Writes Ken Jennings, in "'Jeopardy!' Is a Reminder That Facts Are Fun — and Essential/According to the host Ken Jennings, trivia is overlooked as a 'great social force'" (NYT).
Only "one side of the political spectrum" is "depreciating knowledge, the importance of knowledge and fact itself"? Or does it just seem that way from the point of view of the other side?
And the reason "Jeopardy!” is "a little microenvironment where these facts do have right answers and wrong answers" is because only unquestionable facts can be used as answers on the show. It's not that there isn't other material — facts yet to be nailed down and unknown and unknowable things of all kinds — it's that the other material isn't the stuff of "Jeopardy!" answers.
Yes, it's nice to appreciate the solidity of the facts that do make it onto the answer board, but that's not a basis for maligning the people who doubt and debate about what's true.
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64 comments:
Ken Jennings is a nasty, little, leftist shit. One only needs to go back and remember his Twitter feed before he scrubbed it.
You can say that again.
Please refer all questions about factual provenance to Saint Anthony "I am science" Fauci (TM). He "IS" the science, and he has approved this message.
Baseline things like, there are two genders of humans, or people who enter a country illegally should leave, or it’s not fair to make girls and women compete against boys and men in sports should be agreed upon by everyone.
"just basic things, like climate is changing, or vaccines help prevent disease. This should just be base-line stuff. And now, apparently, it’s very partisan to believe either of those things."
Most everybody agrees that the climate changes. It always has and almost certainly, always will.
Just sayin'.
"...that's not a basis for maligning the people who doubt and debate about what's true."
Yeah. I don't expect "Jeopardy" answers to include early teens gender dysphoria any time soon.
"Deprecating" would be better than "depreciating" IMHO.
Your header has echolalia.
Science is never settled. People who insist that it is need to go back to basics themselves. It used to be the settled scientific consensus that the earth was the center of the universe. You could get in a lot of trouble for doubting this.
Jeopardy requires that we question everything.
"Government policy used to be based on settled scientific consensus..."
Consensus among the scientists who are being funded by the government in its search for a reason to expand its power and control? What could possibly go wrong?
Was going to write what Arashi already wrote.
Scott Jennings > Ken Jennings
Without reading other comments yet:
Oh, please.
climate is changing, or vaccines help prevent disease
Sure. The fact that climate changes, and the fact that, say, the rabies vaccine prevents the recipient from contracting rabies - that's what the Trumpian Know-Nothings question.
The current highest-earning woman in Jeopardy history is a man, so I would appreciate it if Mr. Jennings kindly shut up about game shows and what is "true."
Jeopardy! is supposed to be about fluffing Yale grads with $100 answers about Emily Dickinson and stumping them with $100 answers about finance and potent potables. It’s not about creating yet another leftist propaganda outfit on old school syndicated television…unless cornering the market on Family Feud grand/great grandparents is the hot new Democrat war room strategy…
Vaccines are sterilizing inoculations. With established risk profiles. Administered to at-risk cohorts. Yes.
Climate change is not in dispute. The sources and vectors of the forcings are. The character of the changes is.
Consensus is a sociopolitical construct.
No, I'm sorry. Anyone else?
It used to be the settled scientific consensus that the earth was the center of the universe.
In the 1970s, the Popular Science settled consensus was that we would all soon perish in the coming ice age.
In 1956, it was finally determined that humans have 46, not 48, chromosomes - despite the fact that we could all fricking see chromosomes during meiosis in high school biology lab.
It wasn't until the 1960s that geologists had to admit that it wasn't actually a coincidence that South America and Africa fit together like puzzle pieces, because a young Navy guy noticed magnetic anomalies - stripes, basically - in a symmetrical pattern movng outward from oceanic rifts, finally suggesting a mechanism - seafloor spreading - for plate tectonics.
IOW, you don't have to go back to Galileo or Copernicus to find instances of The Science being dead wrong.
Stomach ulcers and H. Pylori.
One side of the political spectrum that benefits from deprecating knowledge- tell me again the political party of the congressmen and senators working closely with old Twitter to censor posts they didn’t like?
I was thinking the stomach ulcer thing too…
The climate was hotter in 1936. Beyond dispute.
His hauteur would be more convincing if he hadn't had to apologize for a number of "problematic tweets" as a condition for getting the host position.
Ironically, none of those things Jennings listed as used-to-be facts actually are facts. Some are questions under study, some are mere opinion, but none are facts.
Which tells us something about Jennings.
What a stupid battle to engage in for Mr Jennings. It's not 2015 or 2020.
Jennings was elevated by, and Subsequently included in, the gay matriarchy at Disney.
“ IOW, you don't have to go back to Galileo or Copernicus to find instances of The Science being dead wrong.”
It’s been said that science advances one funeral at a time. Senior scientists who act as gatekeeper of “the truth” have to retire or die before alternatives like plate tectonics can be accepted.
“ Science is never settled. People who insist that it is need to go back to basics themselves. It used to be the settled scientific consensus that the earth was the center of the universe. You could get in a lot of trouble for doubting this.”
And lobotomies were the standard of care for depression.
And DDT was a safe chemical.
And how about how George Washington was bled out by his doctors?
I could go on.
“ Legal facts like birthright citizenship…” What an idiot. This is very much an open legal question. Answer this Mr. Jeopardy: If birthright citizenship is such a sure thing, then why did Congress have to pass a bill in the 1920’s making all the Indians born on US soil American citizens?
And Dr. James Clauser, a Nobel Prize winner in physics, does believe CAGW is a threat to human existence.
n.n. “ Consensus is a sociopolitical construct.”
More of an appeal to authority.
DANA BARRETT: You know, you don't act like a scientist.
PETER VENKMAN: They're usually pretty stiff.
DANA BARRETT: You're more like a game show host.
n.n. “ Consensus is a sociopolitical construct.”
More of an appeal to authority.
Citation of the consensus to support an apology or to concede a point is done as an appeal to authority.
"We have found it of paramount importance that in order to progress we must recognize our ignorance and leave room for doubt. Scientific knowledge is a body of statements of varying degrees of certainty-some most unsure, some nearly sure, but none absolutely certain."
Richard P. Feynman
"basic things, like climate is changing, or vaccines help prevent disease" As stated, this is silly. Climate is always changing, and no one denies it; the question is how much, and why--pretending we know for sure is premature. Proper vaccines help prevent disease, but the Covid "vaccine" did no such thing, and some vaccines have side effects that need to be considered. The more basic fact is that one "side" has no clue about what the other side actually thinks.
"Looking back at the worst times, it always seems that they were times in which there were people who believed with absolute faith and absolute dogmatism in something. And they were so serious in this matter that they insisted that the rest of the world agree with them. And then they would do things that were directly inconsistent with their own beliefs in order to maintain that what they said was true."
Richard P. Feynman
If liberals were as smart as they think they are, the world would be a wonderful place.
Now do the genetics of IQ, the underlying diagnoses in gender dysphoria, wealth creation, organic and non-GMO foods are superior, and indigenous medicine. Those aren't even historical examples. Those are current.
"We have found it of paramount importance that in order to progress we must recognize our ignorance and leave room for doubt. Scientific knowledge is a body of statements of varying degrees of certainty-some most unsure, some nearly sure, but none absolutely certain." - Richard P. Feynman
I've been listening to the Feynman lectures. One point he makes is on the conservation of energy. We, now, take it for granted that energy is conserved in interactions. He stresses that not only do we not have proof that this is the case (in fact on a cosmological scale, it probably isn't), but we don't even know what energy is. It's just this human conjured quantity that we find useful. Probably fundamental, but maybe not.
It’s been said that science advances one funeral at a time.
More precisely: “A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.” -- Max Planck
Not exactly true, but Planck lived through a truly revolutionary period in physics, roughly 1900-1930. Thirty Years that Shook Physics: The Story of Quantum Theory by George Gamow gives an entertaining account of the period.
I’ll take men who think they are women for $1000 Alex.
FO Ken Jennings
Four degrees in the hard sciences, and I can tell you that **good** science is -- by nature -- skeptical, even of our own work. "Science" these days has a huge problem in that something like one-third of peer-reviewed published research cannot be replicated. An alarming number of papers are being are being retracted, not a few of them for fraudulent data.
It’s interesting when you look into it, Ken Jennings almost didn’t begin his legendary Jeopardy winning streak. In what I believe was his second game, he responded with “Who is Jones?” to the clue: “She’s the first female track and field athlete to win medals in five different events at a single Olympics.” The judges accepted the answer, allowing him to continue his run.
Ironically, the athlete in question, Marion Jones, had her medals revoked in 2007 after admitting to using performance-enhancing drugs. So, a statement that was considered fact in 2004 (based on events from 2001) was ultimately rendered false just a few years later.
Questionable questions" maybe be Ken Jennings favorite category, but "Jeopardy" has always taken care to avoid the questions he wants to ask (or is it the answers he wants to answer?). They don't ask yes or no questions (like is the earth getting warmer?). They ask (or answer) about Rutherford B. Hayes who took office in 1877, whether or not he really won the election. They would recognize the controversy around "birthright citizenship" and avoid asking what it means, at least until the Supreme Court has spoken.
"It used to be the settled scientific consensus that the earth was the center of the universe. You could get in a lot of trouble for doubting this."
Yes, and this repulsive little maggot yearns for those days.
MAGAts fed misinformation masquerading as news are often wrong but never in doubt. Imagine seething with rage when rational people reject their fever dreams. Trump lost the 2020 election, vaccines save lives, the nazi party was a far right political part are all objective facts that could appear as quiz show answers. Facts don’t have feelings, snowflakes.
Legal facts like birthright citizenship, or facts from the headlines like who won the 2020 election — these are not just contested things; now they are litmus tests for a certain kind of tribalism
Facts are facts and lies are lies.
Birthright citizenship in the U.S. Constitution is established by the Fourteenth Amendment, which states that all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to its jurisdiction, are citizens. This principle, known as jus soli, is a fact.
Joseph Biden won the Presidential Election in 2020. Biden received 306 electoral votes compared to Trump's 232. No one contests that count among the dutifully elected and certified members of the Electoral College.
Ken Jennings is a well-known leftist. Anything he says regarding politics is automatically suspect.
Ken Jennings ends his opinion well:
Fascism has never wanted historical fact and cultural excellence to be celebrated. They don’t want people to think deeply. Authoritarianism can thrive when people are not remembering facts or pondering things deeply, and that’s why there’s a lot of distractions in the culture to try to keep us from those things. But it’s important that we try.
Jennings also picks on liberals , Genius.
When Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer seemed to take a victory lap after President Donald Trump backed off on exorbitant tariffs in April 2025, Ken mocked the senator with a meme that read, "What do you mean your work is done? You didn't do anything."
Ken Jennings always thinks he is the smartest man in the room. Women don't concern him one way or the other. Alex Trebeck was so good because he made it about the contestants, not himself. Jeopardy is unwatchable with Jennings
"Legal facts like birthright citizenship, or facts from the headlines like who won the 2020 election — these are not just contested things; now they are litmus tests for a certain kind of tribalism, and that’s terrible for a society."
I suppose he has to believe these things, or at least say he believe these things, to keep getting the paycheck.
Wow Ken is a LOT dumber than I expected him to be. Science is never “settled” and he should understand that intellectually. Either you remain open to new evidence or you’re doing religion not “science.”
Obviously he doesn’t keep up with current events or he would not write that way about “vaccines” so broadl. Biden’s HHS literally changed the definition of vaccine so it does NOT mean “prevents disease.”
Jeopardy does their politics on the sly, by parading a cavalcade of trans contestants as if they were representative of the American public in general. Feh.
Fascism has never wanted historical fact and cultural excellence to be celebrated.
Hmm, so why does the left have so much opposition to celebrating the Army's 250th Birthday? Isn't a historical fact that they freed the US from an authoritarian King and were they catalyst that brought about the excellence of America that eventually freed the world from the ravages of Facism and Communism?
By 1999 NYC will be underwater.
Is it still considered knowledge when you know something that's not true?
I'll take Stay In Your Lane for 600, Ken.
Is it still considered knowledge when you know something that's not true?
Ah that's a special "knowledge" known as progressivism. Examples are widely available here.
As Richard Feynman explained "Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts." Anyone who thinks there is no doubt whatsoever about anthropogenic global warming of the efficacy of vaccines is doing politics not science.
Interesting that he didn't include the fact that gun possession is an individual right in America.
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