“It’s just a theory” is the most irritating and ignorant argument made by science deniers, but you can’t correct them without sounding like a pedantic asshole.
That’s one thing (of many) that really annoyed me about MatPat’s “theory” channels is he used that as a slogan. He’s hailed as this great YouTube educator yet continued to happily perpetuate the misconception that “theory” is synonymous with “tenuously connected set of ideas formed from 3 hours of Googling stuff in your underwear”.
Yeah, that one stood out to me, too. The green guy saying “it’s not a theory” is incorrect - it’s just not the colloquial definition that the blue guy is using. Why couldn’t “hypothesis” have been used instead, since it’s closer to the definition you said at the end of your comment? “But that’s just a hypothesis - a game hypothesis!”
The bioengineer one reminded me of the last panel of this:
“It’s just a theory” is the most irritating and ignorant argument made by science deniers, but you can’t correct them without sounding like a pedantic asshole.
That’s one thing (of many) that really annoyed me about MatPat’s “theory” channels is he used that as a slogan. He’s hailed as this great YouTube educator yet continued to happily perpetuate the misconception that “theory” is synonymous with “tenuously connected set of ideas formed from 3 hours of Googling stuff in your underwear”.
Yeah, that one stood out to me, too. The green guy saying “it’s not a theory” is incorrect - it’s just not the colloquial definition that the blue guy is using. Why couldn’t “hypothesis” have been used instead, since it’s closer to the definition you said at the end of your comment? “But that’s just a hypothesis - a game hypothesis!”
But that’s just a hypothesis, a game hypothesis
Not quite as catchy, I’ll admit.