas. And so there was no confusion of what was real and what was metaphor. But the way this show does it, having Kaku pretend to be an inventor who's actually designing machines based on these theories -- it's misleading. It misplaces the focus by making it seem like the "invention" is the point of the exercise rather than merely a metaphor to illustrate the underlying concepts which should be the real focus. And it makes Kaku seem arrogant by claiming the credit for other people's work. I'm sure he's not seriously making such a claim, but the show makes it feel like he is, and that comes off as obnoxious. Again, it misplaces the focus by making it seem that it's about him rather than about the ideas.
Actually he sticks very closely to the science in his show. Very little of it is pure "sci-fi". The problem is that half the time he seems to be missing the point with his inventions. I would love to see out takes of the show where the fans take him to task for the things he comes up with. And like Christopher said, he is not the true inventor of most of the inventions. He just wraps them up in a neat half hour episode.
There aren't any real "inventions" here at all, just fictional constructs that are supposed to illustrate theoretical physics concepts. And the "inventions" certainly aren't his. He's the host, acting out a script written by multiple people. Michio Kaku is a theoretical physicist, not an inventor. Popular culture treats all scientists as interchangeable, but that's a lie. Theorists and inventors are two completely different things. And real scientists are highly specialized. An expert in one field (such as string-field theory in Kaku's case) would have no professional expertise in other fields. Beyond his particular specialty as a physicist, Kaku is simply a science popularizer, a guy who knows enough about general scientific ideas to present them to the public. See, this is why Sci-Fi Science is a bad show. In trying to present scientific concepts in an entertaining way, it's gone too far and ended up presenting them in a misleading way, so people mistakenly think it's a show about "inventions" by one guy rather than a discussion of general theoretical concepts developed by multiple scientists. They're using a fictional scenario to frame real concepts, but they aren't drawing a clear enough distinction between the fiction and the reality, and so it ends up being more a lie than a fiction.
I said inventions because I couldn't think of another word at that time. I know he isn't actually inventing anything. But still I find myself not happy with his scientific ideas. Some of his things are structured around science. But what I have seen: 1. Defending Earth from Aliens 2. His time machine 3. His space ship, how he protected it-by far the worse in my opinion. 4. Blowing up a planet 5. Creating a galaxy(I understand the importance of it, if we could do it) 6. Exploring other planets 7. How aliens could conquer a planet His ideas are just too much sometime. What I mean by that is sometimes his topics require a simple answer(invisible suit), but he takes it to incredible lengths. My opinion is that the show needs to be more realistic or change it to sci-fi science theories. What I said about scientist judging him, is that he is a theoretical scientist, most of his work on the show has been just that, but his audience I fear take him to seriously. Maybe having 1 or 2 scientist in the audience to ask the question the guy in the star wars suit isn't going to ask. But that is just my opinion. I actually typed Sci-fi science into the forum search and I didn't get anything.
Again, they're not his ideas. He's the host and probably co-writer of the show, but he's working with a staff of people who are coming up with this fictional way of presenting and summarizing the ideas of other scientists. And it's a failing of the show that it misrepresents things to give the impression that the ideas come from Kaku himself. The ideas come from the various scientists who are interviewed in the show, and the designs for the "inventions" undoubtedly come from the show's art department. You're still getting the purpose of the show backward, and that's the fault of the show's ill-conceived presentation. The "inventions" at the end are not the goal of the show. They're just the method of presentation. The show is supposed to be about introducing and explaining the scientific theories that relate to the topics under discussion. The reason the "invention" process goes to all those lengths to explore all those different facets of the idea is because exploring those various ideas, those general scientific principles, is the real purpose of the show. If, for instance, they did an episode about "how to create artificial gravity" (and I don't know if they actually have or not), it wouldn't really be about that, it would simply be about using that conceit as a vehicle for talking about the general topic of how gravity works and what some of the various theories of gravity are. Again, you're getting it completely backward. The real scientists are the people who came up with these ideas in the first place. They're the people Kaku interviews over the course of the show. This is their work, not his. The idea behind the show is, "Let's take these real theoretical-physics ideas being worked on by various scientists, cutting-edge ideas that resemble the tropes of science fiction, and let's present them to the sci-fi fans out there in a way they'll find accessible and entertaining." And unfortunately, the producers decided that the way to do that was to fictionalize the presentation, to pretend that Kaku was some sort of mad scientist coming up with "inventions" and presenting them to a panel of sci-fi fans to be "judged." But that's just an imaginary conceit, and it's an ill-conceived one that gets in the way of the show's goal of teaching science.
Exactly, Christopher. Hence why I called it "Hollywood" Science. It does nothing to prove or disprove what actually is possible. It tries to corner the viewer into believing using bad hollywood style explanations. On the other hand, in Phil Plait's show, he does tell you what is and what isn't possible.
Preaching to the choir here. I would still like to see some of the fans actually critique his reveals instead of gushingly praise them.
Understood. and I see what your saying. To say that he has no say himself I think isn't true, this is his bread and butter as a theoritcal scientist. But I understand that his ideas aren't his ideas. But in some of the shows, by the way he talks(which probably is the writers faults) he is presenting in a way that say these Ideas might come-out one day(some might, but I doubt if more than half do). I think that those sci-fi fans that he assembles to explain the ideas, are in that other reality world, so I fear that they take him to seriously, just listen to their comments at the end.
Agreed. He can't hear me yelling at the TV. Someone there need to challenge or ask serious questions.