Sometimes they called stuff busted because they couldn’t personally do it though, even though the myth involved elite athletics. I was pretty stoked when they brought in an actual ninja to test if ninjas can grab arrows out of the air. The guy actually did catch some arrows, which was quite amazing.
For anyone missing the show, there was a wonderful project called Streamlined Mythbusters where fans edited each episode down to remove the filler, pre and post ad recaps, etc. They usually also would reorder things so each individual myth was seld contained.
It’s wonderful, but some episodes legitimately got cut down to be 16 minutes long with no real content loss, which can be kind of jarring.
There is also Smyths, which is the same thing.
Unfortunately Mythbusters edits have a tendency to get pulled from the typical video sharing sites rather quickly. I wish someone would make a torrent of the entire series edited this way, and call it a day.
It doesn’t matter how you run because ALLIGATORS WON’T CHASE YOU.
I used to live in Florida on the edge of a big lake where my landlord had carved out a lagoon that mama gators used to hatch their broods, so there would often be between 50 and 100 little alligators chilling out in my backyard sunning themselves. For fun I would try to sneak up on one of them and poke it on the head just to watch it and all the others scatter into the lagoon. Everybody I told about this thought I was absolutely batshit crazy, but I knew that at the time there had been something like 5 alligator attacks on humans in Florida since the 1940s, always on little children playing in water (I was obviously a little child mentally but physically I was a 200-pound adult man). So I knew I wasn’t risking life or limb doing this. For the record, my sneaking up technique was to stand stock still and only move a step or two towards the gator whenever the wind blew; it seems that the gators just took me for a swaying branch and ignored me.
What made me stop doing this was one day I happened to look down at what I thought was a big log and realized that it was actually the mama gator, about 12’ long from tip to tail and probably 2’ in diameter at her midsection. I was fairly confident that she wouldn’t attack me on land either - but not that confident.
but not that confident.
That’s how you bust myths!
So, we meet at last, Florida Man!
Being excited about being wrong because either way it’s information
This literally is the basis of science that I think a lot of people misunderstand. Science doesn’t prove anything conclusively. What scientists try to do is disprove the leading theory and when they can’t, it adds to the pile of evidence that increases the likelyhood of the leading theory being correct. Even things that we’re very, very, very sure are correct are still like 99.99999999999…% confirmed.
A good example that’s often used to show how it’s more important to try to disprove a theory rather than trying to prove it is the existence of black swans. It was long thought that all swans were white and every time someone saw a white swan, that idea was reinforced. But when someone actually went out of their way to go looking for a black swan, they found a bunch of them!
Being able to separate your ego and desire to be right from the learning process is such an important skill.
I remember being stubborn, being proved wrong, continuing to be stubborn, and being proved wrong even harder, in front of others.
It’s such a pathetic and embarrassing feeling to be that wrong.
I don’t want to be wrong a moment longer than I need to be.
There’s no shame in being corrected, but there is in holding on to shit ideas.
This is the right attitude more people should have. But all too often, when people are proven wrong, they genuinely believe that it must be the other person/group, because they cannot accept the emotional consequences of being wrong.
I know that I’ve had a hard time learning this because growing up I was never held to account for my actions on an emotional level. It was the 80s and 90s, and adults at that time would either shrug it off, or go straight to the nuclear punishment of corporal punishment. Never once would they sit down and talk to you about why what you did was wrong and how to do it better next time. I, anecdotally, believe that a lot of genx suffer this same way. They simply haven’t learned that there is a better way.
Or at least use classical conditioning to associate the I’m wrong feeling with the impending new cool facts feeling.
This is why most skepticism based programs don’t work, and Mythbusters did.
They didn’t try to be smug about it, they didn’t belittle people who believed in the myths, they never brought religion and politics into it, and the biggest pitfall they avoided: They never pretended that the “science was settled” and that they “already knew everything”, they simply did the research and went where the data took them.
Too many skepticism based programs seem to think the scientific method is running into a church, yelling “FAKE!”, and then running outside to hurl insults at passersby.
Mythbusters didn’t do that, they skipped the dogma and went straight to the science.
Also, most of the myths weren’t “serious”- it wasn’t like they were debunking flat earth or something.
I hate that debunking flat earth is now seen as serious rather than a 5th grade science experiment.
I actually got fired because I told a Flat Earther to leave the store I worked in, it was closing time and he was harassing people… But if you bitch enough to corporate you can get us to walk on water…
Whatever, I’m a Janitor now, never doing retail again.
It’s too easy to debunk flat earth, if it were flat cats would have knocked everything off by now.
it wasn’t like they were debunking flat earth or something
Though you could do that. And with equipment and a type of experiment that would make sense on their show. The experiment conducted at the very end of the documentary Behind the Curve is perfect. Great big lasers, a simple and easy-to-visualise pass condition. If they had wanted to, they absolutely could have done it.
I mean, yes.
but their myths generally didn’t piss surprisingly large segments of the population off. it was more… the urban legends that gave them an excuse to blow stuff up, shoot stuff, or otherwise crash stuff; all in slow motion.
The Elephant and Mice episode was so wild, because if I remember correctly, the elephant didn’t act afraid of the mouse, it acted afraid it would step on and harm the mouse; as if the elephant had a basic understanding and concern for the wellbeing of another creature conspicuously lacking in many human beasts
Yep. Elephants are wonderfully kind creatures. With my very limited understanding of elephant body language, it didn’t look like an ‘oh no, im scared’ it was more ‘oh hey little guy, didn’t see ya there. ill get outta your way.’
Just smart as hell. This video makes me wonder if elephants legit have a sense of humor:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VOvEFHDOaU
Animal behavior can be difficult to interpret (and even when descriptions come from experts, I often find myself asking “yeah, but how do we really know that?”), but this looks very close to being like someone who’s known for lighthearted pranks.
I miss Mythbusters so much.
It’s amazing to me that Discovery hasn’t tried to bring Mythbusters back. Instead they double down on Ancient Aliens and Pawnstars garbage.
I’m pretty sure they did try to bring it back but it wasn’t as popular because it wasn’t Adam and Jamie
Adam and Jamie were awesome, but I’m certain there are some passionate makers or something out there who could fill the role. It wouldn’t be the same, but it could be it’s own thing. Whoever the new hosts were must have just been the wrong casting, but also I don’t know how much Discovery cared because I didn’t know about it and I was a huge Mythbusters fan. I guess I just didn’t pay attention because Discovery had already killed everything that was worth paying attention to them for by that point.
It’s been a while since I watched them but I recall feeling like the new hosts weren’t genuine. It felt more like a YouTube reaction video than an episode of Mythbusters.
Mythbusters fundamentally needs to capture the joy of engineering more than the joy of explosions. (Not that those aren’t fun too.)
Quoth Adam Savage: “It’s not ‘my experiment failed’, it’s ‘my experiment yielded data!’”
It make me really sad when I learned that James and Adam were not friend.
James said their relationship doesn’t really extend beyond the show.
You mean Jamie?
No, he means James. James Franklin Hyneman.
Who goes by Jamie, and always has?
Yes, he does always go by Jamie. Cordlesslamp technically wasn’t wrong though, and I think Adam even called Jamie by his full name a couple times for comedic effect.
Yeah, but the “for comedic effect” is key here. Unless you’re going for comedy or confusion, you shouldn’t refer to someone by a name they don’t use.
