Neil deGrasse Tyson: #Rationalia should govern the world

[Sean Hayden]

The problem with experts isn't that they overestimate how much they know, but rather how applicable what they know is to making accurate predictions. I'd like to respond to that with the usual 'ya but take the average and they should have an advantage'. Unfortunately, there seems to be evidence from multiple disciplines that this just ain't so.

[Brian Peacock]

Still, I wouldn't mind if politics could move towards ramping down the moralising a little and ramping up reason and evidence a bit more. In my view, one of the most unhelpful tendencies in politics are appeals to the future that make no effort to account for the circumstances of the present.

[mistermack]

Still, I wouldn't mind if politics could move towards ramping down the moralising a little and ramping up reason and evidence a bit more. In my view, one of the most unhelpful tendencies in politics are appeals to the future that make no effort to account for the circumstances of the present.

I'm still confused.
Is this about climate science or not?

[pErvinalia]

Still, I wouldn't mind if politics could move towards ramping down the moralising a little and ramping up reason and evidence a bit more. In my view, one of the most unhelpful tendencies in politics are appeals to the future that make no effort to account for the circumstances of the present.

I'm still confused.
Is this about climate science or not?

Damn, beat me to it!

(although, you are serious, not taking the piss.. )

[laklak]

They all tell you they love you till they get what they want, then it's "make me a fuckin sammich bitch".

[DaveDodo007]

Still, I wouldn't mind if politics could move towards ramping down the moralising a little and ramping up reason and evidence a bit more. In my view, one of the most unhelpful tendencies in politics are appeals to the future that make no effort to account for the circumstances of the present.

So you are a conservative now.

[pErvinalia]

Conservatives "ramp up reason and evidence" and "[ramp] down the moralising"?? I mean, while political evidence and reasoning can be pretty subjective at times, moralising IS conservatives reason for existence!

[cronus]

http://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/ ... -a-fallacy

The Rationalia Fallacy
By Robert F. Graboyes | Contributor
July 18, 2016, at 2:45 p.m.

Science is a noble witness, but a nefarious judge.

Celebrity astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson recently launched a hail of hubris across the internet with this tweet: "Earth needs a virtual country: #Rationalia, with a one-line Constitution: All policy shall be based on the weight of evidence."

Tyson's fantasy – a rational, science-based society – is nothing new. France's Reign of Terror near the close of the 18th century was sanctified in the revolution's Temples of Reason. Stalin and Mao murdered tens of millions in pursuit of Marx's scientific socialism. In the half-century before World War II, the world's greatest scientific minds conjured up eugenics – a dark pseudoscience of human breeding – and browbeat servile policymakers into a scourge of forced sterilizations in America and genocide in Europe. Nazi Deputy Führer Rudolf Hess stated – probably sincerely – that "National Socialism is nothing but applied biology."

Ironically, eugenicists would have denied liberty, opportunity and even life to Dr. Tyson (and to me as well) by dint of ethnicity, confident that their policies were firmly moored in irrefutable evidence.

(continued)

[pErvinalia]

Dumb. Stalin and Mao weren't scientists, and no scientist worth their salt thinks scientific Marxism (like Praxeology) is anything other than bullshit. And the world's scientists didn't "conjure up eugenics". Genetics and husbandry had been known for long before that, and it wasn't until psychopathic politicians (i.e. the likes of Stalin, Mao, Hitler etc) got into it that it was applied for nefarious purposes.

Having said all that, while a technocracy would undoubtedly be better in a rational outcome sense than what we have now, I'm not in favour of such a system. Rationality isn't the be all and end all of human existence. We are emotional, cultural beings. How do you rationalise those things, even if you thought it was a good idea to try?

[pErvinalia]

I do love how we (and by "we" I mean Papa et al) got the jump on NdT by a decade or so. We are the future of rational thinking on the internet!

[JimC]

Then Darwin help the human race!

[Hermit]

...no scientist worth their salt thinks scientific Marxism (like Praxeology) is anything other than bullshit.

Both Marx and Engels regarded their version of socialism as scientific. They contrasted it with the "utopian socialism" of Saint-Simeon, Feuerbach and others. Engels wrote about it at length in a piece titled Socialism: Utopian and Scientific. Marx added a foreword to its 1880 French edition. And yes, Lenin, Stalin, Mao et cetera insisted that Marxism is scientific.

[pErvinalia]

They were all too politically and personally involved for their "science" to remain objective.

[Hermit]

They were all too politically and personally involved for their "science" to remain objective.

That's beside the point. What remains true is that "Stalin and Mao murdered tens of millions in pursuit of Marx's scientific socialism". At least that is how they justified their series of purges.

[pErvinalia]

What does that have to do with science?