Best of Neil deGrasse Tyson Amazing Arguments And Clever Comebacks Part 1

do I believe in UFOs or extraterrestrial visitors I'm not authorized to answer that question where shall I begin our UFO first remember what the U stands for in UFO now there's a fascinating frailty of the human mind that psychologists know all about and it's called argument from ignorance and this is how it goes you ready somebody sees lights flashing in the sky they've never seen it before they don't understand what it is they say a UFO the U stands for unidentified so they say I don't know what it is it must be aliens from outer space visiting from another planet well if you don't know what it is that's where your conversation should stop you know then say it must be anything okay that's what argument from ignorance is it's common I'm a blame in anybody psychologists know all about it and it may relate to our burning need to have to know stuff because we're uncomfortable steeped in ignorance you can't be a scientist if you're uncomfortable with ignorance because we live at the boundary between what is known and unknown in the universe unlike what's right you ever see journalists any journalist you go to journalism you love journalists all articles about science is going to begin scientists now have to go back to the drawing board as though we're sitting up in our office you know masters of the universe as I looked somebody discovered some no we're always at the drawing board if you're not at the drawing board you're not making discoveries you're something else so the public it appears seems to have this burning need to have to have an answer to what is unknown and so you go from an abject statement of ignorance to an abject statement of certainty so that is operating within us let's start there second we know not only from research and psychology but simple empirical evidence in the history of science that the lowest form of evidence that exists in this world is eyewitness testimony which is scary because that's some of the highest form of evidence in the court of law but we know from second grade we is my guy from second grade get up to the microphone for a minute look grab the microphone grab the microphone in your classes have you done the famous experiment where you play telephone and you line up all your kids in class and one person starts with a story and then you hear it and you repeat it to the next person and the next we have you done that in class yet yes you've done that expect because what happened what happens by the time you get to the last person and they retell the story what happened it's like completely different it's completely different completely different okay because the conveyance of information was relying on eyewitness testimony which in that case is ear witness testimony and so let's thank you so we know that so he knows it he's in second grade all right so actually he should be in 12th grade it's devil so so now so now it wouldn't matter if you saw a flying saucer in science even if your tap something less controversial than a flying saucer if you come into my lab and you say you got to believe me I saw it and you're one of my fellow scientists I say go go back go home go back they have some other kind of evidence that's not just you saw it okay because human perception system is right with all ways of getting it wrong okay but we don't like thinking of ourselves that way we have high opinions of our human biology when in fact we should not I'll give you an example of how it reveals itself we've all bought and enjoyed books called called optical illusions right well we all love optical illusions but that's not what they should call the book they should call them brain failures okay that's what it is there's a complete failure of human perception all right all it takes is a few sketches that are cleverly done your brain can't figure it out all right so we are poor data taking devices that's why we have such a thing as science because we have machines that dope don't care what side of the bed they woke up in the morning don't care what they sent to the spouse that day doesn't care whether they had their morning caffeine they'll get the data right okay so maybe you did see visitors from another part of the galaxy I need more than your eyewitness testimony and in modern times I need more than your photograph which Photoshop probably has a UFO button today on your computer so here's that here's that here's what you do I'm not saying we haven't been visited I'm saying the evidence thus far brought forth does not satisfy the standards of evidence that any scientist would require for any other claim that you're going to walk into the lab with so here's what I recommend here's what I recommend next time you're abducted because I'm ready for this I'm ready okay I get abducted I'm ready okay so you're there you're like on the slab because they always do like the sex experiments on you on the Flying Saucer and so there you are and they're poking at you choose what you do you ready you tell the ant you'll be alien for this right so you're poking me all right so then either I'm on this side of it okay so I say hey look over there and then he looks over there you quickly flex snatch something off the shelf put it in the pocket and then lay back alright then you're done you come back and say look what I got okay I like stole the ashtray off the shelf the Flying Saucer and then you bring that to the lab it's not about eyewitness testimony at that point because you'll have something of a lien manufacturer and anything you pull off of a flying saucer that cross the galaxy is going to be interesting okay because even objects within our own culture I got this a device here okay the iPhone 10 years ago they would have resurrected the witch burning laws had you pulled this thing out and that's in our own culture our own culture produced this over a 10 years man so if there's some technology that crossed the galaxy that's going to be some serious stuff to look at in the lab then we can have the conversation until then I can't I'm sorry go ahead keep trying to find them I'm not going to stop you but get ready for that time you are abducted because I'll be looking for your evidence when that happens and and one last point on that is there are people who have looked up who look up all the time like for example the community of amateur astronomers in the world I was an amateur astronomer we look up what we come out of a building we look up done Matt where we looking up UFO sightings are not higher among amateur astronomers than they are in the general public in fact they're lower you say well why is that so well because we know what the hell we're looking at we know do you know because we study this stuff do you know there was a UFO sighting reported by a police officer because we think that because you have a badge or you're a pilot or whatever that your testimony somehow better than that of an average person it's all bad because we're human okay so there was a police officer who was tracking a UFO that was swaying back and forth in the sky okay reported I'm not on the hook there and up in one of the what do you call the cop the squad car chasing a UFO and the UFOs moving back and forth like this okay later it turned out the cop car was chasing Venus and he was driving on a curved road but was so distracted by Venus he thought Venus was the one movement and he wasn't even thinking that he was doing this so I have seen things which without my background in meteorology and astronomy and looking up I would have reported to the police department I would have like orographic clouds that form above huge mountains that are circular and they're above a tall mountain which means wherever you are the Sun can set for you before it has set for the cloud darkening the skies yet this cloud is now illuminated by sunset colors which are what red yellow orange and so and it's circular they've been reports of hovering circular ufos with light beams on them because people are looking at this cloud formation on top of mountains so maybe we have been visited by and maybe they've even landed but why do they land in like the farmers yard and not like Times Square all right and then I worried like maybe they had landed in time school but nobody took notice get over here that's the really big problem there and so what so this will have a huge incident because there's a lot built in it so here's another concern I had oh you said about movies earlier in memory Close Encounters of the Third Kind absolutely remember that and the aliens come in this big flying saucer sure okay and what do we do we turn on runway lights for it I'm thinking fly sources don't need runway lights they're flying saucers were good to say if you put any put a bull's-eye or something you didn't need it when we landed on the moon don't put runway lights for this thing then would you go to Roswell and there's like crashed flying sucks I'm thinking if the alien came across the galaxy and couldn't land a damn spaceship I don't want to meet the aliens there's stupid aliens all right you land on earth for goodness sake we'll tell me you came across the galaxy you can't land on earth go home bring me somebody who can then I'll have the conversation anyhow so those are my opinions on the side we got the big bang that's been going for a while now not everybody's happy with the big bang you found this billboard so so so apparently God isn't happy with the Big Bang I would have thought he'd be totally cool with it but apparently not our I found this bumper sticker in New Mexico The Big Bang Theory God spoke bang it happens this one is okay with the Big Bang but that God did the Big Bang so people are still trying to wrestle with this here's what we know this is the entire universe in one slide quantum fluctuations birth an entire explosion rapid explained a rapid expansion we call it inflation that's an idea that came about in the 1970s when there was inflation severe inflation in our economy so the word had a lot of currency back then now it's like you're inflating a tire like what are you doing you know there is the the baby picture of the universe that's that sort of aqua surface there that's sort of the imprint of what happened in very earliest moments rich in the background sky there it is the Cosmic Microwave Background a record of the earliest moments of the Big Bang then it takes a little time to make your first stars we call it the dark ages stars are made galaxies are made galaxies mature we come up to the present day 13.7 billion years later and that telescope we can't see the whole name it's called w map Wilkinson microwave anisotropy probe they clearly didn't want anyone to pronounce that or remember it I would just call it the Big Bang machine that made this measurement and so it's a pretty coherent picture that we have of the origin of the universe and here's that map that the the space probe shown and so this is a record of the earliest moments of the universe and it tells us what the universe was up to and data we're all pretty happy with this and we're kind of moving on if you look at the chemical ingredients of life itself you remember from biology class we're mostly water and good old waters h2o two hydrogen's one oxygen and if you could look at the sort of the element budget of life hydrogen is number one as expressed in the water molecule the number two in the human body is oxygen turns out number three in the human body is carbon four is nitrogen five you find on all lists is other okay now if you go to the universe that's the O on the periodic table you to know that that's not for oxygen and from other so you go into the universe number one ingredient in the universe is hydrogen that was true in life number two ingredient in the universe is helium we don't have that man doesn't like how come well because helium is chemically inert you can't do anything with it even if you wanted you can inhale it and sound like Mickey Mouse yes next in the universe is oxygen next carbon next other thank you and the third row there so actually that was the second row they must be related to this second row here we are one for one match up with the most abundant ingredients in the universe of these carbon is the most chemically fertile element in the entire periodic table you can make more kinds of molecules with carbon then all other molecules combined so if you are going to experiment through the forces of nature with complex chemistry and you have to pick an element to base it on carbon is your man or your woman however that goes okay so what I'm saying is given the given the what carbon is capable of doing perhaps we shouldn't be so surprised that there's life because we have carbon-based life we're just another one of the things carbon has rolled up its sleeve maybe life is inevitable given the abundance of carbon and oxygen and nitrogen and hydrogen in the universe I'm going to try to invert that view otherwise you're left thinking hey weird fashion you know how you know I'll give you right to say you're special if life on Earth were made of an isotope of business that stuff is nowhere in the cosmos and then we're made of it we're special ok but if we're the most common ingredients of the ingredients of the of the matter that we know and love you don't have an argument and with regard to cell phone use there's some very important fact of science and that is the act of measurement it's a fascinating thing measurement because you can never measure any precisely that is with unlimited precision you can only measure it with the uncertainties of your measuring device and all you can do in the lab is try to constrain how uncertain that measurement is but at some level would always be uncertain and here's what happens if there is if you're trying to measure a phenomenon that does not exist the variations in your measurement will occasionally give you a positive signal as well as a negative signal if that positive signal is the idea that maybe a causes B in this case cell phones cause cancer a paper gets written about that result and then people people get concerned that cell phones my course cancer or powerlines might cause cancer this goes way back and so in fact if you look at the full spate of these studies even those that they thought not to publish because it was not a positive effect there are some cases where in fact there's less cancer and so these are the phenomenon of a no result when you actually have a causing B the signal is huge it is huge and it's repeatable in time and in place with cell phones that repeatable signal is yet to be emerged from the total experiments that are done on it that being said if you're worried almost every cell phone you can you know they have the cell phones on your hip and you've got in earpiece so just do that if you're worried but otherwise we I can either say the jury is still out or the experimental results are consistent with no effect at all I don't want the religious person in the lab telling me that God is responsible for what it is they cannot discover because look at the hubris of that you're in the lab and you say I don't know how this works and not only that no one alive on earth knows how this works and not only that no one who will ever be born will know how this works that's kind of audacious when you think about it and then you put it down and go on to the next problem this problem is a cure for Alzheimer's or cancer or whatever else I don't want them in the science classroom and so the issue is simply about progress and discovery and in my recent forays into Washington well I've been closer to a community of Republicans than I have ever been in my life because I grew up in New York City and in New York City it's I think that person is Republican back there you see that no not that were the one behind that person yeah that's a Republican there's another one that's in New York that so you grow up this way and I get sort of baptized into a Republican administration I had two consecutive appointments in the Bush administration one on aerospace on the aerospace industry and one on space exploration the NASA's future basically and I realized something spending that much time in the community of powerful Republicans that Republicans above all else do not want to die poor so there's a limit to how far this will go and I bet most people in this room even those assembled at this table were highly concerned about the Dover trial wondering how that would turn and I looked at that and I said I'm not worried because it's a Republican judge and in the end if you put people who are not making discoveries in the science classroom that is the end of the foundation of your future economy and so I had a little more confidence than others did because of this a sensitivity to the the money aspect of it but we all know tomorrow's economies will be founded on on on innovations in science and technology and of course that gives cut short if we lose our civilization as what happened in Islam in 1100 and last thought I'll leave you with concerns me greatly if you do the math okay yeah just look you look at all the Nobel Prize winners that ever were some even in this room and ask how many were Muslim and it's like one maybe two okay I think a second one was in economics and the one we referred to was described earlier the co-winner of the Nobel Prize with Professor Weinberg Abdul Salam and he's not Middle Eastern Muslim he's Kotani Muzzin okay now how many Nobel Prize are won by Jews it's like the 4th of the Nobel Prizes okay some high fraction of the total and then you look how many Muslims are there in the world is like a billion Muslims how many Jews 15 million tops okay so you did ratio these numbers had Islam not collapsed in its intellectual standing in the year 1100 and he just do the ratios they would have every single Nobel Prize today so the fact that it's not only just a few it's near zero it is deeply worrying I'm concerned about what lost what what what what brilliance may have expressed itself and did not in that community over the past thousand years you you

Channel: Agatan Foundation

Views: 3,569,808

Rating: 4.8640885 out of 5

Keywords: Neil DeGrasse Tyson (Organization Leader), Moments, arguments, comebacks, part, one, Best, clever, Amazing, Atheism (Religion), Antitheism, Religion, Debate, Philosophy, Science, great, nice, answer, anti-theist, anti, theist, intelligent, bright, smart, church, morality, god, humanism, free will, theism, Christianity, Argument, Space, NASA, blackhole, earth, Darwin, agatan, foundation, fnd, alien, aliens, astrophysicist, astrophysic, Hayden Planetarium, universe, stars, planets, life, Best of, science vs religion, NDT

Id: Dkjkh3OrjeA

Length: 22min 54sec (1374 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 28 2015

Reddit Comments

[u/iAteTheWeatherMan]

Forgive me, but what happened in 1100?

[u/BeeInfantry]

He completely forgot the Ottoman Empire, what is he talking about

[u/tmc25]

A few simple points to rebut this:

(1) The truly amazing fact here is not the Muslims have won so few Nobels but that Jewish people have won so many. You could do the same comparisons with many other populations--Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, etc.-- and the Jewish winners will come out far ahead. That NdGT chooses to compare them with Muslims is mere rhetoric, since we could make more or less the same point substituting any other religion for Muslim.

(2) There have also been almost no Nobel prize winners from mainland China. But Chinese culture has long history of ingenious inventions, as well as great literary and philosophical works. Even today students from cities like Shanghai score the highest of any students in the world on standardized science and mathematics tests. So the explanation for lack of Nobel Prize winners isn't necessarily cultural backwardness and antipathy towards learning. "It's because the Nobel Prize is a Western game," as one of my Chinese colleagues told me once.

(3) Neil deGrasse Tyson commits the "post hoc, ergo propter" fallacy here. Just because one event (here the lack of Muslim Nobel prize winners) happened after another (the events in the 11th century) doesn't mean that the later event was caused by the earlier one. There could be lots of other explanations for the lack of Muslim prize winners, but he just randomly asserts that it is this one.

Edit: Also see the informative comments by /u/reslumina below, which are at the very bottom of this page because they appear under a comment where someone dared to praise Iranian culture:

"As for science in Islamic countries, what about people like Abdus Salam or Sameera Moussa? Did you know that the Islamic Azad University in Tehran is the third largest university in the world? Or that 42% of its students study engineering and technology (which is the largest field of study by enrolment)? Did you know that the number of universities in Indonesia (the country with the largest Muslim majority population in the world) has tripled since 1990? Or that 27% of the population is enrolled in tertiary education... a higher percentage of the populace than in the United States?

Instead of dumping on Islam and Islamic countries, let's put some meaningful metrics out on the table for discussion. Is the pursuit of scientific careers growing or shrinking in the modern Islamic world? What are the overall trends?"

[u/Wastedmindman]

Last minute of the video. ...

[u/myringotomy]

I don't think he is that concerned for them.

[u/jslusie]

He's not completely off- but his point about the nobel prize is weak in my opinion. Most of the middle east, as well as other parts of the world has a long history of extractive ruling- which holds back progress economically and discourages creative destruction. A good example is the printing press. When the printing press was brought into the middle east, first I believe to what is now Turkey, the religious leaders were very opposed to it- so while the rest of the world saw a huge leap in literacy rates for many many many years the middle east was left behind- so it could be something as small as that, that causes years of setback- the literacy rates in much of the middle east are pretty low.

[u/HopDavid]

Looks like a snippet from Tyson's naming rights shtick. He repeats these arguments in a number of vids.

In these vids he claims Hamid Al-Ghazali demonized math and science and thus ended rational thought among Islamic people. But Al-Ghazali did no such thing.

Often George Bush appears in Tyson's naming rights talks. He has Bush giving an anti Islam speech shortly after 9-11. According to Tyson Bush quotes the bible in order to distinguish Christians from Muslims. But Bush's actual post 9-11 speech called Islam the religion of peace. Exactly the opposite of the xenophobic demagogue Tyson falsely portrays.

A lot of his stuff he just makes up. Take everything Tyson says with a grain of salt.

[u/kcjg8]

I stopped caring about nobel prizes when obama won one. Not because I dislike him or don't support his presidency but because he literally did nothing toward peace but still got a nobel peace within like his first month in office?

[u/shadowban_this_post]

Leave history to the historians, Neil.