See Neil DeGrasse Tyson and Ari Melber debunk common science propaganda

this is the news we deal in facts and what I'm about to tell you is a fact I'm joined by one of our favorite guests acclaimed astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson has spent decades exploring the mysteries of our universe and also explaining them in ways that we can understand now he's turned his attention to some of the problems in one planet on the universe inside the universe Earth the new book Starry Messenger urges us to really think critically and objectively about what we're up to and whether we can keep this planet we have here he writes we sow hatred of others fueled by what we think is true or what we want to be true without regard to what is true we've lost all sight of what distinguishes facts from opinions we love grenades at one each other edit one another and we could be sharing beers in pubs Neil is here shout out to drinking together and finding facts great to see you thanks actually I leaning towards wine but but beer is you wrote beer I did write beer I totally wrote beer there uh we know you from so many things but you're clearly taking the scientific rigor that people love about you and I think sometimes learn from you and applying it to some some really big topics why this now what do you want us to think about uh this book has been gestating within me for decades just in fact I can remember my first thoughts when I was scientifically literate early middle school I'd look around and I'd see adults saying things making decisions commenting holding opinions it was like what wait where did that come from have you thought about it this way do you understand the data and it's been gestating within me and then the book was birthed whole it was and I realized all of these parts of society could benefit from dose of a cosmic perspective just what does that look like from above but also an infusion of science literacy and critical thinking in a way where your argument that you thought you held firmly and you thought you were opposite the person you were fighting with in fact from another perch you could learn that you both actually agree more than you disagree or you're both equally wrong and you'll realize it together okay either of those are our progress in any kind of between any warring factions in modern society Yeah you mentioned the factions some of this goes back a long way people debating what is God who's got the right belief system I mean we do that's old school stuff right yeah that is however this country the United States um was quite the fascinating experiment in that regard it's whatever is your personal Truth uh it's welcomed uh but you can't tell someone else you can't require someone else have your personal truth and that gave religion freedom to express itself in all stripes in all varieties in this country that's remarkable and so but that's a particular kind of Truth in the chapter truth and Beauty I I go into this in great detail but I I had to split the word truth into three parts because there are many people who especially religions they really attach themselves to the word truth and I don't want to take that away from them so there's a personal truth is Jesus your savior is is Abraham your you know in your in your lineage is is Muhammad your last savior is ancestor or your ancestors watching you these are these are cherished beliefs and it works provided that if you have that belief you don't then rise to power over laws and legislation and have those laws and legislation Force others into that same belief system so the pluralistic feature of this country I think is something that Canon should be cherished so how does science distinguish wait slip in a political truth you know what that is no it's not it's what becomes true simply because it got repeated so many times our brain has this has this failure mode well we think it's a success mode where you hear something so many times your brain says must be true yeah repetition is a big part it's the foundation of all of all um uh um what did Hitler do with the um what's the term there where you believe this and I'm going to print this and it's not propaganda thank you thank you thank you for helping you guys the question but you asked me the question what did Hitler do I was like well a lot a lot which thing a lot so so repetition is is a foundation of propaganda but the scientific truth is what you establish to be true through experiment observations repeated verified and when that is done it is true whether or not you believe in it and if you're going to base laws and right on on something that has to apply to everybody it seems to me the objective truth should be your primary motive so you say objective truth just then uh let me read from you on objective truth in the book objective truths of science are not found in belief systems they're not established by the authority of leaders of the power of persuasion nor are they learned from repetition or gleaned from magical thinking to deny objective truths is to be scientifically illiterate not to be ideologically principled explain that important that's one of my best sentences in the book yeah you're finding that well we found it we found it but explain that split because you do something that I think is very important that sometimes belief and ideology especially the way we're tribally organized which you also write about becomes its own test if you're down with this goal you got to be down with this other stuff and then before you know what that means being down with things that at one point you might have known were questionable or not true and now you glom onto them it's a portfolio a portfolio of beliefs walk us through that well no because science one of the things that does best is unpack things that are otherwise glued together that you think all have to all have to roll in one in in in in one coherent shape you unpack and say no this works but that doesn't no I'm not going to ride with that because you've attached it to this but I'm not going to go with you on that because I'm thinking about this what happens is we like following leaders and and they we let them do our thinking for us and I can't Embrace that no that wouldn't seem like I don't mind leaders but that doesn't even have to agree with everything the leader says okay and so um what what all it means is if you pose an argument there might be holes in that argument and you and you need to be a little bit open to that and I don't mean holes that I'm right and you're wrong it could be a hole that well we're both wrong and there's a new place we can agree on and that's when you go out and have a beer there's an Unwritten uh ethos between two scientists in an argument and that Unwritten ethos is either I'm right and you're wrong well you're right and I'm wrong or we're both wrong we know that in advance so we're not fighting to the death you fight to the point where you say you know this extra bit of data will help decide which of these World Views is correct and can I join you in that I'm guessing that with Scientists if they acknowledge that error rates exist and Vary but virtually no humans or systems have a hundred percent accuracy sooner or later they will be on the wrong side of an empirical debate well so I mean you have to understand how science works and that's not taught in school it starts you know it's starting school here's a book and and the vocabulary words are in both face in the chapter right memorize those and they test it and then you move on where is where do you learn what science is and how and why it works and why you can trust it and what it means to trust it what do you have to do to get to the point where you can believe what the scientist says and not the person who wishfully thinks something is different so I have a big question for you because you you tackle ethics and they're different competing systems of Ethics historically on Earth many of them have involved some appeal to a higher power yes this power or this God creates this ethics are there ethics in the non-human rest of the Galaxy I don't know um you know ethical ethics as well as just sort of morality I can tell you this whatever ethics or morality we agree to have as Society progresses and by the way the ethos of today was not the same as 50 years ago or 100 years ago you know there would have been another day when I was would have been a slave okay and so the ethics and morality evolves and it evolves according to sort of rational discourse about what is right and what is wrong are there permanent ethics on Earth do you think can you point to any that are permanent I don't know what's permanent but I do know that if you think something is permanent that's usually not a good sign because you attach to it and then as the world moves on it could have a different outlook on that I'm old enough to remember the Sunday newspaper had a section called the women's section yeah that was like sort of ethically the right thing because what do women do they are at home and in that section were recipes and coupons and all the things women did at home and nobody nobody critiqued that for decades right and finally we get into the 1970s and the moving Frontier of the the second wave women's live movement and all that changed but it took that long to do it you needed an entire Civil Rights Movement to happen first and then everyone said well how about the women and that so so I'm I will not accept something as eternally true given that we continue to mature in this world and this this this Treatise is an attempt to show you how your most cherished feelings maybe there's holes in them but you kind of have to be open to that a little and I try to be playful in ways you know just so that you're not thinking this I'm not this I'm not lecturing at you here and the book is not even very well it's 200 Pages it's not even very big so it's it's there for you to taste and you know before I lose you because I want to jump around to the book please please I'm doing too much talking here no you're here to talk uh you then turn to physiology why why is that important to you that we explore our understanding of that oh my gosh because in the in the body and mind chapter think about it um we judge what is normal and what is not and what does that even mean is normal just the average is a normal person but do we compare that we know you have Model Homes is there a model person that has all their working faculties and then you compare yourself to that if you're not that you're not normal are you disabled if they can do something and you can't right is that how we're gonna is that how you wanna do this because if that's the case I give examples okay um the New York Yankees okay Jim Abbott was a pitcher for the New York Yankees he threw a no-hitter for the New York Yankees oh by the way he only has one hand okay he has had higher how do you fire how how do you do this right that's pretty great okay and um there's another person who's a champion archer okay a champion archer can shoot arrows both better than nearly everyone on Earth he was born without arms am I going to say that he's disabled because I have arms and he doesn't no I'm not going to do that you can't make me do that because we're all who we are and you you work with the hand are you are you disabled because you can't do math okay is that how we're going to think about it you know I was bad about it you just do it you look through it you you look like you're like if I can't draw am I disabled because I'm not an artist so there's a whole analysis of how we Define what is normal and what is not and the reason why an astrophysicist is telling you about this is because we have the entire universe that we classify there's a star is it odd is it average is it this how do we lay them out think about them that goes the final question yes we are living in a time of unparalleled technological advancement and yet we're saddled by all of this misinformation and stupidity we're seeing more of the Galaxy I believe tell me if I'm wrong than we've ever seen in previous generations you write Rank by distance site is very important the farthest thing visible to the human eye is a twin of our own Milky Way the Andromeda Andromeda the Andromeda see I knew I'd need help the Andromeda galaxy named for the the the the the woman saved by Perseus in Greek legend yeah Andromeda well there's a J Cole song she don't want to be saved but that's for enough uh she's about to be consumed by the Kraken so yeah she wanted to be saved and you write it sits two million light years away be far beyond the stars of the night sky what does it do for us in English plain English that we have gone as a global Community from seeing that far with as you say the naked eye to what we're now seeing just in the last years farther through the Galaxy and its own history what can we as a people what is someone watching the program what do they take from that day-to-day life that we can now see more of the galaxies now you can take one of the greatest of all Cosmic perspectives that exist and it's the Revelation that emerged mid 20th century that the atoms of our body are traceable to the crucibles in the centers of stars that then later exploded scattering that enrichment into pristine gas clouds that then form star systems with planets one of which was the sun with Earth so that we're not simply in this universe alive yes the universe is alive within us that is a gift of modern astrophysics to civilization that borders on the spiritual so that when you stand out in the night sky and look up do you say well I'm small and the universe is Big you might say that and to be true but a bigger fact than that is you are made of the same ingredients as those Stars we're not just poetically we are literally Stardust that achieve consciousness to contemplate the extent of the universe in which we live and so the the greater is that moving Horizon the more of this we find that we are participant of in the great unfolding of cosmic events spending a little time with your mind is a joy a joy uh I think I got part of what you said the book Starry Messenger is in bookstores now foreign hey I'm Ari melber thanks for watching the beat I wanted to let you know I'm writing a forward to the January 6 committee's full report which is coming out soon from Harper Collins you can go pre-order the book right now and it'll come to you first when the report comes out in the fall or whenever the government releases it just search melberjan6 on Amazon or your favorite independent book site and click pre-order you'll be the first to get both the report and my new piece on the coup conspiracy you can also go to melberbook.com and order it there [Music] thank you [Music]

Channel: MSNBC

Views: 2,019,645

Keywords: Ari Melber

Id: uds82Ay37CE

Length: 16min 46sec (1006 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 23 2022