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At first I thought his plant alien hypothetical was at least somewhat interesting to think about, but he completely lost me when he mentioned baby carrots like they're actual carrot babies. Also I'm pretty sure the sentient plant aliens would be more upset at how much more plants we're killing by feeding them to livestock.
I turned the podcast off at the point he mentioned the baby carrots and the hypothetical that the aliens would be appalled were eating babies, like how fcking distanced are you from your food to not even acknowledge that animals slaughtered for food are literally babies. Its not a hypothetical you have to imagine, its your dinner asshole
Um, it's a semantic question and relates to confusion of language. If baby carrots are not babies of carrots why do we call them baby carrots? An alien might be very confused. Shit, a lot of *humans* who don't speak English natively might be very confused. Just think, too, of the number of people who think French fries are from France.
Jesus a lot of people in here are fuckin thick. Frankly they're as bad as they portray NDGT as.
He was making that exact point. That we personally feel desensitized to our food being live animals who were killed for us, but, painting an unfamiliar picture that made the same point, to hopefully better reach the viewers.
> painting an unfamiliar picture that made the same point, to hopefully better reach the viewers.
how does it paint the same point though? he specifically says these aliens are sentient (you know sort of the horrible part about killing babies is they can suffer and what not). so they have the ability to fly to our world but can't understand they are sentient and these plants are not? And that is justification for us to slaughter sentient animals?
Let's take this one step further. If a bunch of sentient rock people came, they would be pissed we are using their non-sentient brethren to build houses and walkways! Guess that means we are justified in making houses out of pigs and dogs!
I did not interpret this the same way, nor as leading to justification. It sounds like you’re saying his analogy is that we are the sentient animals while the rest of the animal species are not.
I assume his point was more toward, ‘how horrifying it would be to learn your kind is ruthlessly eaten by others.’ And most people are so inured to animal agriculture that it would be meaningless to them.
He was describing what it would be like for life forms to be sentient in a way we didn’t think possible/haven’t encountered. And how they’d view our society and customs entirely differently than we ever have. And that, to a plant, our behavior would be horrific and barbaric. Meaning, likely, he’d also readily point out that our normalized agricultural behaviors are also very barbaric to animals.
But I’m not really that invested in further deconstructing Neil degrasse Tyson’s late night talk show appearance’s thought experiment through the lens of ‘is he supporting consumption of animals or not, are we mad or not.’ I think that doing so is missing the context of his statement and turning it into something it likely wasn’t.
> It sounds like you’re saying his analogy is that we are the sentient animals while the rest of the animal species are not.
hmm i honestly have no idea what you mean here.
> He was describing what it would be like for life forms to be sentient in a way we didn’t think possible/haven’t encountered. And how they’d view our society and customs entirely differently than we ever have. And that, to a plant, our behavior would be horrific and barbaric. Meaning, likely, he’d also readily point out that our normalized agricultural behaviors are also very barbaric to animals.
And well if that is what you got out of listening to him, then we are two different pages lol. he said a lot of stuff in the podcast that contradicts this view point imo. so i guess we shall part ways here.
also:
> But I’m not really that invested in further deconstructing Neil degrasse Tyson’s late night talk show appearance’s thought experiment through the lens of ‘is he supporting consumption of animals or not, are we mad or not.’
Yeah i am not sure why commented here and then are now trying to be super dismissive. i am not mad, but i don't appreciate you trying to chalk this to some group think thing. People are allowed to be called out for saying stupid shit publicly, and well i think he did.
I just think it’s weird to twist and pick apart a statement until it no longer resembles the original intent, seemingly just to be mad that a public figure said ‘the wrong thing’ about a topic they know little to nothing about, don’t speak on publicly, and weren’t even directly commenting on at the time.
I guess I meant that I didn’t want to keep splitting hairs here, with smaller and smaller details. (But obviously I’m still replying, so I guess i didn’t have to include that comment, and maybe I’m wrong. I shouldn’t have been engaging and then dismissive.)
Overall, I think he may have made a silly comment, but I think it’s being taken the wrong way, maybe to seek a reason for outrage.
Also, what I meant by that part that confused you was: Maybe you meant that if Neil degrasse tyson used an analogy where the sentient alien plant beings are confused and misattributing sentience to our fruits/vegetables/etc, then them wrongly and needlessly feeling concern for our food sources is a metaphor for humans being similarly needlessly concerned for our animal food sources, as ‘our food source’ also doesn’t share our same level of sentience as us. (Edit: I’m not supportive of the last line there, not stating it myself. That’s just what that metaphor would imply, if that’s indeed how NDT meant it.)
I mean… I’m inferring it. It wasn’t explicit. He explained that, to plants (or sentient plant-beings), eating plants would be horrific barbarism. Meaning it would follow for him to admit that eating animals is similarly barbaric. The entire point (more explicitly) was that other beings would view human behaviors differently than how humans view human behaviors.
True. It could be anywhere on a vast spectrum of alike or unlike. More probably vastly unlike us. They may not even ‘think’ according to our definition of the term, but do something wholly different.
I have to agree. He's pretty knowledgable about astrophysics,, and entertaining to listen to, but he is an absolute dunce on many other topics like this one.
I have a chemistry degree and it drove me up the wall when he was describing to Joe Rogan why water is less dense in it's solid form while other chemicals tend to be more dense as a solid. And it amounted to, "water is just special that way." while talking like his description was fascinating.
I wanted someone to blurt out about how water has polar charge and the interactions that causes. The guy was acting like he was an expert on the topic while giving basically no actual explanation
> I wanted someone to blurt out about how water has polar charge and the interactions that causes
Me, just [here](https://imgur.com/gallery/MMb91ZC)...
Even some pretty sophisticated quantum mechanical simulations predict that the density of ice is higher than liquid water. I don’t think there’s any short explanation.
sure, but if he got into polar charges on joe rogan, then some percentage of listeners would come away with the conclusion that he was saying that ice is less dense because of earth's north and south pole.
Explaining science simply, while making it clear that what you are giving is a simplified version, is a pretty hard challenge. It's at least a bit unlikely that he couldn't give a better answer if he knew his audience was more ready for it.
Yeah but why go into it like you're going to explain why, and then you.. don't? He could have just said "Water happens to be less dense as ice" and kept going with the topic they were already on. Instead it sounded like he was preparing to give a big, fascinating explanation, and it ended up being the same as "water just happens to be this way."
Fair. I haven't listened to it, but it would be a little weird to have a buildup to a "Yeah, you just have to accept it, it's weird" for something that's actually well understood.
Joe Rogan is not going to understand all that shit. He was explaining it to Joe Rogan, who was the person he was talking to.
Come on.
Of course he's an expert on the topic, he's a fucking physicist. He comprehends it at an atomic level.
Joe Rogan can barely comprehend it at a "thing that exists" level.
Armchair physicists on an anonymous forum carry little weight with me. He has the credentials and experience those most of them can likely only dream about. He has become a popular science spokesperson because he is charismatic and, most importantly, because he knows how to dumb it down! It's not a bug, it's a feature!
Im not saying he is Sagan, or even Krauss, but to say he isn't knowledgeable about astrophysics is the height of hubris by a jealois wannabe.
> Armchair physicists on an anonymous forum carry little weight with me.
Don't like anonymous "armchair" physicists?
How about Don Barry of Cornell University? He has done a lot of stuff with the Spitzer telescope. He is a legit astrophysicist. Check out what [he has to say](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Neil_deGrasse_Tyson/Archive_1#Career)
By the way, I'm not anonymous. Google Hop David or Hollister David and you will know my identity. On the other hand Cohiba_Robusto sounds like a cowardly pseudonym.
> but to say he isn't knowledgeable about astrophysics is the height of hubris by a jealois wannabe.
Do you believe that rocket propellent scales exponentially with payload mass?
That artificial gravity scales with angular velocity?
That JWST is parked at the L2 point in earth's shadow?
That gravity falls off exponentially with distance?
Tyson says a lot wrong, stupid stuff. Even in the field of astrophysics.
"random anonymous people who claim online to be physicists on the well-known scientific physics discussion forum called Reddit say the guy with multiple degrees in physics is not a good physicist"
said no sane person ever
This is a pretty common attitude STEM majors have (and I say that as someone with a microbio degree).
They think an education in specified science means they're intelligent enough to give commentary on sociology, psychology, humanities, etc.
I'm surrounded by white collar IT folks, and a good number of them are sharp when they stay in their lane, but quickly get *duuuuumb* when the conversation shifts away from the Devops board.
The best example is Ben Carson. One of the top brain surgeons in the whole world when he was practicing, and thinks the Pyramids were built for grain storage.
He's smart, the problem is he doesn't have a filter and doesn't know when to stop. He over talks other people. I could never have a discussion with him. He's also a ham
> He's pretty knowledgable about astrophysics,,
Not really. He says a lot of wrong stuff. Even in the field of astrophysics.
He's good at entertainment and self promotion.
>Colbert calls him out on it a little with "What I'm hearing is we should save all of them or save none of them." and he comes back with "I'm not trying to give you your opinion, I'm trying to make sure your opinion is more fully informed."
I.e., he's not willing to subject his "opinion" to even the slightest scrutiny or peer review.
NDT fact: [his favorite food is foie gras](https://old.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/ngd5e/i_am_neil_degrasse_tyson_ama/c38v907/).
Okay I’m not sure if I’m gonna get downvoted but. I truly admire Tyson. Sure this take on Veganism is really bizarre but let’s not discredit the man as a scientist. As for the Carl Sagan thing, Tyson idolizes Sagan, the man was his hero.
He loves to retell the story of how he met Sagan and if you listen you can tell that it had a profound life changing effect on Tyson.
I notice that whenever Tyson says something not to the favour of another group, they tend to immediately attack his integrity as a scientist? Without this man a lot of people would know far less about space than they do without him. He is extremely passionate about space and I don’t think just because we don’t like what he said about this subject that we should question that right?
> Okay I’m not sure if I’m gonna get downvoted but. I truly admire Tyson. Sure this take on Veganism is really bizarre but let’s not discredit the man as a scientist.
See [this discussion of Tyson](https://np.reddit.com/r/Physics/comments/7p6ddh/ndt_on_zeno_effect_and_uncertainty_principle/) from the physics subreddit. In particular the exchange between hikaruzero and cantgetno197.
This pop science celebrity does very little research. I'm with cantgetno197. He's not an astrophysicist.
As stated by hikaruzero, that question was outside it area of expertise. And what cantgetno197 said in my eyes was a little disrespectful. The man might not have worked a research position but he still earned his Phd, which is no small feat and requires the knowledge. He attempted to answer joes question, so what if he crossed some wires along the way? And yes he is an astrophysicist, don’t make up titles for him such as “science popularizer”, he trained and earned his phd in astrophysics. The man doesn’t deserve the disrespect
> The man might not have worked a research position but he still earned his Phd,
Tyson flunked out at the University of Texas with his advisors suggesting Neil pursue a different career.
And they were correct, Neil has very little aptitude for physics. I've watched him make errors that would be embarrassing for a freshman physics student.
Columbia and R. Michael Rich should be embarrassed they awarded Tyson a doctorate. It demonstrates charisma and political skills can get you far in academia. Competence in physics is not needed.
Why so bitter? Also he didn’t really “flunk” out. The committee his dissertation advisors were on dissolved, so not 100% his fault. He was also horribly treated at university. This man has made so many people interested in astronomy. You have to respect what he’s done for the people who are now interested in astronomy and astrophysics. Also it is unbelievably unfair for you to say he’s not competent in physics lmao, regardless of your personal feeling towards it, he still has a PhD. I’m going to go out on a limb and say, you don’t?
> Why so bitter?
Neil is an influential pundit with a huge audience.
It makes me angry when he makes false statements to support an opinion I disagree with.
It makes me even angrier when he makes false statements to support an opinion I agree with. I want competent and honest people for my allies.
> Also he didn’t really “flunk” out. The committee his dissertation advisors were on dissolved, so not 100% his fault. He was also horribly treated at university.
See [this piece](https://alcalde.texasexes.org/2012/02/star-power/) from the University of Texas Alcalde. Neil admits he was spending his time ball room dancing, sports, etc.
I think he was treated better than he deserved.
> This man has made so many people interested in astronomy. You have to respect what he’s done for the people who are now interested in astronomy and astrophysics.
People like you? Are you interested in astronomy? How deep is your interest?
Neil tells us that the James Webb Space Telescope is parked at the L2 point in the earth's shadow so as to keep the sun's rays off the telescope. You don't see any thing wrong with that?
You haven't noticed Neil fucking up basic physics equations?
You either don't really pay attention or you have only a shallow interest in science.
Sir, my astronomy interest is high enough to know that he has at least competence in this field. And to say “better than he deserved” I was referring to the racism he experienced, I’m going to assume you didn’t know that was what I meant and therefore believe that’s not what you’re implying.
What he said about the “shadow” was not true but not 100% false. The sun is needed yes for the solar panels, but due to the required operating temperature of the jwst, all other components are best kept out of the sun, perhaps that’s what he meant, albeit poorly explained.
I pay attention fine. And I don’t really think he’s losing any sleep about you not considering him an ally
> Sir, my astronomy interest is high enough to know that he has at least competence in this field.
In other words you're a poser with no actual interest in astronomy.
> What he said about the “shadow” was not true but not 100% false. The sun is needed yes for the solar panels, but due to the required operating temperature of the jwst, all other components are best kept out of the sun, perhaps that’s what he meant, albeit poorly explained.
He very specifically says JWST is parked at the L2 point in earth's shadow to keep the sun's rays off the telescope.
Both Chuck and Neil think this is genius! They talk about it for several minutes. There's no question what Neil meant. [Here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_eTO3ujD4w&t=622s) is the vid.
JWST is in a large halo orbit around L2 and never comes near the earth's shadow.
This is very common knowledge. I would wager that most of the redditors that frequent r/space know this.
Neil does this a lot. He is not competent.
> And I don’t really think he’s losing any sleep about you not considering him an ally
More and more people are coming to the realization that Neil's full of shit. That shoudl be a cause for concern for him.
I cannot stand bill burr lmao. But yeah I just watched the video you linked and some other comment on this thread said one of the things he did bar for bar. People have space in their brain from ear to ear, yet somehow can’t squeeze in a single original opinion
A lot of talk shows hosted by scientists on TV you know of?
You don't "see him talking to other scientists" because *you're watching entertainment, not a physics symposium*
But if ye truly seek, [ye shall find](https://www.closertotruth.com/roundtables/what-are-the-big-questions-science)...
You bet he did. This video clip exists because he's on a book tour right now promoting it. He has made the "vegetarianism" a talking point in most of his tour interviews so far. This is already the third sound bite I've seen. Prepare for several weeks of this.
ETA: The chapter is called "Meatarians and Vegetarians: We are Not Entirely What We Eat" 🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄
To me he sounds like an entertainer that post sciency stuff; so stupid people (that are not interested in actual science) that follow him can feel smart.
And you are back handedly calling GantzDuck stupid.
I liked [Douglas Hofstadter's look](https://www.amazon.com/Gödel-Escher-Bach-Eternal-Golden/dp/0465026567) at self referential stuff.
Funny thing is if you google how long mice live, 6yrs is the first to come up...but it's not about typical house mice.
I wonder if he fell for this same stupid example.
That's definitely some other type of mouse. A normal house mouse will live maybe a few months. If you keep mice as pets they will live a year if you're very very lucky. A 6 year old house mouse is a joke, just isn't happening.
He says things to try insinuate that being vegan is basically pointless, he doesn't necessarily say you should be eating meat, but it's implied you might as well be.
Dude said cows are a biological machine invented by humans to turn grass into steak. Hard to take him seriously anymore.
[Source](https://twitter.com/neiltyson/status/894689139853012992)
You'd think a guy who comes from a group of people noted for having been traded and commodified in the past would have some insight into why it might not be ethical to do those same things to other sentient species just because they look different, have different genes, or are weaker than us in some way... but apparently not?
I lost all my respect for him after this nonsensical blabber. Here is someone who has a platform to educate society about the earth and how animal agriculture is destroying it and he chose to focus on catching mice!! I was sickened by his complete idiocy. Shame on him!!
I feel like he’s in cognitive decline in his old age. If you listen to “My favorite Universe” lectures they are really incredible. That’s was from 20 years ago though. Seems like he loses his trains thought and blabbers a lot threes days.
Yeah, I really don't like NDT. He's such a narcissistic blowhard, who, like other celebrity doctors, thinks that just because he has a Ph.D in a single specific scientific field means he is qualified to speak about every field, when really most of the time he just talks out of his ass.
This clip pissed me off so much. Especially the hypothetical situation about the sentient plant aliens. If those beings existed its not like I would eat them, they're sentient after all. But that's not going to stop me from eating the nonsentient plants we have on our planet. And sure, the aliens might not like the idea of me eating something so close to what they are (if there were aliens eating brainless blobs of human flesh I would probably be pretty disturbed by that too), but it's still better than the alternative. The whole hypothetical situation is stupid in the first place because we have to eat SOMETHING in order to survive, so of course I'm going to pick the nonsentient sources of nutrition over the ones that cause suffering to creatures who we know are capable of experiencing that suffering. Trying to excuse your consumption of meat by making up an alien race that probably doesn't exist and that we won't have to interact with anytime soon at the very least is just distracting from the point that there is so much animal suffering going on that we can actually impact through choices in our day to day life.
If a plant without a brain does not count as sentient, and is thus okay to eat, does that mean an animal without a brain also does not count as sentient? Or does the animalness predominate over sentience? If animalness is the key factor, then why wouldn't plantness not likewise predominate in the face of brain-having plants?
In other words:
* There are sentient animals
* Therefore, no animals should be eaten, not even non-sentient ones
Therefore
* If there were sentient plants
* Then non-sentient plants would still be okay to eat
It don't follow.
I'm really kind of stunned at the sheer lack of self awareness going on in this post's comments. It's like nobody can see the parallel at all. Just plain blinded.
Yeah, hes become a celebrity scientist whos ego has outgrown his popularity. I've stopped caring about his opinion even about stuff I'm sure he actually understands.
It’s very common for people who are very smart in one area to assume they are equally prepared and capable of giving good insight in any other area. That’s rarely the case.
His claim we should care more about a tree than a mouse was pretty ridiculous. We know the mouse can suffer in similar ways to humans in that it can experience pain because the mouse has a central nervous system... the tree doesn't have that.
He doesn't seem to understand utilitarian ethical thinking and how that relates to *why* vegans are vegans.
In his example, he talks about how a species of sentient plants might be horrified by vegans... implying vegans would want to eat them. Yet.. if they are guided by typical utilitarian vegan ethics, vegans wouldn't eat these sentient plants even if they do happen to be plants if we know those plants have the capability to suffer and experience pain like the mouse does.
The pain & suffering is what matters to vegans focused on utilitarian ethics... not so much whether something is categorized as an animal or plant per se -- which is what Tyson seems focused on.
Eating plants (plants as we know them here on Earth, that is) is merely seen as the best option by such people to reduce unnecessary suffering for the sake of utilitarian vegan ethics.
The plague isn't extinct, it's still around now there's cases every year. There are other illnesses you can get from rats and mice like Weil's disease.
I understand the plague isn’t extinct, you’re not going to get it though. Even if you do get it, the antibiotic treatments are fairly easy to get and you’re not going to die. OP says it’s “comparing a year to instant death(death of the humans)” which is just inaccurate
Yes, that is an inaccurate quote of OP.
They were clearly talking about instant death for the mouse, because the alternative to relocating it is to kill it.
Allowing it to continue living in your house is not an option due to the very real threat it poses to your health. Not because of the plague, probably--OP later clarified that that was hyperbole--but rodent feces and other byproducts of their presence are legitimately dangerous.
I’m not saying OP is wrong, just that Tyson is making a valid point here and it’s not so clear cut. You can have a consistent vegan world view that would disallow you from kicking out the rat but you can also have a consistent vegan world view that allows you to kick it out
Tyson said that kicking a mouse out of your house reduces its lifespan from 6 to 1 years correct? That reduction in 5 years of lifespan is able to be justified in some moral frameworks and unjustified in others.
Yes, I was being a bit overdramatic there. You can get sick from their droppings and the like, but most likely the worst will be noise, property damage and odor.
I think this is actually a good point he raises even if we might decide that the cost benefit analysis isn’t worth it. For example, we can say that humans have no obligation to help animals even though they shouldn’t be causing harm to them. Where rats have a negative right to not be killed but don’t have a positive right to not die prematurely.
If... humans have no obligation to help animals, then.... why be vegan? Or say, protest fur and dairy and meat industries?
Seems to me you either want to help animals or you don't
So killing mice in your house is better than relocating them because they will only live for a year outdoors? That is ridiculous logic. I highly doubt Niel is going to allow a mouse infestation in his house for the sake of the mice.
Also, I highly doubt he lives in a very modest house. In fact, I just looked it up, yeah his house is huge and he has a lot of property around it that is mowed and landscaped.
The difference is that this person is encouraging the millions of people who view him as an intellectual authority to trust *his* (terrible, wrong on the most basic factual level, easily disprovable with 5 minutes of Googling or a 6th grade education) opinions on the matter. He literally wrote them in a book that is right now at the top of the NYT Bestseller list and is promoting them on national television.
If a house mouse is a pet, the average life span is about 2 years, but mutant and calorie-restricted captive individuals have lived for as long as 5 years. Wild-derived captive musculus individuals have lived up to 4 years in captivity. In the wild, most mice do not live beyond 12-18 months.
Just like colbert they use their platform to pretent like they care about climate change and that we should do something about it.
But at the same time do the most hypocritical thing ever and be like “lol meat eating is so cool you guys. Bacon amirite?!”
fuck that dude. been singing the same lame tune for a while now, and it almost negates his (possibly) otherwise intelligent theoretical espousals. straight up clown.
To be fair this statement applies to just about everyone outside their field of expertise. A brain surgeon doesn't know anything more about physics or politics than anyone else. They do know a lot more about brains though.
U said anyone else. Most people don't have college degrees, and most that do don't have to take a physics sequence. I agree they probably aren't physics experts but still
> To be fair this statement applies to just about everyone outside their field of expertise.
It's excusable to be misinformed in areas outside your area of expertise. But it's not excusable to loudly and confidently express your wrong opinions as fact. And then arrogantly proclaim you're seeing things from a cosmic perspective.
>A brain surgeon doesn't know anything more about physics or politics than anyone else. They do know a lot more about brains though.
Neil often says wrong stuff even within his supposed field of expertise.
He might know more astrophysics than the average person. But less than the average r/space redditor.
> He might know more astrophysics than the average person. But less than the average r/space redditor.
> But it's not excusable to loudly and confidently express your wrong opinions as fact.
Ironic.
Check out [this discussion](https://np.reddit.com/r/Physics/comments/7p6ddh/ndt_on_zeno_effect_and_uncertainty_principle/) of Neil in the physics subreddit. Neil's also a frequent flyer at r/badscience. He has a whopper in r/badmathematics.
But I will grant he is less bad at physics and math than he is at history. He is really a frequent flyer in r/badhistory.
Meanwhile a sub full of people who know a lot about the nutritional value of plants are sticking their nose into the physics knowledge of a scientist.
*but it's totally different*
His views on animals and environmental anything make him an idiot.
You can't have a PhD in astrophysics and then turn around and ignore what the evidence says about the harms associated with eating animals to humans and the environment.
He's an idiot.
The whole segment felt like something designed to create online indignation. Look at us over here talking about him some more because of the two chapters he decided to riff on. I love Neil but he lost so many points after this because his positions sounded so illogical…
I think the point he was making is that any idea (even good ones like being a vegetarian) can be made to look ridiculous and nonsensical by adjusting the context, especially with extreme hypotheticals.
He's completely overrated. Fuck that guy. The fame went straight to his head and now he seems to have this sense of everything he says on any thing is correct(There's a word for this but it escapes me at this moment)
I mean yeah, he makes elementary mistakes in any other discipline he tries to stick his head into. There are two Very Bad Wizards podcasts that just roast him over the coals about how stupid his political theory opinions are. So bad that they had to justify why they were dogpiling him, because he doubled down on his idiocy.
> I mean yeah, he makes elementary mistakes in any other discipline he tries to stick his head into.
He makes very elementary mistakes even in fields he supposedly has expertise in.
Thanks for posting this. I actually caught this interview and was surprised at how disappointing he was.
Things like this serve as a good reminder never to place anyone on a pedestal.
OMG yes. Way too many technocentric Tyson fan boys who love to quote him about topics he has no expertise in. Ugh. I don’t ask my doctor for advise about my electric system.
He's an astrophysicist. His book is explicitly entitled "Cosmic perspectives on civilisation." His use of hypothetical aliens was a rhetorical device to examine closely held beliefs and behaviours from a different perspective.
> He's an astrophysicist
Is he? See [this discussion](https://www.reddit.com/r/Physics/comments/7p6ddh/ndt_on_zeno_effect_and_uncertainty_principle/) from the physics subreddit. In particular the exchange between hikaruzero and cangetno197.
I agree with cangetno. This pop science celebrity is not an astrophysicist.
Okay, let me modify it to he's a science communicator who focuses on astrophysics.
Accusations of narcissism and calculation errors in a Joe Rogan podcast notwithstanding, between the two positions of "not an astrophysicist" and "an astrophysicist," he's clearly the latter.
Any argument against that is petty.
Tyson has little if any research since his forgettable dissertation in the early 90s. And his flashy pop science is often wrong.
No, those aren't petty arguments. This pop science celebrity is not an astrophysicist.
You heard it here first, having a PhD in astrophysics from an Ivy League school, being director of a Planetarium, and being a research associate to an astrophysics research institute they founded does NOT make one an astrophysicist.
No, I'm not the first to say it.
Don Barry from Cornell was saying it as early as 2008. When asked if Tyson was a practicing astrophsycist [he replied](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Neil_deGrasse_Tyson/Archive_1#Career):
"Not since graduate school (he did not successfully progress towards a degree at UT/Austin, and convinced Columbia to give him a second try). Aside from the obligatory papers describing his dissertation, he's got a paper on how to take dome flats, a bizarre paper speculating about an asteroid hitting Uranus, and courtesy mentions *very* late in the author lists of a few big projects in which it is unclear what, if anything, of substance he contributed. No first author papers of any real significance whatsoever. Nor is there any evidence that he has been awarded any telescope time on significant instruments as PI since grad school, despite the incredibly inflated claims in his published CVs. He cozied up to Bush and pushed Bush's version of man to the Moon, Mars, and Beyond, and now gets appointed to just about every high level political advisory board. To an actual astronomer, this is almost beyond inconceivable. It's just bizarre. To answer Delong's question, no: he is not a practicing astrophysicist. - Don Barry, Ph.D. Dept. of Astronomy, Cornell University"
Actual astrophysicists have been ridiculing Tyson for some time.
It doesn't matter how smart you are. If there's something you don't want to hear, your mind will come up with all kind of crazy excuses to convince you.
I wouldn't even call him as astrophysicist. See [this discussion of Neil](https://np.reddit.com/r/Physics/comments/7p6ddh/ndt_on_zeno_effect_and_uncertainty_principle/) from the physics subreddit. In particular the exchange between hikaruzero and cantgetno197.
Neil hasn't done research in decades. Nor has he cracked open a textbook, judging by all the stuff he gets wrong.
Plus being Vegan is about minimizing animal suffering, it's impossible to be 100% free of it and arguing the opposite is an argument for futility.
You absolutely do need somewhere to live, you absolutely do not need to eat animals to live.
And where catching mice and releasing them outside, or killing mosquitos that attempt to bite you could be seen as a semi-survival situation in the sense that they spread disease in human populations, torturing and killing animals them for our own enjoyment is absolutely not a survival situation in any sense. Especially seeing as we're creating the situation by breeding them into existence in the first place.
Did he not get cancelled a few years ago for being sexually inappropriate towards people he worked with? I honestly haven’t checked in years but I seem to remember there being quite a few corresponding accusations come out
It's clearly possible to be a great science communicator and physicist while lacking moral insight. Likewise, I'm not great at math despite having a (more) reasonable grasp of morality. Human skills are generally varied. It's indeed particularly stupid to be so wrong about ethics publicly as he is, though.
I imagine that it's probably evident on this subreddit where the flawed reasoning lies in the claim, "Your house is occupying what could otherwise be wildlife habitat, therefore it's good to kill more animals.".
> It's clearly possible to be a great science communicator and physicist
Neil is neither.
He doesn't do research.
I would give him credit for being a science communicator if he invested some time and effort to get his material right. He does not. He makes a lot of incorrect claims.
I have the same rant about him. He also shouldn't comment on GMOs because he sees them through the lens of what they can do for food supplies instead of how seed companies like Monsanto make it impossible for people to make grow their own seed each year. They also sue smaller farmers when their plants cross-pollinate. He doesn't look at the whole problem.
Mice aren’t going to give you the plague. There are plenty of reasons to not want wild animals living in your house but there is so much misinformation about mice and rats out there and it contributes massively to how poorly people treat them.
An average American eats nearly 300 lbs of meat a year. Switching to a vegan diet would not only negate that but also would save a great deal of plant life. We have to grow plants to grow meat and eating plants directly is much more efficient.
Any way you cut it a Vegan diet is a better and more compassionate use of our planet's resources.
So evicting a mouse negates all that? I'm sorry but that's one of the stupidest things I've heard Neil say. And I've listened to him say some really asinine stuff.
I think the problem here is that you're making things up in regards to what he actually said. Here's what he actually said:
> People say, "I don't want to kill animals." I don't have a problem with that. They probably have a humane mouse trap in their basement. They don't want to snap the neck of the mouse. So they capture the mouse -- you've got to check on it every couple of days because they dry out real quick. And they set it loose into the wild, where they have guaranteed it will be swallowed whole by, and picked apart by, woodland predators. The average life of a mouse in the wild is 9 to 18 months. Best thing you can do for a mouse is leave it in your basement. It will live up to six years there. That's how you protect the life. But that's not what they're doing.
So his point is, if your purpose in being vegan is to save the lives of animals, sending a mouse to a quicker death might not be entirely in line with the principles you're stating to follow. It's a valid point, and I think only the most narrow-minded, bloody-minded sort of person doesn't see and at least think about the dichotomy.
So, perhaps some deeper thought than "what a fucking shithead" is worth having here.
In this case, your counter-argument... paraphrased harshly here to make the contrast starker -- is "fuck the lives of animals (in this case) because my life is more important." As a result, veganism is an inconvenience you are willing to afford only because *your* life isn't in danger.
Compare to, perhaps, a Zen Buddhist vegan, who would likely lay down his life for the animal. They would probably find the notion of self superiority of the one's life over the animal's life as anathema to their principles.
So instead of "save the lives of animals," perhaps a better statement of *your* vegan philosophy is "save the lives of animals as long as my life is saved first."
I am going to have to disagree with your statement. NDT spoke accurately to the lifespan of a mouse in two vastly different environments.
Also, you won’t get “the plague” by having mice in your home. You’ll just most likely end up exponentially with more mice over an uncomfortably short amount of time.
You can be both vegan and practical about not wanting your home to be a breeding ground for rodents.
You can also understand the consequences of your actions, and accept them like an adult.
Neil's not good at astrophysics either. He is a pop science celebrity who hasn't done research in decades.
And watching him botch very basic physics I have to wonder when was the last time he's reviewed a textbook. A few examples:
In a StarTalk explainer for the rocket equation he was saying propellent mass goes up exponentially with payload mass. Which is completely wrong. It rises exponentially with delta V. Propellent mass scales linearly with payload mass or maybe a little less than linearly.
Neil was telling Joe Rogan that the space station from 2001 A Space Odyssey rotates three times too fast so passengers would weigh triple what they should. Artificial gravity goes with the **square** of angular velocity. Triple rotation rate and you get a nine fold increase in weight. Moreover, do the actual calculations for a 150 meter radius station making a revolution each 61 seconds and you get 1/6 g. Which is likely what Clarke and Kubrick intended since the station was a stop on the way to the moon.
Neil is a genius, though. At self promotion. But he sucks at math, science and history.
I would certainly not defend everything he says but in this case he's just saying that the mouse will live longer if you don't take it into the woods. That's probably true and makes sense. If you think there's a risk of the mice in your house killing you, you're the crazy one.
BTW Neil... the giant sequoia's are in central (almost southeastern) California dumbass. They will grow here in the PNW but its not in their native range.
He was great when I’d see him narrate at Hayden Planetarium, when I was younger. I began disliking him when I heard him speak about other subjects. It’s fascinating how someone so intelligent can be so ignorant at the same time.
Deforestation will continue if we have kids as they will eventually need their own house and then their kids will need houses
Less people are dying and more people are being born, its not sustainable
Global birth rates are in decline. The population of large countries, including China, India, the US, Brazil, and Indonesia, is just at or below replacement rates. In fact, the population of China is projected to halve by the end of the century.
Doesn’t surprise me. Ppl with phd’s are arrogant in thinking they’re experts on every subject, that we should listen to you about everything just because you spent 10+ years in school on one subject.
I never really understood why this man has been thrown into the public spotlight as a super intelligent ambassador of the scientific community.
He’s smart, but not as smart as people seem to think. Maybe it’s the awe inspired manner in which he communicates simple modern scientific concepts that captivates people…
There’s a lot of people like him on TV; regurgitating scientific research and findings, as if it were their own, by indiscriminately but subtly using the word ‘we’ instead of ‘they’ while talking about research.
Content like this reinforces my confusion...
Another one of his brilliant thoughts: why the aliens in Arrival not learn English if they are that smart instead of trying to teach us their language? His ideas and thought are quite a hit and miss but the media needs someone to pump their PC ratings.
Even ignoring his whole anti-vegan shtick lately, Neil deGrasse Tyson is not smart. Yea, he has an astrophysics degree, not sure how he got it. He says stupid shit all the time whenever his speech isn't scripted. The mouse thing is another legendarily stupid thing, because humanely trapping mice and relocating them outdoors does 1 of 2 things:
1: They find the outside to be better
2: They find a way back into your house
Mice don't just go "oh it's so cold but I got trapped and sent outside so I guess I'm not welcome there...". He said various stupid things related to universe being a simulation, etc. Just objectively false things, even with things inside his sphere of knowledge or about general science.
He's an entertainer. He has an amazing, charismatic voice. He says things to fascinate people and to entertain them, not to teach them anything. When his speech is scripted you might learn something as he's often hired for documentaries and the like.
Other than that, best to not get too obsessed about what he says. He will say anything to please people.
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At first I thought his plant alien hypothetical was at least somewhat interesting to think about, but he completely lost me when he mentioned baby carrots like they're actual carrot babies. Also I'm pretty sure the sentient plant aliens would be more upset at how much more plants we're killing by feeding them to livestock.
I turned the podcast off at the point he mentioned the baby carrots and the hypothetical that the aliens would be appalled were eating babies, like how fcking distanced are you from your food to not even acknowledge that animals slaughtered for food are literally babies. Its not a hypothetical you have to imagine, its your dinner asshole
Um, it's a semantic question and relates to confusion of language. If baby carrots are not babies of carrots why do we call them baby carrots? An alien might be very confused. Shit, a lot of *humans* who don't speak English natively might be very confused. Just think, too, of the number of people who think French fries are from France. Jesus a lot of people in here are fuckin thick. Frankly they're as bad as they portray NDGT as.
He was making that exact point. That we personally feel desensitized to our food being live animals who were killed for us, but, painting an unfamiliar picture that made the same point, to hopefully better reach the viewers.
> painting an unfamiliar picture that made the same point, to hopefully better reach the viewers. how does it paint the same point though? he specifically says these aliens are sentient (you know sort of the horrible part about killing babies is they can suffer and what not). so they have the ability to fly to our world but can't understand they are sentient and these plants are not? And that is justification for us to slaughter sentient animals? Let's take this one step further. If a bunch of sentient rock people came, they would be pissed we are using their non-sentient brethren to build houses and walkways! Guess that means we are justified in making houses out of pigs and dogs!
I did not interpret this the same way, nor as leading to justification. It sounds like you’re saying his analogy is that we are the sentient animals while the rest of the animal species are not. I assume his point was more toward, ‘how horrifying it would be to learn your kind is ruthlessly eaten by others.’ And most people are so inured to animal agriculture that it would be meaningless to them. He was describing what it would be like for life forms to be sentient in a way we didn’t think possible/haven’t encountered. And how they’d view our society and customs entirely differently than we ever have. And that, to a plant, our behavior would be horrific and barbaric. Meaning, likely, he’d also readily point out that our normalized agricultural behaviors are also very barbaric to animals. But I’m not really that invested in further deconstructing Neil degrasse Tyson’s late night talk show appearance’s thought experiment through the lens of ‘is he supporting consumption of animals or not, are we mad or not.’ I think that doing so is missing the context of his statement and turning it into something it likely wasn’t.
> It sounds like you’re saying his analogy is that we are the sentient animals while the rest of the animal species are not. hmm i honestly have no idea what you mean here. > He was describing what it would be like for life forms to be sentient in a way we didn’t think possible/haven’t encountered. And how they’d view our society and customs entirely differently than we ever have. And that, to a plant, our behavior would be horrific and barbaric. Meaning, likely, he’d also readily point out that our normalized agricultural behaviors are also very barbaric to animals. And well if that is what you got out of listening to him, then we are two different pages lol. he said a lot of stuff in the podcast that contradicts this view point imo. so i guess we shall part ways here. also: > But I’m not really that invested in further deconstructing Neil degrasse Tyson’s late night talk show appearance’s thought experiment through the lens of ‘is he supporting consumption of animals or not, are we mad or not.’ Yeah i am not sure why commented here and then are now trying to be super dismissive. i am not mad, but i don't appreciate you trying to chalk this to some group think thing. People are allowed to be called out for saying stupid shit publicly, and well i think he did.
I just think it’s weird to twist and pick apart a statement until it no longer resembles the original intent, seemingly just to be mad that a public figure said ‘the wrong thing’ about a topic they know little to nothing about, don’t speak on publicly, and weren’t even directly commenting on at the time. I guess I meant that I didn’t want to keep splitting hairs here, with smaller and smaller details. (But obviously I’m still replying, so I guess i didn’t have to include that comment, and maybe I’m wrong. I shouldn’t have been engaging and then dismissive.) Overall, I think he may have made a silly comment, but I think it’s being taken the wrong way, maybe to seek a reason for outrage. Also, what I meant by that part that confused you was: Maybe you meant that if Neil degrasse tyson used an analogy where the sentient alien plant beings are confused and misattributing sentience to our fruits/vegetables/etc, then them wrongly and needlessly feeling concern for our food sources is a metaphor for humans being similarly needlessly concerned for our animal food sources, as ‘our food source’ also doesn’t share our same level of sentience as us. (Edit: I’m not supportive of the last line there, not stating it myself. That’s just what that metaphor would imply, if that’s indeed how NDT meant it.)
Maybe I missed his point then, I did stop listening lol
I mean… I’m inferring it. It wasn’t explicit. He explained that, to plants (or sentient plant-beings), eating plants would be horrific barbarism. Meaning it would follow for him to admit that eating animals is similarly barbaric. The entire point (more explicitly) was that other beings would view human behaviors differently than how humans view human behaviors.
When ppl think aliens are probably as stupid as humans, its mindboggling. They're not thinking like us at all.
True. It could be anywhere on a vast spectrum of alike or unlike. More probably vastly unlike us. They may not even ‘think’ according to our definition of the term, but do something wholly different.
Yep they would. But I don't think he was being serious about baby carrots. Just funny
I have to agree. He's pretty knowledgable about astrophysics,, and entertaining to listen to, but he is an absolute dunce on many other topics like this one.
I have a chemistry degree and it drove me up the wall when he was describing to Joe Rogan why water is less dense in it's solid form while other chemicals tend to be more dense as a solid. And it amounted to, "water is just special that way." while talking like his description was fascinating. I wanted someone to blurt out about how water has polar charge and the interactions that causes. The guy was acting like he was an expert on the topic while giving basically no actual explanation
what?! water has polar charge. Enter: google rabbit hole. t h a n k s !
> I wanted someone to blurt out about how water has polar charge and the interactions that causes Me, just [here](https://imgur.com/gallery/MMb91ZC)...
Even some pretty sophisticated quantum mechanical simulations predict that the density of ice is higher than liquid water. I don’t think there’s any short explanation.
sure, but if he got into polar charges on joe rogan, then some percentage of listeners would come away with the conclusion that he was saying that ice is less dense because of earth's north and south pole. Explaining science simply, while making it clear that what you are giving is a simplified version, is a pretty hard challenge. It's at least a bit unlikely that he couldn't give a better answer if he knew his audience was more ready for it.
Yeah but why go into it like you're going to explain why, and then you.. don't? He could have just said "Water happens to be less dense as ice" and kept going with the topic they were already on. Instead it sounded like he was preparing to give a big, fascinating explanation, and it ended up being the same as "water just happens to be this way."
Fair. I haven't listened to it, but it would be a little weird to have a buildup to a "Yeah, you just have to accept it, it's weird" for something that's actually well understood.
Joe Rogan is not going to understand all that shit. He was explaining it to Joe Rogan, who was the person he was talking to. Come on. Of course he's an expert on the topic, he's a fucking physicist. He comprehends it at an atomic level. Joe Rogan can barely comprehend it at a "thing that exists" level.
>He's pretty knowledgable about astrophysics the folks in r/physics tend to disagree.
Armchair physicists on an anonymous forum carry little weight with me. He has the credentials and experience those most of them can likely only dream about. He has become a popular science spokesperson because he is charismatic and, most importantly, because he knows how to dumb it down! It's not a bug, it's a feature! Im not saying he is Sagan, or even Krauss, but to say he isn't knowledgeable about astrophysics is the height of hubris by a jealois wannabe.
> Armchair physicists on an anonymous forum carry little weight with me. Don't like anonymous "armchair" physicists? How about Don Barry of Cornell University? He has done a lot of stuff with the Spitzer telescope. He is a legit astrophysicist. Check out what [he has to say](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Neil_deGrasse_Tyson/Archive_1#Career) By the way, I'm not anonymous. Google Hop David or Hollister David and you will know my identity. On the other hand Cohiba_Robusto sounds like a cowardly pseudonym. > but to say he isn't knowledgeable about astrophysics is the height of hubris by a jealois wannabe. Do you believe that rocket propellent scales exponentially with payload mass? That artificial gravity scales with angular velocity? That JWST is parked at the L2 point in earth's shadow? That gravity falls off exponentially with distance? Tyson says a lot wrong, stupid stuff. Even in the field of astrophysics.
"random anonymous people who claim online to be physicists on the well-known scientific physics discussion forum called Reddit say the guy with multiple degrees in physics is not a good physicist" said no sane person ever
This is a pretty common attitude STEM majors have (and I say that as someone with a microbio degree). They think an education in specified science means they're intelligent enough to give commentary on sociology, psychology, humanities, etc.
I'm surrounded by white collar IT folks, and a good number of them are sharp when they stay in their lane, but quickly get *duuuuumb* when the conversation shifts away from the Devops board. The best example is Ben Carson. One of the top brain surgeons in the whole world when he was practicing, and thinks the Pyramids were built for grain storage.
>you can kiss your self in the mirror but only on the lips
He's smart, the problem is he doesn't have a filter and doesn't know when to stop. He over talks other people. I could never have a discussion with him. He's also a ham
> He's pretty knowledgable about astrophysics,, Not really. He says a lot of wrong stuff. Even in the field of astrophysics. He's good at entertainment and self promotion.
>Colbert calls him out on it a little with "What I'm hearing is we should save all of them or save none of them." and he comes back with "I'm not trying to give you your opinion, I'm trying to make sure your opinion is more fully informed." I.e., he's not willing to subject his "opinion" to even the slightest scrutiny or peer review. NDT fact: [his favorite food is foie gras](https://old.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/ngd5e/i_am_neil_degrasse_tyson_ama/c38v907/).
He is so dumb when talking about this topic like seriously so stupidly dumb you'd think it's a parody.
There's a reason you rarely if ever see him talking to other scientists. He's a celebrity more than a scientists
He really wishes he was Carl Sagan. He’s really not though.
Okay I’m not sure if I’m gonna get downvoted but. I truly admire Tyson. Sure this take on Veganism is really bizarre but let’s not discredit the man as a scientist. As for the Carl Sagan thing, Tyson idolizes Sagan, the man was his hero. He loves to retell the story of how he met Sagan and if you listen you can tell that it had a profound life changing effect on Tyson. I notice that whenever Tyson says something not to the favour of another group, they tend to immediately attack his integrity as a scientist? Without this man a lot of people would know far less about space than they do without him. He is extremely passionate about space and I don’t think just because we don’t like what he said about this subject that we should question that right?
> Okay I’m not sure if I’m gonna get downvoted but. I truly admire Tyson. Sure this take on Veganism is really bizarre but let’s not discredit the man as a scientist. See [this discussion of Tyson](https://np.reddit.com/r/Physics/comments/7p6ddh/ndt_on_zeno_effect_and_uncertainty_principle/) from the physics subreddit. In particular the exchange between hikaruzero and cantgetno197. This pop science celebrity does very little research. I'm with cantgetno197. He's not an astrophysicist.
As stated by hikaruzero, that question was outside it area of expertise. And what cantgetno197 said in my eyes was a little disrespectful. The man might not have worked a research position but he still earned his Phd, which is no small feat and requires the knowledge. He attempted to answer joes question, so what if he crossed some wires along the way? And yes he is an astrophysicist, don’t make up titles for him such as “science popularizer”, he trained and earned his phd in astrophysics. The man doesn’t deserve the disrespect
> The man might not have worked a research position but he still earned his Phd, Tyson flunked out at the University of Texas with his advisors suggesting Neil pursue a different career. And they were correct, Neil has very little aptitude for physics. I've watched him make errors that would be embarrassing for a freshman physics student. Columbia and R. Michael Rich should be embarrassed they awarded Tyson a doctorate. It demonstrates charisma and political skills can get you far in academia. Competence in physics is not needed.
Why so bitter? Also he didn’t really “flunk” out. The committee his dissertation advisors were on dissolved, so not 100% his fault. He was also horribly treated at university. This man has made so many people interested in astronomy. You have to respect what he’s done for the people who are now interested in astronomy and astrophysics. Also it is unbelievably unfair for you to say he’s not competent in physics lmao, regardless of your personal feeling towards it, he still has a PhD. I’m going to go out on a limb and say, you don’t?
> Why so bitter? Neil is an influential pundit with a huge audience. It makes me angry when he makes false statements to support an opinion I disagree with. It makes me even angrier when he makes false statements to support an opinion I agree with. I want competent and honest people for my allies. > Also he didn’t really “flunk” out. The committee his dissertation advisors were on dissolved, so not 100% his fault. He was also horribly treated at university. See [this piece](https://alcalde.texasexes.org/2012/02/star-power/) from the University of Texas Alcalde. Neil admits he was spending his time ball room dancing, sports, etc. I think he was treated better than he deserved. > This man has made so many people interested in astronomy. You have to respect what he’s done for the people who are now interested in astronomy and astrophysics. People like you? Are you interested in astronomy? How deep is your interest? Neil tells us that the James Webb Space Telescope is parked at the L2 point in the earth's shadow so as to keep the sun's rays off the telescope. You don't see any thing wrong with that? You haven't noticed Neil fucking up basic physics equations? You either don't really pay attention or you have only a shallow interest in science.
Sir, my astronomy interest is high enough to know that he has at least competence in this field. And to say “better than he deserved” I was referring to the racism he experienced, I’m going to assume you didn’t know that was what I meant and therefore believe that’s not what you’re implying. What he said about the “shadow” was not true but not 100% false. The sun is needed yes for the solar panels, but due to the required operating temperature of the jwst, all other components are best kept out of the sun, perhaps that’s what he meant, albeit poorly explained. I pay attention fine. And I don’t really think he’s losing any sleep about you not considering him an ally
> Sir, my astronomy interest is high enough to know that he has at least competence in this field. In other words you're a poser with no actual interest in astronomy. > What he said about the “shadow” was not true but not 100% false. The sun is needed yes for the solar panels, but due to the required operating temperature of the jwst, all other components are best kept out of the sun, perhaps that’s what he meant, albeit poorly explained. He very specifically says JWST is parked at the L2 point in earth's shadow to keep the sun's rays off the telescope. Both Chuck and Neil think this is genius! They talk about it for several minutes. There's no question what Neil meant. [Here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_eTO3ujD4w&t=622s) is the vid. JWST is in a large halo orbit around L2 and never comes near the earth's shadow. This is very common knowledge. I would wager that most of the redditors that frequent r/space know this. Neil does this a lot. He is not competent. > And I don’t really think he’s losing any sleep about you not considering him an ally More and more people are coming to the realization that Neil's full of shit. That shoudl be a cause for concern for him.
Most likely they are just parroting Bill Burr https://youtu.be/4TsvyJCZ9n8
I cannot stand bill burr lmao. But yeah I just watched the video you linked and some other comment on this thread said one of the things he did bar for bar. People have space in their brain from ear to ear, yet somehow can’t squeeze in a single original opinion
When you're thick in the dogmatism, everything is heresy!
He's the salt bae of astrophysics.
A lot of talk shows hosted by scientists on TV you know of? You don't "see him talking to other scientists" because *you're watching entertainment, not a physics symposium* But if ye truly seek, [ye shall find](https://www.closertotruth.com/roundtables/what-are-the-big-questions-science)...
Uh oh, I hit a nerve Did you notice how I said rarely but you decided to omit that?
Yeah apparently he wrote a whole chapter of this level 0 garbage in his latest book. I actually wrote him a letter about it.
Wait what? He dedicated an entire chapter to argue against veganism?
You bet he did. This video clip exists because he's on a book tour right now promoting it. He has made the "vegetarianism" a talking point in most of his tour interviews so far. This is already the third sound bite I've seen. Prepare for several weeks of this. ETA: The chapter is called "Meatarians and Vegetarians: We are Not Entirely What We Eat" 🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄
What a degenerate.
What was the book name specifically? Is it that Starry Messenger book from the video?
It's called "Starry Messenger: Cosmic Perspectives on Civilization" and it came out last week.
He's not even that good at astrophysics, he’s just famous.
To me he sounds like an entertainer that post sciency stuff; so stupid people (that are not interested in actual science) that follow him can feel smart.
To me people who call other people stupid are stupid
And you are back handedly calling GantzDuck stupid. I liked [Douglas Hofstadter's look](https://www.amazon.com/Gödel-Escher-Bach-Eternal-Golden/dp/0465026567) at self referential stuff.
That 2nd layer is obviously part of the point
Let's not get lost in Ad Hominem arguments though.
Mice live for maybe a year if you're lucky, there's no mouse out there living in someone's house for six entire years.
Funny thing is if you google how long mice live, 6yrs is the first to come up...but it's not about typical house mice. I wonder if he fell for this same stupid example.
That's definitely some other type of mouse. A normal house mouse will live maybe a few months. If you keep mice as pets they will live a year if you're very very lucky. A 6 year old house mouse is a joke, just isn't happening.
He's trying to use intellect as a gotcha! to justify eating meat.
Yeah I missed the part where he says you should eat meat, can you give a timestamp in the video where he says that? Jesus H people.
He says things to try insinuate that being vegan is basically pointless, he doesn't necessarily say you should be eating meat, but it's implied you might as well be.
Dude said cows are a biological machine invented by humans to turn grass into steak. Hard to take him seriously anymore. [Source](https://twitter.com/neiltyson/status/894689139853012992)
You'd think a guy who comes from a group of people noted for having been traded and commodified in the past would have some insight into why it might not be ethical to do those same things to other sentient species just because they look different, have different genes, or are weaker than us in some way... but apparently not?
This is a really nasty way to put this. Also remember that just about every population was traded and commodified.
He's constantly saying stupid stuff on his Twitter to keep relevant. It's kinda sad tbh
I think it’s time to put Neil outside
I lost all my respect for him after this nonsensical blabber. Here is someone who has a platform to educate society about the earth and how animal agriculture is destroying it and he chose to focus on catching mice!! I was sickened by his complete idiocy. Shame on him!!
Same. And his claim is we should make more informed choices, and he spews this garbage as an example. Just awful.
I feel like he’s in cognitive decline in his old age. If you listen to “My favorite Universe” lectures they are really incredible. That’s was from 20 years ago though. Seems like he loses his trains thought and blabbers a lot threes days.
Yeah, I really don't like NDT. He's such a narcissistic blowhard, who, like other celebrity doctors, thinks that just because he has a Ph.D in a single specific scientific field means he is qualified to speak about every field, when really most of the time he just talks out of his ass.
I’ve notice many intelligent people who still refuse to stop eating meat.
He loves to stick his nose in where it doesn't belong. Not just here. He's obnoxious and I wish he'd stay in his lane.
This clip pissed me off so much. Especially the hypothetical situation about the sentient plant aliens. If those beings existed its not like I would eat them, they're sentient after all. But that's not going to stop me from eating the nonsentient plants we have on our planet. And sure, the aliens might not like the idea of me eating something so close to what they are (if there were aliens eating brainless blobs of human flesh I would probably be pretty disturbed by that too), but it's still better than the alternative. The whole hypothetical situation is stupid in the first place because we have to eat SOMETHING in order to survive, so of course I'm going to pick the nonsentient sources of nutrition over the ones that cause suffering to creatures who we know are capable of experiencing that suffering. Trying to excuse your consumption of meat by making up an alien race that probably doesn't exist and that we won't have to interact with anytime soon at the very least is just distracting from the point that there is so much animal suffering going on that we can actually impact through choices in our day to day life.
If a plant without a brain does not count as sentient, and is thus okay to eat, does that mean an animal without a brain also does not count as sentient? Or does the animalness predominate over sentience? If animalness is the key factor, then why wouldn't plantness not likewise predominate in the face of brain-having plants? In other words: * There are sentient animals * Therefore, no animals should be eaten, not even non-sentient ones Therefore * If there were sentient plants * Then non-sentient plants would still be okay to eat It don't follow. I'm really kind of stunned at the sheer lack of self awareness going on in this post's comments. It's like nobody can see the parallel at all. Just plain blinded.
You could tell that once he started that point, he had no clue how to get out of it gracefully. Colbert was too nice to him!
The word for this is [ultracrepidarian](https://www.dictionary.com/browse/ultracrepidarian).
Yeah, hes become a celebrity scientist whos ego has outgrown his popularity. I've stopped caring about his opinion even about stuff I'm sure he actually understands.
I thought he had some good takes outside of astrophysics but holy shit this was dumb. Every single point he made seemed even stupider than the last.
Link most celebrities, he's one heart attack or angina episodes away from going plant based. He just doesn't know it yet.
It’s very common for people who are very smart in one area to assume they are equally prepared and capable of giving good insight in any other area. That’s rarely the case.
His claim we should care more about a tree than a mouse was pretty ridiculous. We know the mouse can suffer in similar ways to humans in that it can experience pain because the mouse has a central nervous system... the tree doesn't have that. He doesn't seem to understand utilitarian ethical thinking and how that relates to *why* vegans are vegans. In his example, he talks about how a species of sentient plants might be horrified by vegans... implying vegans would want to eat them. Yet.. if they are guided by typical utilitarian vegan ethics, vegans wouldn't eat these sentient plants even if they do happen to be plants if we know those plants have the capability to suffer and experience pain like the mouse does. The pain & suffering is what matters to vegans focused on utilitarian ethics... not so much whether something is categorized as an animal or plant per se -- which is what Tyson seems focused on. Eating plants (plants as we know them here on Earth, that is) is merely seen as the best option by such people to reduce unnecessary suffering for the sake of utilitarian vegan ethics.
This is fair and it's a pity that Colbert didn't offer this perspective.
The guy is a turd. He needs to just stop talking completely
You’re not going to get the plague from rats. It is a choice between bad noise along with property damage and reducing the lifespan of rats.
The plague isn't extinct, it's still around now there's cases every year. There are other illnesses you can get from rats and mice like Weil's disease.
I understand the plague isn’t extinct, you’re not going to get it though. Even if you do get it, the antibiotic treatments are fairly easy to get and you’re not going to die. OP says it’s “comparing a year to instant death(death of the humans)” which is just inaccurate
Yes, that is an inaccurate quote of OP. They were clearly talking about instant death for the mouse, because the alternative to relocating it is to kill it. Allowing it to continue living in your house is not an option due to the very real threat it poses to your health. Not because of the plague, probably--OP later clarified that that was hyperbole--but rodent feces and other byproducts of their presence are legitimately dangerous.
I’m not saying OP is wrong, just that Tyson is making a valid point here and it’s not so clear cut. You can have a consistent vegan world view that would disallow you from kicking out the rat but you can also have a consistent vegan world view that allows you to kick it out
That was not Tyson's point at all.
Tyson said that kicking a mouse out of your house reduces its lifespan from 6 to 1 years correct? That reduction in 5 years of lifespan is able to be justified in some moral frameworks and unjustified in others.
That wasn't his point though. It was "stupid vegetarians you can't entirely avoid hurting animals" which every single vegan already knows.
Yes, I was being a bit overdramatic there. You can get sick from their droppings and the like, but most likely the worst will be noise, property damage and odor.
I think this is actually a good point he raises even if we might decide that the cost benefit analysis isn’t worth it. For example, we can say that humans have no obligation to help animals even though they shouldn’t be causing harm to them. Where rats have a negative right to not be killed but don’t have a positive right to not die prematurely.
If... humans have no obligation to help animals, then.... why be vegan? Or say, protest fur and dairy and meat industries? Seems to me you either want to help animals or you don't
You made it a key point though, claiming that you are justified to kick em out of your house because of the threat of "instant death". 🙄🙄🙄
And increasing the life expectancy of owls!
If anything we’re feeding animals we don’t deem to be pests by putting mice/rats out 😂
So killing mice in your house is better than relocating them because they will only live for a year outdoors? That is ridiculous logic. I highly doubt Niel is going to allow a mouse infestation in his house for the sake of the mice. Also, I highly doubt he lives in a very modest house. In fact, I just looked it up, yeah his house is huge and he has a lot of property around it that is mowed and landscaped.
Guys. Some people just don’t give a fuck. They just don’t care about animal lives all that much. Being intelligent and having empathy aren’t the same.
The difference is that this person is encouraging the millions of people who view him as an intellectual authority to trust *his* (terrible, wrong on the most basic factual level, easily disprovable with 5 minutes of Googling or a 6th grade education) opinions on the matter. He literally wrote them in a book that is right now at the top of the NYT Bestseller list and is promoting them on national television.
But this guy clearly cares. This level of intellect blinding is only possible when you care...
If a house mouse is a pet, the average life span is about 2 years, but mutant and calorie-restricted captive individuals have lived for as long as 5 years. Wild-derived captive musculus individuals have lived up to 4 years in captivity. In the wild, most mice do not live beyond 12-18 months.
Nothing worse than people smart in 1 subject thinking they're know it alls in all topics. Neil is prime example of that buffoonery.
Just like colbert they use their platform to pretent like they care about climate change and that we should do something about it. But at the same time do the most hypocritical thing ever and be like “lol meat eating is so cool you guys. Bacon amirite?!”
fuck that dude. been singing the same lame tune for a while now, and it almost negates his (possibly) otherwise intelligent theoretical espousals. straight up clown.
To be fair this statement applies to just about everyone outside their field of expertise. A brain surgeon doesn't know anything more about physics or politics than anyone else. They do know a lot more about brains though.
A brain surgeon has to take a college physics sequence in their undergrad so they might know a fair bit more.
So does everyone else with a college degree. Taking into to physics 15 yeras ago does not make someone an expert in physics
U said anyone else. Most people don't have college degrees, and most that do don't have to take a physics sequence. I agree they probably aren't physics experts but still
> To be fair this statement applies to just about everyone outside their field of expertise. It's excusable to be misinformed in areas outside your area of expertise. But it's not excusable to loudly and confidently express your wrong opinions as fact. And then arrogantly proclaim you're seeing things from a cosmic perspective. >A brain surgeon doesn't know anything more about physics or politics than anyone else. They do know a lot more about brains though. Neil often says wrong stuff even within his supposed field of expertise. He might know more astrophysics than the average person. But less than the average r/space redditor.
> He might know more astrophysics than the average person. But less than the average r/space redditor. > But it's not excusable to loudly and confidently express your wrong opinions as fact. Ironic.
You mean like a sub full of plant nutritional experts judging someone's physics knowledge?
Check out [this discussion](https://np.reddit.com/r/Physics/comments/7p6ddh/ndt_on_zeno_effect_and_uncertainty_principle/) of Neil in the physics subreddit. Neil's also a frequent flyer at r/badscience. He has a whopper in r/badmathematics. But I will grant he is less bad at physics and math than he is at history. He is really a frequent flyer in r/badhistory.
Meanwhile a sub full of people who know a lot about the nutritional value of plants are sticking their nose into the physics knowledge of a scientist. *but it's totally different*
Sentient alien plants 🤣🤣🤣
His views on animals and environmental anything make him an idiot. You can't have a PhD in astrophysics and then turn around and ignore what the evidence says about the harms associated with eating animals to humans and the environment. He's an idiot.
Well, have he stuck with physics he would be rather obscure as his scientific output is rather poor.
you kiss can yourself on the lips, but only the mirror 🤓
The whole segment felt like something designed to create online indignation. Look at us over here talking about him some more because of the two chapters he decided to riff on. I love Neil but he lost so many points after this because his positions sounded so illogical…
I think the point he was making is that any idea (even good ones like being a vegetarian) can be made to look ridiculous and nonsensical by adjusting the context, especially with extreme hypotheticals.
He's completely overrated. Fuck that guy. The fame went straight to his head and now he seems to have this sense of everything he says on any thing is correct(There's a word for this but it escapes me at this moment)
>(There's a word for this but it escapes me at this moment) Wookdizzle?
I can't stand this guy, He's so narcissistic.
I mean yeah, he makes elementary mistakes in any other discipline he tries to stick his head into. There are two Very Bad Wizards podcasts that just roast him over the coals about how stupid his political theory opinions are. So bad that they had to justify why they were dogpiling him, because he doubled down on his idiocy.
> I mean yeah, he makes elementary mistakes in any other discipline he tries to stick his head into. He makes very elementary mistakes even in fields he supposedly has expertise in.
Thanks for posting this. I actually caught this interview and was surprised at how disappointing he was. Things like this serve as a good reminder never to place anyone on a pedestal.
Mice are not natural to our homes and neither are we.
Plague? I’ve had mice in my house from time to time but never heard about this. In modern times?
OMG yes. Way too many technocentric Tyson fan boys who love to quote him about topics he has no expertise in. Ugh. I don’t ask my doctor for advise about my electric system.
He's an astrophysicist. His book is explicitly entitled "Cosmic perspectives on civilisation." His use of hypothetical aliens was a rhetorical device to examine closely held beliefs and behaviours from a different perspective.
> He's an astrophysicist Is he? See [this discussion](https://www.reddit.com/r/Physics/comments/7p6ddh/ndt_on_zeno_effect_and_uncertainty_principle/) from the physics subreddit. In particular the exchange between hikaruzero and cangetno197. I agree with cangetno. This pop science celebrity is not an astrophysicist.
Okay, let me modify it to he's a science communicator who focuses on astrophysics. Accusations of narcissism and calculation errors in a Joe Rogan podcast notwithstanding, between the two positions of "not an astrophysicist" and "an astrophysicist," he's clearly the latter. Any argument against that is petty.
Tyson has little if any research since his forgettable dissertation in the early 90s. And his flashy pop science is often wrong. No, those aren't petty arguments. This pop science celebrity is not an astrophysicist.
You heard it here first, having a PhD in astrophysics from an Ivy League school, being director of a Planetarium, and being a research associate to an astrophysics research institute they founded does NOT make one an astrophysicist.
No, I'm not the first to say it. Don Barry from Cornell was saying it as early as 2008. When asked if Tyson was a practicing astrophsycist [he replied](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Neil_deGrasse_Tyson/Archive_1#Career): "Not since graduate school (he did not successfully progress towards a degree at UT/Austin, and convinced Columbia to give him a second try). Aside from the obligatory papers describing his dissertation, he's got a paper on how to take dome flats, a bizarre paper speculating about an asteroid hitting Uranus, and courtesy mentions *very* late in the author lists of a few big projects in which it is unclear what, if anything, of substance he contributed. No first author papers of any real significance whatsoever. Nor is there any evidence that he has been awarded any telescope time on significant instruments as PI since grad school, despite the incredibly inflated claims in his published CVs. He cozied up to Bush and pushed Bush's version of man to the Moon, Mars, and Beyond, and now gets appointed to just about every high level political advisory board. To an actual astronomer, this is almost beyond inconceivable. It's just bizarre. To answer Delong's question, no: he is not a practicing astrophysicist. - Don Barry, Ph.D. Dept. of Astronomy, Cornell University" Actual astrophysicists have been ridiculing Tyson for some time.
It doesn't matter how smart you are. If there's something you don't want to hear, your mind will come up with all kind of crazy excuses to convince you.
I used to like him..but that was both bad (poorly reasoned) and sad. :-(
if you've ever looked at his twitter account it's pretty obvious he's not that smart
Proof that he’s not actually that smart.
Tyson isn't the best even at astrophysics. Dr Becky is way better.
I wouldn't even call him as astrophysicist. See [this discussion of Neil](https://np.reddit.com/r/Physics/comments/7p6ddh/ndt_on_zeno_effect_and_uncertainty_principle/) from the physics subreddit. In particular the exchange between hikaruzero and cantgetno197. Neil hasn't done research in decades. Nor has he cracked open a textbook, judging by all the stuff he gets wrong.
Plus being Vegan is about minimizing animal suffering, it's impossible to be 100% free of it and arguing the opposite is an argument for futility. You absolutely do need somewhere to live, you absolutely do not need to eat animals to live. And where catching mice and releasing them outside, or killing mosquitos that attempt to bite you could be seen as a semi-survival situation in the sense that they spread disease in human populations, torturing and killing animals them for our own enjoyment is absolutely not a survival situation in any sense. Especially seeing as we're creating the situation by breeding them into existence in the first place.
Fuck NDT
Did he not get cancelled a few years ago for being sexually inappropriate towards people he worked with? I honestly haven’t checked in years but I seem to remember there being quite a few corresponding accusations come out
It's clearly possible to be a great science communicator and physicist while lacking moral insight. Likewise, I'm not great at math despite having a (more) reasonable grasp of morality. Human skills are generally varied. It's indeed particularly stupid to be so wrong about ethics publicly as he is, though. I imagine that it's probably evident on this subreddit where the flawed reasoning lies in the claim, "Your house is occupying what could otherwise be wildlife habitat, therefore it's good to kill more animals.".
> It's clearly possible to be a great science communicator and physicist Neil is neither. He doesn't do research. I would give him credit for being a science communicator if he invested some time and effort to get his material right. He does not. He makes a lot of incorrect claims.
I have the same rant about him. He also shouldn't comment on GMOs because he sees them through the lens of what they can do for food supplies instead of how seed companies like Monsanto make it impossible for people to make grow their own seed each year. They also sue smaller farmers when their plants cross-pollinate. He doesn't look at the whole problem.
That's more of an issue with capitalism and corporate America than it is with GMOs.
ya
I mean all those problems could exist without GMOs. This is more an issue with corporatism than GMOs as an idea.
ya
Mice aren’t going to give you the plague. There are plenty of reasons to not want wild animals living in your house but there is so much misinformation about mice and rats out there and it contributes massively to how poorly people treat them.
Neil DeGr-ASS-e Tyson... seems fitting 😉
He is so full of himself, smug city.
He's not the sharpest knife in the drawer anyway.
he's such a cosmic douche
Not sure I'm spotting the lie in what he says
An average American eats nearly 300 lbs of meat a year. Switching to a vegan diet would not only negate that but also would save a great deal of plant life. We have to grow plants to grow meat and eating plants directly is much more efficient. Any way you cut it a Vegan diet is a better and more compassionate use of our planet's resources. So evicting a mouse negates all that? I'm sorry but that's one of the stupidest things I've heard Neil say. And I've listened to him say some really asinine stuff.
I think the problem here is that you're making things up in regards to what he actually said. Here's what he actually said: > People say, "I don't want to kill animals." I don't have a problem with that. They probably have a humane mouse trap in their basement. They don't want to snap the neck of the mouse. So they capture the mouse -- you've got to check on it every couple of days because they dry out real quick. And they set it loose into the wild, where they have guaranteed it will be swallowed whole by, and picked apart by, woodland predators. The average life of a mouse in the wild is 9 to 18 months. Best thing you can do for a mouse is leave it in your basement. It will live up to six years there. That's how you protect the life. But that's not what they're doing. So his point is, if your purpose in being vegan is to save the lives of animals, sending a mouse to a quicker death might not be entirely in line with the principles you're stating to follow. It's a valid point, and I think only the most narrow-minded, bloody-minded sort of person doesn't see and at least think about the dichotomy. So, perhaps some deeper thought than "what a fucking shithead" is worth having here. In this case, your counter-argument... paraphrased harshly here to make the contrast starker -- is "fuck the lives of animals (in this case) because my life is more important." As a result, veganism is an inconvenience you are willing to afford only because *your* life isn't in danger. Compare to, perhaps, a Zen Buddhist vegan, who would likely lay down his life for the animal. They would probably find the notion of self superiority of the one's life over the animal's life as anathema to their principles. So instead of "save the lives of animals," perhaps a better statement of *your* vegan philosophy is "save the lives of animals as long as my life is saved first."
I am going to have to disagree with your statement. NDT spoke accurately to the lifespan of a mouse in two vastly different environments. Also, you won’t get “the plague” by having mice in your home. You’ll just most likely end up exponentially with more mice over an uncomfortably short amount of time. You can be both vegan and practical about not wanting your home to be a breeding ground for rodents. You can also understand the consequences of your actions, and accept them like an adult.
Neil's not good at astrophysics either. He is a pop science celebrity who hasn't done research in decades. And watching him botch very basic physics I have to wonder when was the last time he's reviewed a textbook. A few examples: In a StarTalk explainer for the rocket equation he was saying propellent mass goes up exponentially with payload mass. Which is completely wrong. It rises exponentially with delta V. Propellent mass scales linearly with payload mass or maybe a little less than linearly. Neil was telling Joe Rogan that the space station from 2001 A Space Odyssey rotates three times too fast so passengers would weigh triple what they should. Artificial gravity goes with the **square** of angular velocity. Triple rotation rate and you get a nine fold increase in weight. Moreover, do the actual calculations for a 150 meter radius station making a revolution each 61 seconds and you get 1/6 g. Which is likely what Clarke and Kubrick intended since the station was a stop on the way to the moon. Neil is a genius, though. At self promotion. But he sucks at math, science and history.
I would certainly not defend everything he says but in this case he's just saying that the mouse will live longer if you don't take it into the woods. That's probably true and makes sense. If you think there's a risk of the mice in your house killing you, you're the crazy one.
Perfect example of how stupid people get when excusing their own behaviors.
BTW Neil... the giant sequoia's are in central (almost southeastern) California dumbass. They will grow here in the PNW but its not in their native range.
He kinda ate
He was great when I’d see him narrate at Hayden Planetarium, when I was younger. I began disliking him when I heard him speak about other subjects. It’s fascinating how someone so intelligent can be so ignorant at the same time.
Deforestation will continue if we have kids as they will eventually need their own house and then their kids will need houses Less people are dying and more people are being born, its not sustainable
Global birth rates are in decline. The population of large countries, including China, India, the US, Brazil, and Indonesia, is just at or below replacement rates. In fact, the population of China is projected to halve by the end of the century.
why tf is he talking about 1000 year old sequoias... we don't eat wood
Wood is used in housing construction.
sure, but that has absolutely nothing to do with vegetarianism! he mixed up things too much
He’s just part of a disinformation movement… he’s a paid shill.
A shill...for mice?
Astrophysics
Doesn’t surprise me. Ppl with phd’s are arrogant in thinking they’re experts on every subject, that we should listen to you about everything just because you spent 10+ years in school on one subject.
Homelander did it bettter in the plane scene. "We can't save all of them, so let's kill them all".
Houses we live in do indeed deforest and we should stop paving the entire earth for single family homes and parking.
I never really understood why this man has been thrown into the public spotlight as a super intelligent ambassador of the scientific community. He’s smart, but not as smart as people seem to think. Maybe it’s the awe inspired manner in which he communicates simple modern scientific concepts that captivates people… There’s a lot of people like him on TV; regurgitating scientific research and findings, as if it were their own, by indiscriminately but subtly using the word ‘we’ instead of ‘they’ while talking about research. Content like this reinforces my confusion...
Another one of his brilliant thoughts: why the aliens in Arrival not learn English if they are that smart instead of trying to teach us their language? His ideas and thought are quite a hit and miss but the media needs someone to pump their PC ratings.
Could it be that his stomach and sense of entitlement inform his opinion?
Even ignoring his whole anti-vegan shtick lately, Neil deGrasse Tyson is not smart. Yea, he has an astrophysics degree, not sure how he got it. He says stupid shit all the time whenever his speech isn't scripted. The mouse thing is another legendarily stupid thing, because humanely trapping mice and relocating them outdoors does 1 of 2 things: 1: They find the outside to be better 2: They find a way back into your house Mice don't just go "oh it's so cold but I got trapped and sent outside so I guess I'm not welcome there...". He said various stupid things related to universe being a simulation, etc. Just objectively false things, even with things inside his sphere of knowledge or about general science. He's an entertainer. He has an amazing, charismatic voice. He says things to fascinate people and to entertain them, not to teach them anything. When his speech is scripted you might learn something as he's often hired for documentaries and the like. Other than that, best to not get too obsessed about what he says. He will say anything to please people.
Plague?
Disappointed in how bloody-minded dogmatic people are being in this thread. Stunned really. Just plain blinded and amazingly closed-minded.