Neil DeGrasse Tyson on science literacy - World Science Festival

[blindedby2monkeys]

4 people are intelligence illiterate

[SomeAnimeOtaku]

@blindedby2monkeys lol

[TheButtonNose]

I could listen to this guy the whole day

[resistnzisfutl]

So wish this guy would enter politics...

[ImKsco]

Kermit the frog @ 3:10

[TheButtonNose]

@ImKsco ahahahahhaha good find

[Kimjongil3000]

this guy should be in Congress. He would light things up

[hunta99]

Preach! (in an atheistic manner)

[DarthDefiler]

"No, that's not OK!"

[redstate86]

Tyson for president! I'm a republican and I'd vote for him no matter what party he is with.

[eugeniobb]

i think he meant (between the lines): if sarah palin runs again.... don't vote for her!

[pmk422]

Everyone needs to shut the fuck up and stop arguing. Of all the thousands of petty arguments online there have been exactly 3 people who have changed their mind.

[H1TMANactual]

Lol I don't have much of a respect for liberal arts anyway.

[RedArcher1000]

He is very right about how the majority of people can comfortably admit they can't do maths or science, while no one would comfortably admit that they can't read or write.

[rjohn71]

The last part is true because science and math require an exact answer which is right or wrong and the fuzzy social sciences only require you to parrot the views of your profs with complicated bs.

[ScienceIsKnowledge]

This guy is one of my modern day heroes.

[etbadaboum]

As stated in the last part, scientists know more in more domains than liberal artists do. Actually, you'll find more scientists with good writing skils and appetite into various fields than liberal artists with taste for math or science in general. Science opens you gates of knowledge. Platon, Vinci, Descartes, Pascal they were good in various fields and separating fields was pointless. Progress and modernity made us specialists on one topic. Maybe with Internet we can adjust the trajectory :)

[tiananman]

@etbadaboum The irony is, Tyson comes to this conclusion in an extremely unscientific way. He's using personal anecdote - which is probably the least scientific method for proving a point. I'm not saying he's wrong, but there's a bit of arrogance that his literature or music hobby gives him the right to draw his conclusion, or that because he reads Shakespeare that he has the same level of mastery as an English major. It's the kind of conclusion you might expect from a BA!

[NotSoOldHippy]

Nobody does exploitation of people's scientific ignorance better than FOX "News." If people *think* critically, it's much harder to rook and swindle them or convince them it's okay to murder a million Islamic brown people to seize control of their oil, or fight a "war on Christmas" and no end of frothingly insane bullshit.

[Machiventa]

Give this man some DMT! 

[Poleschs]

I have to go and buy Shakespeare, right now.

[TheToxicRadio]

the people who vote, scare me....

[etniko]

wow, this is a wake up call.

[allahhasaids]

@etniko Really, I am so happy to hear this

[seniorgomez666]

absolutely brilliant man!

[kyuteh]

everyone needs to see and hear this

[AteistiSrbije]

i just love this man!!!

[2plus2is9]

Nice hat!

[AR333]

I was in Liberal Arts and it was full of postmodernists who thought that EVIDENCE was somehow a rich white male's concept.

[Bromopar]

@AR333 I have found when talking with people about superstitous concepts that they feel that EVIDENCE is not required. They somehow seem to think that when asked for evidence to support their beliefs they automatically assume you are attacking their "upstanding moral charecter." These same people also think that scientists are trying to somehow work against them by disproving their beliefs or just plain ignoring them which is ironic because that's what superstitous people do to scientists.

[Phelan666]

@AR333 Wait...what?

[AR333]

@Phelan666 If you want clarification, elaborate your question a little bit.

[CurlyJFries]

@AR333 BAHAHAHAHAHAH!

[AtheistEvolution]

@AR333 HA, that is a sad sad thing to hear.

[Setzer]

@AR333 That kind of attitude annoys me to no end.  I hear people say things like well we can really know anything for sure because we can be fooled by our senses. Or all knowledge is just based off empirical observations (as if that's a bad thing to base knowledge off--it's not the only way to "know" things either, but I digress)

People who say this crap think they're being clever, but you're never going to invent any kind of technology or discover anything new with that kind of mentality.

[TheArtistOfKuroo]

AR333 I find postmodernists just as annoying and detrimental to art and the humanities. All postmodernists want to discuss in art is "examine the boundary between high and low art" and getting past representational art. A few weeks ago I was arguing in an art class that Marcel Duchamp's "Readymade" art was plagiarizing the engineers and designers who made the objects originally. Useless discussion when compared with topics like how to use a brush properly or how to compose an image.

[Jonmad17]

@AR333 Oh, stop it. The liberal arts are necessarily for human advancement just as science and engineering are. And i'm sure Neil, who hosts a television show and watches Stark Trek, would agree. This left brain vs. right brain myth needs to be dispelled.

[AR333]

@Jonmad17 Your "oh stop it" was not exactly followed by a rebuttal to what I wrote, which is what I would expect after such a dramatic introduction.

[Hapafull]

I agree with Tyson on the importance of literacy in science and logic. I'm also glad that he is knowledgeable enough about economic history to get the order of causation correct. It was the Industrial Revolution, ergo the freeing of the economy and the embracing of capitalism, that enabled science to become a mainstream pursuit and made available the resources to pursue research and innovation.

Capitalism is a necessity for technological progress. Anyone who says otherwise is a nutcase.

[twohooves]

@TamarGirl Take a look at the Suggestions list. Derp.

[FeelOfFriction]

Ironically, enough scientific knowledge will lead you to know this man is full of shit.

[twohooves]

@FeelOfFriction So, one of the more brilliant physicists of this century is full of shit? Prove it, please.

[stimacakaburek]

@FeelOfFriction Can you somehow justify your claim, or you just make shit up?

[hlyleh]

@TamarGirl There is another part where he talks about 2012 right before/after this.

[hlyleh]

It's impossible for Neil to get a dislike!

[Handyandy58]

The last part of this is sadly true. It is evidenced in the core curriculums of universities all over. At my university, to earn a BS requires at least a year of physics and chemistry, and usually 1.5 years of calculus, and sometimes more math, in addition to a host of liberal arts requirements. A BA, however, requires 1 year of math, which need not be calculus, 2 semesters of "science" with classes like "common human diseases" fulfilling that requirement.

[Entertainmentwf]

@Handyandy58 LOL, hence why a BA is useless in the real world :P. It's high school at the university level.

[tiananman]

@Entertainmentwf

What an uninformed and ridiculous comment. 

[Entertainmentwf]

@tiananman lol... sadly it's not.

[tiananman]

@Entertainmentwf

Well consider this response an education: I'm in a field that is DESPERATE for competent liberal arts grads. It's a growing field, it pays well, and it's exactly the kind of work that math or science types have difficulty with.

Notice: I'm not denigrating folks in the math or science field. I don't need to do so in order to make my point.

[Entertainmentwf]

@tiananman I don't know where you go but liberal arts aren't going to invent the next greatest theory or idea to get the world going. Desperate of course, all universities are like that because there is a growing population of people who want to go get a degree and since arts degrees do NOT require specialization, they are the 'new' high school diploma in most dependencies in the real world. Essay, essay essay will not increase your critical thinking skills. Economics 101... lol irony :P.

[tiananman]

@Entertainmentwf I don't know what you're blathering on about. It sounds like you could take a few intro to writing courses. Your response is just the latest example of how poor communication skills can render any point moot. I'm not in school either. I'm in "the real world." The real world is desperate for talented liberal arts graduates. So you're, once again, WRONG about the BA being useless in the real world. That's something that lazy science majors tell themselves to feel good.

[basmithtx]

@tiananman Would you elaborate on this field or industry that is presently desperate for liberal arts grads?

[tiananman]

@basmithtx Sure! I work for an online publisher. We have more in-house writing needs than we can possibly fill. We publish different types of research, and put out huge amounts of content. Someone has to write all of that content. Every website on the internet has content needs!

We actually just hired a journalist away from his newspaper gig to come work for us and write. Lumbering all-purpose newspapers are dying. Niche websites on the Internet are growing.

[basmithtx]

@tiananman Hopefully they're hiring some writers with a science background to write science-y content - we need more public focus on science literacy! :P

[SecularResponse]

@TamarGirl LOL!!!!

[SecularResponse]

Oh my! I have a new best friend!

[konbitkreyol]

The Black Hole