Finally…The Truth with Michael Shermer

20:53The Trump spirit comes upon him. That's the first time anybody's ever cued Trump. We don't summon Trump.

21:04Neil deGrasse Tyson:Trump appears on his own. He's a channeler. So again, I mean, the levels of trust the public has in scientific institutions, medical institutions, and the academy, universities, has plummeted to an all-time low post-COVID. This is a problem. So that's one of the reasons I wrote this book was like, hey, these institutions actually work pretty well. They usually get it right. Sometimes they're wrong. I would have preferred our institutions to couch their recommendations in more probabilistic. Right now, this is what we think about masks or vaccines or whatever, social distancing. 50-50, we're going to go with this.

21:40Maybe next week we'll change our mind. Yeah. They could have done that. That was the worst thing. That was never done. That was the worst thing they did, is the fact that the best available evidence, no one ever used those terms, but it's hard to engender trust when you preface everything with the best available evidence up until now, and then people go, well, what's that supposed to mean?

22:02Neil deGrasse Tyson:I think there's some hope there because when we grew up, I think we're in the same decadal age. We're young, yeah. Polling results were not given with uncertainties, and now they are. Okay, they just gave a number. They just gave a number. And that was like, the number. Right. Now it's plus or minus three points. Right, so that was an important achievement, I think. You'll hear people say things like, my priors are this, and I upgraded my priors and my credence is now that. That's a whole Bayesian area of statistics that people have no idea what they're actually saying. But they've inculcated it from just pop culture.

22:39And this is a good thing. It is. It's okay if I change my mind. Yeah, it is. Yes, absolutely. And I think that's very important, too, to give people the leeway to say it's okay if I'm wrong. The best thing I like about science, it is hands down the number one thing since I've been working with Neil for all these years. The thing that I appreciate the most is information that has changed when better information has come along. And nobody, the world, the science world is not set on fire. They're like, yeah, okay, well, we got better information. Now, one proviso on that is that just because that idea was wrong and that one was wrong, my idea is surely right, even though you think I'm wrong.

23:21I'm one of the heritage. I'm Galileo.

23:23Neil deGrasse Tyson:Right. I'm right. Yeah, and everybody else is right. So does AI help or hurt this exercise? It's a tool. I don't know. We don't know yet. It's a useful tool, which is going to— In the search for truth. Yes. Yeah, absolutely. But you've got to check the sites, the sources they cite. If they provide it, they give— Some of the sources, they're hallucinating. They're not real. If you click on the link, it's like that actual article doesn't actually exist. When we spoke to Jeffrey Hinton, he said some AI does have overconfidence. Overconfidence. He said that the hallucinations that we all know and laugh at with AI, he doesn't call them hallucinations.

24:01Neil deGrasse Tyson:He calls them confabulations. Confabulations, that's what he said. Yes, yes. That's good because we do that. Humans do that. That's why he calls it that. We have fragmented memories of things and we fill it in so that the narrative can make sense to us. Reagan famously remembered things from movies he was in that he thought actually happened. It's like, no, that was a movie you did in 50s. Oh, yeah. So if we go back to the my side bias where people are believing things even though they know it's probably not right. Is that true? Oh, sorry. That's very meta. And I came across the phrase, and I'm not sure if it's yours, if it is, I appreciate this, a servant of belonging.

24:41That's not my phrase, but I like it. What does that mean? What does it mean? Well, so when people publicly signal, like the example I use in the book is, you know, asking undergraduates, do you accept Darwin's theory of evolution? They go, oh yeah, of course, yeah. Explain it. Well, they can't. You know, the giraffe stretches its neck and the baby giraffes have long, no, that's not it at all. So they're publicly signaling, yeah, the scientists tell us this is true, but it probably is. And so a lot of conspiracy theory proclamations. Yeah, I think QAnon is real or the Pizzagate thing. I mean, if you really think about it, this cannot possibly be true.

25:15But what they're signaling is my side says this is a conspiracy theory, and I do know there's bad things that happen. Those Democrats, they're up to no good. I don't know if Hillary actually did this at this Pizzagate. But she did something. She did something, yeah. That's it, yeah. That woman's guilty. Find her. Find her why she's guilty. I call it the past interference syndrome. if you're rooting for the team that the call was made against, it's not past interference. If you're rooting for the team that the call was made for, no, it's definitely past interference. That's right. And you actually see it that way.

25:46That's right.

25:47Neil deGrasse Tyson:My truth and your truth. All right. Let's back up a moment just to get the vocabulary established. You referred to Bayesian reasoning. Could you just say something about that? So that's Reverend Thomas Bayes and this is kind of statistical methods of when you should change your mind when the evidence changes. So you start with, here's what I think is true based on the following points of evidence. Now, if those change, I may change my credence, that is my belief, my confidence that this thing is true. And it's just an influx constantly changing. This allows you to not be so committed to the belief that I have to defend it, like it's my territory and it's under attack.

26:25Rather, it's maybe true, maybe it's false, I don't know. This is my confidence level now, let's go there.

26:30Neil deGrasse Tyson:So it's a more fluid. It's more fluid, yeah. It's a more fluid tracking of. So is there a point where truth is fixed and fixed only? It can never be changed. Not in science. I mean, if it's a religious truth, this is what we believe. All right, so I'm trying this out in the book that a lot of religious truths are actually more like literary truths. They're just stories that have deeper meaning behind them, like great literature, you know, a Jane Austen novel or a Dostoevsky novel. Is there really a Middle Earth somewhere on the planet from J.R.R. Tolkien's... Don't ruin my dream. No, maybe it's in New Zealand.

27:02Sorry, sorry.

27:04Neil deGrasse Tyson:Exactly. You're making a really good point where we don't approach fiction declaring that it's false. Right. Of course. It's not the operative way to think about it. We approach fiction as a source of lessons, parables, ways of living. Moral homilies, yeah. Moral compass can come out of it. And so that's why I've never liked it when people say, is this fact or is it fiction? because that equates fiction with being false. And I'd rather fictional literature not be thought of as true or false. Same with mythologies. Just, is there a lesson in there? So now pick up where you were going. Yeah, so like the story of Jonah and the whale or the great fish.

27:46Did he really live for three days in the belly of a great fish who then spit him out at this other land where he goes to deliver the message, the moral message to these other people, okay? You're missing the point of that story. It's not, you know, how do you live inside a fish for three days? You know, the three days is very symbolic, okay? And most Christians, when I, yeah, of course, I don't know. It's probably not real, but there's a deeper truth there. Okay, how about the resurrection? Maybe that didn't actually literally happen, but it's a story about redemption, forgiveness, starting over, and they go, hang on, time out.

28:15Yeah, time out. Red card. Yeah, red card. You've got Moses in the parting of the Red Sea. You're messing with the whole foundation here now. You've got Moses in the parting of the Red Sea. I mean, you can't really literally say it has to happen. Well, I've heard, you know, people have sent us articles as skeptics. Oh, that was caused by an earthquake or this tsunami. or this volcano. Maybe it didn't happen at all and it's just a story, right? And in the case of Jesus, there's people that think, well, this is called the swoon theory, that he wasn't actually dead on the cross. He just fainted. He swooned.

28:43And then they put him in the cold cave that preserved him for a couple of days and he woke up. And he woke up. And then he went with Mary Magdalene. And if you want to go full Dan Brown, they moved to France, had kids.

28:53Neil deGrasse Tyson:Full Dan Brown. I get the reference, yep. That's funny. And the Illuminati's protecting their lonely descendants. Right, exactly. today. So again, most Christians go, no, no, no. It has to literally happen. Now, why do they insist it literally happen? I think part of the reason is because we live in the age of science where your core beliefs should have some foundation in evidence. In the age of science. Yes. So I just think, okay. So are we swapping out the lenses for different subject matters and the way that we will look at religion and biblical stories through one lens? And if you take politics or something else, and we talked about UAPs at the beginning of the show, and we see them through a totally different lens, maybe more skeptical, maybe less skeptical.

29:35Well, this is my point. Use the right lens to look at this thing. Read biblical stories as literature rather than as empirical claims. Absolutely. But, you know, unfortunately— Well, he's going to hell.

29:49Neil deGrasse Tyson:Just saying. We started our little chat here about post-truth era. Are we? Are we tiptoeing towards it? Please say no to that. Yeah, so what's the status? Well, that was my opening comment. So here's, before you even say anything, I'm really embarrassed to admit this now. What the hell does post-truth mean? What does that mean? Pay attention. This is what I'm asking. That's why we're asking the man. Okay. This is what I'm asking. What does that even mean? He's got a book with his title, see? Okay? So shut the hell up and let the man talk. Okay, go. Well, what it's supposed to mean from the kind of postmodernism and all that stuff in the 80s and 90s is that the old model was that there is an objective reality and truth that we can discover through science.

30:38The new reality is that science is just another narrative story that people tell, and it's no better or different than any other story. So the aboriginal Australian stories about the origins of life and so on is just as good as your scientists. And so what we're pushing back against that is saying, no, they're not equal. And so that would be post-truth that there's no truth to be found. But when you actually read postmodernists, they're making an argument. And they're going, here's our evidence for it. It's like, that's not my post-truth. You're making an argument. So you're on the page with me.

31:11Like, all right, let's see what you got. So then on the back of that, do you get the feeling that there are segments of society, whether it be Eastern, West or whatever, that have just given up on the truth and have more or less just switched off? Well, some people have, yes. I mean, that was, remember, Steve Bannon's famous line to Trump was just flood the system of shit and then we'll tell them what's true because they won't know what to think is true.

31:36Neil deGrasse Tyson:He actually said that? Yeah, he did. Yeah, he did. Oh, yeah. Yeah. This was in like 2015. He's a great guy. I gotta tell you that Steve Bannon, he's something special. I was on a real time with him on one episode. Steve Bannon? Yeah. Ugh. He seemed pretty okay at the time. See, that's the problem. Isn't that the trick of the devil? That's the trick. That's the problem. He seemed like a regular guy. Exactly. He seemed. I'm just saying. That's the disturbing part. So can you give me a short list of the kind of biases we should look out for for ourselves? And how do we know they're not in your book?

32:13Well, you have to read the book. Check the evidence there. Well, so obviously the big one, motivated reasoning. Again, we're all just designed to look for and find evidence for what we want to be true. He said we're designed. Well, designed by evolution. No!

32:27Neil deGrasse Tyson:Look at that. There's one theory that reason evolved as not to find veridical truth, what's actually out there, but to win our arguments for our side. That's one case. Now, we have to have some capacity to understand what the world is actually like in order to survive. So there's probably a balance there. But the idea is that we're going to win the argument for our tribe. That's the my side bias. The hindsight bias, after the fact, you look back at how things unfold and you go, oh, it obviously had to be that way. My life had to come about that way because look what happened. In fact, most of it's just random.

32:58And we're not good at detecting randomness in your business. The stars in the sky are clustered. That's what randomness looks like. My favorite story from Steve Jobs is when they released the iPod shuffle feature that randomly played your songs from your playlist. And people complained. They said, certain songs come up more than others. It's not random. It's like, no, that is what randomness looked like. So they had to program it to be less random so people would feel it's random.

33:22Neil deGrasse Tyson:You program it so that it hits every song before it then redoes it. But that's not random. That isn't random. That's not random at all. That's like throwing the die and getting all the numbers in a row first. First, yeah, before you go. Exactly, right. Or cancer clusters. Oh, look, there's this community here. We got to look to see if there's industrial waste stuff there, some company. So they find the cancer cluster first. Yes. Then they look for what could cause it. But there's other clusters where there's no cancer at all in this community, and no one goes in there to say, well, let's see what they're doing right, because they ignore those misses, right?

33:55So that's one of the things that epidemiology, they have these tools. But you said a cluster of no cancer. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's just a whole. That's not even, no one's even called that. They're just like, well, these people are healthy. Let's find out what's causing that. What's causing all this health? Yeah, yeah. Can't have that. There's not even a name for it.

34:15Neil deGrasse Tyson:Right, there's not even a name. It's not going to make the news. People are healthy. Right. Right. There's no interest. And if they're living near high power lines, no one's going to say the high power lines made them healthy. That's right. Right. So what kind of bias is that? Well, that's just the, you know, well, I call that patternicity. to find meaningful patterns and random noise. Most of it is just random. Right, like Jesus and a piece of toast. Yes, the Virgin Mary and the Grimsy sandwich. Right, we're really good at that, but for reasons that I think are plausible, right, with the lion in the bushes, tell us that story.

34:47Right, yeah, so you hear a rustle in the grass, is it a dangerous predator, or is it just the wind? So if you think that the rustle in the grass is a dangerous predator, and it turns out it's just the wind, that's just a false positive, no big deal, you just move outside. But if you make the other kind of error in which you assume the rustle in the grass is just the wind, it's a dangerous predator, you get a Darwin Award for taking yourself out of the gene pool early by making that mistake. So we tend to assume the worst. We tend to assume the pattern we think is real is really is real just in case.

35:14Same thing with conspiracy theories. Most of them are not true, but some of them might be. Maybe it's better to err on the side that they really are after me. Even if they're not after me, they might be. So I better be cautious just in case. It's funny when you say that because I have talked, you know, I do a lot of work in climate. And one of the things I say is everybody loves conspiracy theories except the one conspiracy theory that's in front of everyone. And that is a small group of companies got together and decided that at all costs possible, they were going to make sure that we dig stuff out of the ground and burn it full well knowing since 1950 whatever that it would destroy our planet.

35:56Now, that is a conspiracy. But you say that to people that are like, dude, get the hell out of here. Well, same thing with tobacco, big tobacco. Big tobacco. They knew. They knew the deal. For a long time. That's a conspiracy. But these conspiracies, they're not sexy. They don't have aliens, and so nobody cares. That's right. I mean, the Illuminati, these 12 guys in London running the world. Okay, but there are 12 CEOs in tobacco that, you know. Right. They had meetings. We have their memos. Yes. And they knew the deal, and, you know, millions of people died, but yet somehow that's not a conspiracy.

36:29They're the ones that had that phrase, you know, the jury is not in, or the science is not settled. We have to wait. We have to wait. That's where they came from. Yeah, that's where they came from.

36:37Neil deGrasse Tyson:This notion of settled science, the people I've spoken with who would invoke that term, the way they bring it to the table is there are these two research papers that are opposite the other hundred. And so therefore the science is not settled. Not settled. Without realizing that there's always going to be outlier research papers. Right. And so at some point - Especially when they're paid for by the people who want a different answer. So tell me about the notion of consensus here. because when you look at, I think if you look up the definition, it refers to opinion, consensus of opinions. And in science, when we speak of consensus, it's the agreement of experiments and observations.

37:17Neil deGrasse Tyson:So how has that word worked for you when you've been voted? Well, in science, yeah, we have to be careful to define that. I mean, it's a consensus of the experts who have been finding each other for decades about whether this hypothesis or theory is true or not. By the time we consume it, they've already hashed out all the problems. This is what we think is probably true. Could be wrong. But that's what we, 97 % of climate scientists say X. What about the 3 %? Maybe they're right. Right. Maybe, but probably not. Yeah, Mr. Exxon and Mr. Shell. Is that who the choices are? That's the three scientists.

37:51Mr. BP, Mr. Exxon, and Mr. Shell. I mean, Neil, you must get these papers. I've been working in my garage here, and Einstein was wrong, and Newton was wrong, and Hawking was wrong, and I got the theory. I'll share the Nobel Prize with you if you help me. with the math, right? I mean, you get these. Okay, so how do you know that guy's not right? I mean, he could be. Maybe all these others. Probably not, right? Because usually the outsiders, the heretics and so on, the would-be Galileos, they're not Galileo. They're just wrong. So if we take a holistic view and go in and look at all the different components of a truth, our truth, my truth, your truth, what value is truth to modern society right now?

38:33I mean, we can't run a society in which there's not some agreed upon reality, like money. I mean, money, it's fiat money. It's just ink on paper. It's not valued at all by itself. That's for sure. But with a structure behind it that says, we value it at this level and we will back it up. Okay. And so we all have to agree to that though. And then once we do that, that becomes the reality, even though underneath it, those are more political.

38:59Neil deGrasse Tyson:That means people have the power to create a truth. In that sense, yes. So political truths are a little different than others. In what way? Well, so in a way, a democratic election is a kind of experiment. What's the right percentage of immigration a country should have? Zero. There's no right number. Unless, of course, they're from South Africa. Or my wife. Or my head of the FBI. Exactly. All with parents who are immigrants. Wow, look at that. Yeah. So we run an election. That's an experiment. We go, okay, these people are now in power. They're going to set it here, and we'll see how that goes.

39:37And then maybe the public goes, ah, we didn't like that. We're going to bring in the other team, and they're going to do something different, and we'll see how that goes. Yeah, try it. I dare you. Well, so but when you talk about, when you're looking at it that way, you brought up money, okay, it's not just the trust that it's valuable. It also behaves as if it were valuable. which is why we then continue to put more trust in it. So for instance, if we had runaway inflation, our dollar would become worthless and we would stop trusting it. Therefore, it would not be of value. So the levers that we are pulling to keep the dollar as a viable world currency is the thing that gives us trust.

40:26Therefore, it really does have value though. That's right, yep. I mean, that's why the government implemented the FDIC. And we're guaranteeing a certain level of money in the bank, even if you think it's not really there. You don't have to have a run on the bank. That's all based on exactly what you just said. A bank run is people just don't trust that the money is in the bank. And it's actually not in the bank. It's out on loan. That's true, you're right. So it's too many people go to the bank. It's in your house, and it's in your house, Neil. And it's your house, Gary. That's where the money is.

40:58That's exactly right. Jimmy!

41:01Neil deGrasse Tyson:Was that It's a Wonderful Life? Yeah! Fresh into memory.

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44:34Are we experiencing more disinterest in the truth? Well, I think there's an incentive to say that. I think people actually still want to know. Are they getting steered towards this? By political groups, religious groups, whatever. Yeah, that's happening. Probably more than before, but it's hard to say. It could just be elevated because of social media. It just becomes so prominent so quickly. In real time, you can see what's happening on X or whatever, where people's attitudes are. I doubt this or I doubt that. I mean, just like the ice shooting of Renee Good. Renee Good. Right, so you have the exact same video clip.

45:13You go Fox News. You can clearly see here she's trying to run over the agent. You go over to CNN. You can clearly see here she's trying to escape the agent and not cause the problem. We're looking at the same video. Right. So even the video evidence is not going to be enough. Not enough. Yeah. Are we failing to adapt to the speed of social media? And are we going to struggle even more with social media? I don't know. The whole thing can collapse. It's so new. I don't know what's going to happen.

45:38Neil deGrasse Tyson:Yeah, because it's feeding you, you know, it's an outrage engine. But let me ask a different question here. You are doing the bidding of science and scientists, yet you yourself are not a scientist. What is your disappointment? Wait a minute. What? No, I'm joking. I'm joking. Well, I am a historian of science. Right, but that's important. That's important. Yeah, that's your background, history of science. So my question is, why aren't more scientists doing exactly what you're doing? Why are you doing the bidding of scientists? Well, they're too busy working in labs actually doing real research.

46:12Oh, okay.

46:15Neil deGrasse Tyson:Because what you say is exactly what's going on, but the scientific community doesn't articulate it. We're not trained to articulate it in our graduate. And you're not built for it. I mean, let's be honest. I'm often accused of defending the orthodoxy. I thought you were a skeptic. Why aren't you skeptical of whatever their pet peeve is about science? Well, because of the consensus thing. I trust the experts. Maybe they're wrong. Maybe you're right with your pet theory about vaccines or the Big Bang or whatever, but probably not. And so I'm really just – what I'm expressing is the system works pretty well most of the time.

46:48And even when there's a mistake made and there's a correction, oh, that theory turned out not to be right or this or that, expanding, accelerating, expanding universe, all that stuff. But that wasn't scientists just being wrong. It was scientists correcting the – updating, upgrading our priors and so on and finding new evidence. That's how it works. So even the worst mistakes in the history of science that creationists point out, built down man, they got that one wrong, and they got that fossil wrong. Yeah, but the mistakes were discovered by scientists.

47:16Neil deGrasse Tyson:Right. Right. But it wasn't the journalists finding the mistakes. That's right, yeah. The scientists found their own mistakes. And even after the replication. Because the system is built to do that. That's right. So, no, unpack our understanding of the word skeptic. Because I've heard people saying, I'm just being skeptical of what the scientists are telling me. Isn't that a healthy posture? At what point do you say, because one of the skeptics organizations, if not yours, I don't remember which, had a button. The button just said, I doubt it. Oh yeah, that was Joe Rogan. No, and I'm just saying, no.

47:53Neil deGrasse Tyson:Being a skeptic means you know at which point you no longer need to doubt it. That's right. And so where does that training come in? Interesting. Because a lot of the people who were, quote, skeptical of vaccines, like you said, skeptical of masks, skeptical of any emergent scientific objective truth. They're just being skeptical. How could you fault them for that? How do you take us out of that? Well, so at the beginning of the plan, I know that's a very dangerous, because they're usually not just asking questions. Absolutely. They're moving us down a pathway. So we start, in science, we start with a null hypothesis.

48:25Your hypothesis is probably not true. Now, go ahead and give us your best evidence. I think ivermectin will cure the issues with COVID-19. That's nice. Okay, do you have any evidence for this? Well, my aunt tried it and she got better. Okay, sorry, in medicine, an anecdote is not data. We have to have controlled trials, epidemiological studies and so on and so forth. The plural of anecdote is not data. That's right. That's right. I think Bigfoot's real. Okay, it could be. Maybe there's another bipedal primate running around out there in Canada or the Himalayas. Show us the body. And if they do, okay, then it's real.

49:02But if not, then I'm going to remain skeptical until I see that evidence, that's completely reasonable. All people should be scientists in that. So there's nothing special about science and skepticism in that regard. We should all be skeptical to start, but then be willing to say, okay, I think that one's probably true.

49:17Neil deGrasse Tyson:So there's some people who believe they are nobly skeptic who don't know that boundary between when the skepticism is healthy and when it's just wrong to be skeptical. That's right. Yeah, I mean, there are people to just sort of contrarian by nature. I'm just going to doubt everything just for the hell. Just the button. I doubt it. Right. I don't believe anything anymore and skepticism. I mean, the line's quite blurred right now. Back in the 90s when post-modernism was big, and there is no real truth. I said, so the claim that the Holocaust never happened is as good as your claim that it is? Well, no, okay, I'm not saying that.

49:56I'm like, oh, okay, so there is a way to find out whether something's true or not. Yeah, I guess so.

50:02Neil deGrasse Tyson:Catch us up on this, because I don't want it to go unresolved, because the 90s was 30 years ago, okay? What? What? That can't be. You're just making up math now. 30 years ago. Oh, my God. 30 years before the 90s was the 1960s. So this postmodern movement was led in academia by the liberal arts community. Could you just remind us about that? you know the literature lit crit and all that stuff deconstructing the text what did the author really mean when they said this and we can't know because they're gone whatever okay so it kind of came out of that and then so we're examining narratives well science is a narrative it's a story it then it became it's just a story it's just another story there's nothing special about it no better or worse than anybody else's story in any other profession it got wrapped up in the oh, well, it's Western, industrialized, capitalist, white, male.

51:01Neil deGrasse Tyson:Okay, but that was pretty strongly seated in academia. When did that spill out into the public? Well, again, probably in the 90s. And just like any kind of claim that anybody makes, we should doubt it, just because it came from a white guy or it came from an academy where this capitalists were running it or whatever, funding it, that kind of thing. Okay. What is the health of that movement today? Well, it's still around, but I think it's been challenged. I mean, to be fair, on the right, there's also the kind of fake news, alternative facts, you know, all this stuff. You can't trust the media.

51:37Neil deGrasse Tyson:Oh, because the postmodernism was a leftist movement. That was a leftist movement. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's one on the right, too. Yes. And so, again, one reason for the book is that we have to get back to trusting experts. Expertise does matter. Definitely. Even if they occasionally get it wrong, that's fine. Here's the deal. they may sometimes get it wrong, but your dumb ass always gets it wrong. You know, that should be on a poster. There's another T-shirt. That's a poster. That's it. That's it. That's it in the nutshell. And Michael, there are people who say, I did my research, and they spent an hour reviewing YouTube videos.

52:10Neil deGrasse Tyson:When a scientist says I did my research, they mean something completely different. Yes, that's right. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so I like independent journalism. I think it's a good corrective for some of the areas of mainstream journalism. but most of those people don't have fact checkers or editors. So they also get it wrong a lot. I just did an op-ed piece for the Washington Post. There was just 700 words, excerpt from the book. Four people went through it. I mean, it took like four days and I had to like provide a link for every single sentence. And it was to the point I was getting irritated. And I'm like, actually, this is a good thing.

52:42There's people checking me. Because I know when I'm just posted on some website that there's nobody fact checking it. Yeah. So let me ask you this. And I think I'm opening up a Pandora's box here right now, but I don't care. Don't do it. I got to do it. You got to care. It's just so important. In this country, right now, after almost officially eradicating or officially eradicating measles, we now are at a 35-year high for measles outbreaks. and there is a direct correlation between the number of people who are not vaccinated and the increase in the cases of measles. What do you say to someone who is listening to the voices that says, well, vaccines are like, they're harmful to your children.

53:34They're wrong. And there are clearly cases where people have died because they've been vaccinated and all the things that they put together. How do we talk to someone like that? Well, you have to ask questions first. Where'd you hear that? You know, oh, on Tucker Carlson or Rogan or whatever. I was listening to RFKJ talk about that. Okay, so, but those sorts, you have to counter false information with more accurate information. So, I mean, there are people that are harmed by vaccines. That does happen. You know, if you give a billion people something with a 0.0001 % side effects, you're going to get some, you know, enough to fill the evening news, right?

54:07So you have to counter it with data. This is the answer to what's the harm of people just being skeptical or whatever. Well, so people won't get vaccinated. And then they'll get measles and things like that. That's unfortunate. I mean, RFKJ, some of the stuff, you know, we should eat healthier. Yeah. No doy. Yeah. Average apple.

54:27Neil deGrasse Tyson:Just to be clear, the liberals were OG anti-vaxxers. Yes, that's right. It only crossed over the fence to become purple. Yes. when it became mixed in with the freedom. Right. Can't have the government tell me. Government can't tell me what to do. Yeah, because the right has never really been anti-pharma from my read of the news. No, because they're fine with pharmaceutical companies making money. Yeah. But some liberals are like, I don't know, comfortable with big pharma making money on vaccines, so maybe the vaccines are better. No, no, no, no. Got just a couple of minutes left here. Have you found anything other than science that has access to objective truths?

55:06By accident. It's called Truth Social. Okay. We took this long. There it is. We took this long for you to go there. Go ahead. Well, I mean, they may get there by accident. I mean, some of the claims about religion, about how we should live our lives, turned out to be good. You know, you should treat others like you would want to be treated the golden rule. Okay, you can graft a game theory model with math on that. Yeah, that actually is true. Okay, they got that through experience, trial and error over thousands of years. Okay, so yeah, some institutions like that can get it right without actually testing.

55:45Science is so new, right? We've been fumbling around for thousands of years, getting some things right and some things wrong, but we're making progress. That's cool. Quickly or slowly? Slowly. Moral progress happens on a decadal level. It happens just slow enough, you don't quite notice how it happened, and then you look back to the 90s. And look, how far we've done.

56:06Neil deGrasse Tyson:Is there such a thing as a moral truth? I think so, yes. So this is published by Johns Hopkins University Press. Wow. And how many of your books have been with them? Two, Conspiracy and this one. Okay. Yeah, they're good. They're really good. The publisher? Yes, they fact check. They do a lot of fact checking and editing. Is this out now? Yeah, it just came out. Okay. Yep. So what are you working on now? And how do we find you on social media? Skeptic.com, michaelschirmer.com, on Twitter, X, at Michael Shermer. Yeah, S-H-E-R. So Michael Shermer is the key. Yeah, that's the, that's pretty. The key term.

56:38Just put it in the Google. And you post it

56:39Neil deGrasse Tyson:with some frequency. I do. Yeah, yeah, not as often as you, maybe, or maybe, yeah, I don't, it depends what's going on. Do you have a TikTok account? I don't, I should get one I know. Okay. Not even on Instagram. I mean, I'm so, I'm so old school. I'm older than you. Old man on the porch. Okay. I'm more on the porch. Yeah, Yeah. All right, Michael, take us out with some hope. Oh, well, again, I think there is an objective truth to be found. I think we're able to find it provisionally and that our brains are smart enough to figure out what's really going on and understand reality. Even if it's error prone, we do it better than other species.

57:19So we'll dig out of this. I think in my ultimate chapter is on, at some point, we could become the equivalent of omniscient beings. That is, if there's a God, we could become in the far future. Or the aliens, if we discover them, they'll be so far advanced in us, they'll appear to be omniscient and omnipotent. And that's the closest we can get to a deity. It'd be our future selves or the aliens.

57:42Neil deGrasse Tyson:All right, dude. And Chuck, we still got you on our YouTube channel. Oh, thank you. Just smart enough. Thank you, sir. Chuck Nice, just smart enough. Look it up and watch it on YouTube, guys. All right. Michael Shermer, delighted to have you. Thank you for having me. This has been another installment of StarTalk Special Edition. Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist, as always, bidding you to keep looking up.

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