
Neil deGrasse Tyson: pedantry in space - jgrahamc
https://samkriss.wordpress.com/2016/03/14/neil-degrasse-tyson-pedantry-in-space/
======
rjeli
FYI, this article may have ulterior motivations. The author is a leftist
political writer (has supported violent resistance to Trump[1], compared him
to a toilet full of feces and declared America fascist[2]). There has recently
been a scuffle around NDT's tweet defending Americans who support Trump[3].

This is not to dismiss the contents of the article, but to provide context.

[1]:[https://samkriss.wordpress.com/2016/03/12/on-the-violence-
of...](https://samkriss.wordpress.com/2016/03/12/on-the-violence-of-politics/)

[2]:[https://samkriss.wordpress.com/2016/01/21/american-
aphanisis...](https://samkriss.wordpress.com/2016/01/21/american-aphanisis-in-
search-of-donald-trump/)

[3]:[http://www.redstate.com/moe_lane/2016/03/12/neil-degrasse-
ty...](http://www.redstate.com/moe_lane/2016/03/12/neil-degrasse-tyson-donald-
trump/)

~~~
nycthbris
Wow that redstate article is a stretch. Of course people against Trump for
president don't want other people to vote for Trump.

------
lomnakkus
I think NdT (and many others) illustrate perfectly the problem of being an
expert in one field and then straying into other fields thinking that somehow
your expertise in Field A carries over to Field B. In most instances it
absolutely doesn't![1] This is where humility comes in -- it's something most
scientists _should_ have been taught by failed experiments, failed classes(!),
&c. NdT (el al) probably _had_ humility early on, but I think the spotlight
may have gotten to them. Richard Dawkins seems to have fallen into the same
trap wrt. feminism ("Dear Muslima" and all that crap).

Plus, Twitter -- it seems -- can make idiots of all of us. Without someone
vetting it's just _way_ too easy to say the first thing that comes to mind...
which is usually the wrong thing... and then you're stuck defending it because
PRIDE.

[1] By way of example he recently ventured into commenting on biology...
badly. I'll spare you the details, but if you want to investigate, here[2] is
a decent takedown by an actual expert with links back to the original. (Not
that you need an expert to see the idiocy of NdT's remarks, but if you want
authority, you've got it.). I believe NdT has also previously spouted off
about the uselessness of Philosophy... which requires a pretty ignorant view
of Philosophy.

[2] [http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2016/03/17/some-
days-...](http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2016/03/17/some-days-its-
very-hard-to-defend-neil-degrasse-tyson/)

~~~
lomnakkus
(Too late to edit, apologies for the self-reply.)

I take back the "thinking that somehow" phrasing. Actually, I think it's more
like "being convinced that somehow". There isn't usually much thinking
involved.

------
slang800
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the argument behind this piece seems to
essentially be "ignorance is bliss and science is bad because it takes away
the mystery"?

It's hard to imagine a more anti-intellectual view than that. :P

~~~
wfo
The article suggests intellectual activity extends beyond fact-collecting and
saying "wow, gee whiz, isn't space incredible? And isn't it great that only
dumb people believe in God? I'm so much smarter than non-sciencey god-
believing peasants who don't even know what nebulae are"

It is deeply intellectual, far more so than NDT in fact. In particular note
where it eviscerates his attempt to stray beyond physics into history, where
his analysis is laughably false.

I don't know why but it's often the case that hard scientists, once they are
established and respected for doing hard science, feel like they are entitled
to go around pretending they can speak intelligently about any other field, no
matter how little they understand it. Probably the learned contempt and
disdain for the humanities that consumes and drives the culture of many of my
fellow STEM folks.

The article attacks the rigid inability of these people to shift their
thoughts from the strict empiricist/materialist framework (facts are what the
world is) as if they had read Wittgenstein's first book but forgot there was a
second -- and their inability to be intellectually flexible, which is the
reason why inevitably their attempts to dabble in the humanities flop
hilariously.

------
nycthbris
This article is highly subjective. Yes NDT can make a whole lot of things
boring if you'd rather not know how they work and prefer the mystery of not
knowing or taking a different perspective (whether correct or incorrect
factually). However the majority of things he describes are things that are no
longer mysteries to the existing scientific consensus. They are things we
actually didn't know about the world only a few hundred years ago. That is not
to say that the mysteries are gone at all. If you dig deep enough into any
topic in science (it's not actually as deep as some may think) you ask a
question where everyone who studies it says "we don't know the answer". The
mystery is still there, it has just moved away from things humans have been
able to systematically investigate up to this point in time.

Yeah, IFL science can get kind of annoying and its followers can come off as
evangelical but we're human and that's tribalism.

It was funny reading this bit given the point the author is making about a
shallowing of intellectualism. The author essentially shares the same thought
that the people he's mocking are having:

> ...and you are then supposed to think yes, I knew that, and imagine someone
> else, someone who didn’t know it already, some idiot, and think: I’m better
> than that person, I’m so much smarter than everyone else.

------
mbubb
Have to agree - bought his redo of Sagan's Cosmos and sat down with family to
watch. Serious bummer.

On atheism he is tedious - so much prefer Feynman or Steven Weinberg on the
subject.

------
antihero
The first part of this reminds me of what I think when coming back from a k
hole.

------
johnbm
TLDR: Mr Tyson pissed off the wrong people on Twitter (guess who) so now it's
open season.

~~~
Torgo
Complaints of this nature have been going on for a while, but they get flagged
off HN in record time by assblasted Tyson fans.

~~~
dang
They get flagged because they don't come close to belonging on HN.

Please don't post unsubstantive comments here.

~~~
Torgo
Lawrence Krauss, Richard Dawkins and Neil deGrasse Tyson all project a proud,
willful disrespect of philosophy, which has been noted and argued about on HN
substantively. I'm sure Tyson's Internet superstardom with the Reddit and
Imgur crowd has nothing to do with the instant backlash against only criticism
of him though, right?

~~~
dang
I'm not sure I understand why you're irritated. There's a pox on all of them
at HN, and a pox there shall remain.

Controversies about these characters mostly aren't interesting (in HN's sense)
whether they're in the key of zeal or the key of critique. Whoever's flagging
them is doing us all a favor.

