> As a scientist and educator, my goal, then, is not to become President and lead a dysfunctional electorate, but to enlighten the electorate so they might choose the right leaders in the first place.
This reeks of extreme arrogance. A type very common in academia. The presumption that the masses are ignorant, while you, anointed and blessed, are simply brilliant.
No.
If you get off your high-horse and actually talk to them, you'll find that they are just as brilliant as you, in their own ways.
Our problems don't stem from the majority wallowing in ignorance. They are not ignorant. Our problems stem from divergent interests. What is in the interest of one, is not in the interest of his neighbor. The path to a healthier nation is in finding creative ways in resolving those conflicts of interest.
At the risk of being labelled as negative, I'm going to disagree. The majority of people just don't care. They don't care about politics, about science, about reason or about anything outside of their day to day lives and relationships. That's how it's supposed to be.
As it turns out, the average person isn't brilliant, anointed or blessed (this is due to the meaning of the word "average"). Saying that everyone is "brilliant in their own way" is a cop out, a platitude that's no better than saying nothing at all. Intellectual curiousity, love of learning and scientific rigor are real things, and a large number of the humans on this planet don't possess them. If you object to the idea that Neil DeGrasse Tyson is more brilliant than most, then you're in danger of losing touch with reality.
If NDT is showing any arrogance, it's in thinking that he has the ability to raise the level of public discourse. He's really smart, but apparently not smart enough to realize that no amount of education can change the basics of human nature. You can teach people how to think, but you can't make them like it.
A laughably small number of americans vote in presidential, much less local elections. And many of those voters have only the shallowest understanding of the issues being decided upon. deGrasse Tyson has a point...education may be democracy's only hope.
ASIDE: I'm noticing rampant selection bias on hn. It's important to remember that most of the people on this planet are nothing like us. Working at tech companies and hanging out at tech events it's easy to believe that everyone is as intelligent, reasonable and hard working as our family and coworkers. Most people just don't have the same love of learning and/or hacking that we do. While we value knowledge and intelligence above all, most humans don't and there's nothing wrong with that.
If NDT is showing any arrogance, it's in thinking that he has the ability to raise the level of public discourse. He's really smart, but apparently not smart enough to realize that no amount of education can change the basics of human nature.
If this were true, then Jews as a demographic wouldn't have a reputation for being well-educated and literate. What you're talking about is as much cultural as it is inherent, if not moreso. And if it's cultural, then education can change it.
I think you're right. You are probably always going to have a normal distribution, or close to it, but how tight that distribution is and where it is centred is I think something that can be changed with some effort.
Certainly it is possible to make the population as a whole dumber (just stop public education for instance), so it makes sense that, unless we happen to be doing everything brilliantly right now, we can do better as well.
> I'm noticing rampant selection bias on hn. It's important to remember that most of the people on this planet are nothing like us.
And there's the crux. There is a forum just like this one somewhere on the Internet that is entirely devoted to Justin Bieber. It probably has more users than HN.
To you and Mr. Tyson, they're ignorant twits because ...
> They don't care about politics, about science, about reason or about anything outside of their day to day lives and relationships.
To me? It's just a conflict of interest. They're different. Apples and oranges.
Are apples better than oranges? In some cases, but not in all. Anyway, I don't want to live in a world filled with only apples. Variety is the spice of life. Go spend some time with an orange.
1. To be fair, (I assume) most of the posts on Justin Bieber forums are from people that are not of voting age.
2. People think of them as 'ignorant twits' because they don't realize that by ignoring such things decisions that affect them are being made for them. It's too easy to find yourself in a situation you don't like because you were too busy ignoring what was going on to realize what was happening. E.g.:
“There’s no point in acting all surprised about it. All
the planning charts and demolition orders have been on
display in your local planning department on Alpha Centauri
for fifty of your Earth years, so you’ve had plenty of time
to lodge any formal complaint and it’s far too late to
start making a fuss about it now.”
The problem isn't lack of access to information or the motivation to exercise your freedoms, it is the rampant apathy of the masses.
I do not believe I am better than anyone or that I care more for the welfare of the world, but I just try to learn and contribute as much as I can.
I am saddened by the fact that most people do not realize how long it took for life to emerge and how much longer for liberty to be considered a birthright.
We really need a perspective shift on our planet if real change is going to happen from within the populace. It is also discouraging that most people put the burden on the shoulders of a few to lead and fix the world and get angry when they find out they have little or no say in the direction of society. It's a double-edged sword.
There is definitely a selection bias on HN, exactly why this is one of my top five news sources. I strive to get a 360-degree perspective on the happenings of the world.
A laughably small number of americans vote in presidential
I'm sorry but it's not logical to waste time with something which has no impact.
If there was any incentive, people would come. Like $5 or tax reductions, I don't know.
It's not rocket science to increase the participation. But I guess the vote of the pragmatic is not desired.
Actually the fact there is no incentive at all shows they want as few people to vote as possible, globally.
Maybe it's because opposition mobilizing themselves more is what allows the country to alternate leadership easily instead of being stuck in the same ideology forever, at the expense of the other 48%. Or maybe the alternate leadership is like our beating heart, a constant source of ideological thought, instead of the slumbering effect of an eternal monolithic party like in China. Be careful what you wish for.
Anyway when the choice you have is Blue or Red, "educating the masses" has little impact.
But maybe masses having little impact is actually perfection...
> If NDT is showing any arrogance, it's in thinking that he has the ability to raise the level of public discourse. He's really smart, but apparently not smart enough to realize that no amount of education can change the basics of human nature. You can teach people how to think, but you can't make them like it.
I don't disagree with you here, per se, but I think a lot can be done with education. Maybe not "change the basics of human nature", but we can probably get them to enjoy thinking and we can probably raise the level of public discourse by a significant degree.
I'm not saying it would be easy or quick, but I think that it's possible. Indeed, it seems to me to be the arc of history, to paraphrase a bit, even if it is irritatingly long.
> no amount of education can change the basics of human nature
When was the last time you saw someone nail a cat's tail to the ground and pelt it with rocks? Back... oh, not that long ago, evolutionarily speaking, that was just the height of entertainment. The absolute limit.
Now, only a few generations of First Worlders not having seven kids and getting to keep two, a few generations of public education and most people knowing how to read, a few generations of not starving because of locusts or drought or Act of Monarch, we have a population of people even the /b/-tards of which will step in to defend a cat.
It takes a long time. It is a long, slow, agonizing crawl. But we are making it.
We have politicians who think all geologists are lying about the age of the earth and actually believe in a sort of divine manifest destiny.
There comes a point where merely learning to resolve our differences is (although necessary) not sufficient. Some things (such as, for example, Democracy imho) require a baseline education and scientific literacy.
You put crap into a democracy, you are going to get crap out. The process works pretty well for executing the will of the people, but it really does next to nothing as far as data sanitation goes; it simply was not designed to do that.
(On the other hand, the constitution itself was designed to be a crap-filter of sorts. Instead of just putting every single issue to a vote, the constitutions makes some things unusually hard to push through. The first amendment is basically a filter to prevent the "will of the people" from being executing if it violates certain principles (of course a strong enough "will of the people" can remove these filters).)
There's a question to my mind as to how much of the posturing on evolution, anthropogenic global warming, resource depletion, age of the earth, etc., is based on true belief and how much is tactical stupidity. I could go either way on that. Many people are highly self-delusional.
I would agree, if we were just talking self-identified phone surveys or something. But we're talking about people saying their children shouldn't learn about those things. I can't imagine purposefully making your children grow up thinking something is so wrong, you are an immoral person to consider it, unless they genuinely believed it as well.
So to call it tactical stupidity is messed up on a scale I'm not prepared to level at such a large number of my fellow citizens (as an American), or anyone really. I'd rather think someone willfully ignorant than that willfully mean.
Tactical stupidity is knowing the truth but being unable or unwilling to admit it. In an extreme case, you might call wilful ignorance (including depriving yourself of information) to be an extension of this.
Depriving others (particularly your own children) of factual information starts sliding into the "true belief" side, so far as I'm concerned.
It may be messed up, but it's also fundamental human nature. As Heinlein observed: man not a rational animal, he's a rationalizing animal.
True. Some of these politicians may be "playing dumb" for political reasons.
Though really that just makes it a question of if the politicians and their constituents are in need of a better education, or just their constituents.
Whichever is the case, I think an increased emphasis on science education is important.
>If you get off your high-horse and actually talk to them, you'll find that they are just as brilliant as you, in their own ways.
Seems fairly unlikely that the majority the 200,000,000+ eligible voters are nearly as brilliant, in any way, as this particular astrophysicist who graduated from Harvard and earned a PhD at Columbia.
>Our problems don't stem from the majority wallowing in ignorance. They are not ignorant. Our problems stem from divergent interests. What is in the interest of one, is not in the interest of his neighbor. The path to a healthier nation is in finding creative ways in resolving those conflicts of interest.
Getting everyone to vote in the direction that's actually in their own best interests would be a huge step.
People are mind-bogglingly ignorant, and it is demonstrably so. I don't know how one could even claim otherwise.
>If you get off your high-horse and actually talk to them, you'll find that they are just as brilliant as you, in their own ways.
These ways obviously don't lend themselves to scientific literacy, knowledge of international politics or human rights, or rational appraisal of facts. Maybe an individual has an amazing ability to console those in distress - that's GREAT, but it doesn't grant them immunity from criticism for ignorance of important worldly issues.
Frankly your attitude is typical of American "everyone is special" bullshit. In other cultures if you're uneducated you are looked down upon. While it's probably deeply unsettling to sensibilities that promote understanding and tolerating differences in individuals' capacities to contribute to society (which I do support), perhaps that outlook has some merit after all.
Based on my reading you're conflating ignorance with an apathy toward evidence and information based decision making.
I agree with the author that most people lack the ability or desire (I'm not sure which) to _seek_ an objective reality even if it's unlikely a truly objective reality exists. I think this is what he characterizes as "scientifically literate". And while you can argue up and down that data can be used to mislead people just as easily as rhetoric, I'd prefer the latter to the former because at least then there's something tangible to discuss (methods for data collection, data presentation, etc).
He's making a statement of goals consistent with his temperment and skill set.
He's an educator and scientist. He has knowledge, knows how to process systematic knowledge (qualifications of a scientist). He can express and explain his knowledge, and enjoys doing so (qualifications of an educator).
He's probably much less skilled and/or interested in politics, negotiating, electioneering, campaigning, and leading, all required of a politician / statesman. He may actually be able to do these things, but very likely dislikes doing them.
I know that my own preferences and skills lean similarly, though I can fill a leadership role in a pinch / emergency situation.
Arrogance need have nothing to do with it. Sounds much more like an accurate self-assessment in my book.
As to the problems we're facing: some result from ignorance, some from tactical stupidity, and yes, many from divergent / conflicting interests.
NdGT is suggesting his own ability/interest in negotiating such conflicts may be insufficient to fill a political role.
Everybody has a prejudice or two without adequate basis in reality. Most people don't realize that they have prejudices. Of those who do, most don't bother to do test them further than inspecting a few cases of confirmation bias.
It's not the ignorance or the intelligence of the American populace that upsets me. It's the inability to imagine that they might be wrong.
You say our problems stem from divergent interests, but yet what he speaks to here is our ability to observe objective truths, and to build our solutions on those. Our current system has no interest in building or finding solutions that help everyone, but instead in pushing their own agendas in the assumption that once "we" win, "they" will have to admit how right we were!
He's saying that our subjective opinions of what the facts SHOULD be (often our very notion of what is in our best interest,) should be investigated until we come to an objective reality of what is in our best interests. He's saying science provides those answers if we can get beyond ourselves.
He says we should not elect people only to chastise them for being both too smart, or too dumb. How, from that, do you get "he's saying we're dumb!" He's not saying someone is dumb, and someone is smart. He's saying as a scientist, it's his job to hunt for objective truths, and that as an educator, he seeks to teach everyone to find those truths.
Should scientists and educators not... Educate and seek objective truths? Isn't that kind of the point in those professions? What's arrogant about that? What's EXTREMELY arrogant about that?
> The path to a healthier nation is in finding creative ways in resolving those conflicts of interest.
That's the entire purpose of government and has been since the dawn of time. Even authoritarianism is a "creative way [to] resolve those conflicts of interest".
Do you really know we're talking about NDT, right? One of the most hard-working scientists when it comes down to educate people. And you're saying this:
> If you get off your high-horse and actually talk to them, you'll find that they are just as brilliant as you, in their own ways.
I think you're reading too much into it. The point is everybody hates (or at least complains about) their elected leaders, despite the fact that they keep electing them. Rather than complain, he chooses to educate. That is "arrogance"?
Seems like quite a reach to simply say "no" to the idea of one of the greatest scientists of our time being more enlightened than the average person. Is this just a troll or are you being serious?
This reeks of extreme arrogance. A type very common in academia. The presumption that the masses are ignorant, while you, anointed and blessed, are simply brilliant.
No.
If you get off your high-horse and actually talk to them, you'll find that they are just as brilliant as you, in their own ways.
Our problems don't stem from the majority wallowing in ignorance. They are not ignorant. Our problems stem from divergent interests. What is in the interest of one, is not in the interest of his neighbor. The path to a healthier nation is in finding creative ways in resolving those conflicts of interest.