“It’s the beginning of the end,” he told Yahoo News and Finance anchor Bianna Golodryga. “It’s the beginning of the end of an informed democracy, the moment people are debating whether an objectively established scientific truth is true. The moment that happens, there is no informed decision-making.”
Tyson, director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, said he was disturbed that government leaders were ignoring the scientific reports from the National Academy of Sciences.
“If you’re going to ignore their reports, there is no future for a country that wants to thrive in terms of its health and its wealth and its security,” he said.
Tyson said competition in all those fields require “innovation and intelligent investments” in science, technology, engineering and math.
“If you don’t have that, just watch America fade. We’re already kind of fading. Just watch it continue to fade and just disappear. It’s not a cliff, so you don’t know it. You don’t ‘oh, we’re stepping over the edge.’ No, no. It’s just, we’ll become less relevant. The world starts making decisions without us, where we used to lead those very same decisions.”
“I’m so disappointed that the country that I grew up in ― that put men on the moon, that developed the internet, that invented personal computers and smartphones ― that people are debating what is and what is not scientifically true.”
I actually do not think we need a famous astrophysicist to point this out to us, we are seeing it with our own eyes almost every day.
This is what helped to elect Donald Trump.
This is what is undermining our public education.
And this is what is potentially destroying the future of our country.
It is what the conservatives have been pushing us toward for decades.
If facts have a liberal bias, well then facts need to be undermined and stripped of their ability to shape the opinions and open the minds of the American citizens.
And here we are.
At a place where truth is a matter of opinion, and reality is open to interpretation.
still selling fear
ReplyDeleteTrump may be the leader of that mission for right now, but he certainly didn't get it underway.
ReplyDeleteMedia is complicit. Posts making this same point always take me to the early 90s when the mission of enlightening routinely employed by the Donahue program increasingly lost to the chair-throwing savagery of Geraldo and Jerry Springer.
Who needs examination of nefarious government doings when there's six different punks to be DNA tested for parenthood, out of control teenage girls to be sent to boot camp, or “My Husband Treats Me Like A Slave.”
Throw in Limbaugh and Fox and it's all true. My own soapbox is recalling all the idiots doing simple manufacturing jobs for good money and breeding rafts of idiot children. (I was QC/QA.) Those people don't listen to Nye and Tyson. I tried to discourage them...
DeleteI will not accept this type of ignorance. It will be much easier to identify those non science scabs and remove them. Facts are facts truth is truth. I'm a bit sick of this ignorance that don john fell into. The stupid shit for brains fell in head first!! If doomed science America is the case then America must remove the World wide fake internet service. Get a pencil, paper, textbook and fund public schools. The world wide web of deceit is the problem. Mr Gates of Hell will not win.
ReplyDeleteVALUES!
Deletehttp://www.berkeleyside.com/2017/05/02/berkeley-author-george-lakoff-says-dont-underestimate-trump/
The Atlantic
Deletehttps://newsstand.google.com/articles/CAIiEM8pF7v-LSvtM1Flcku5BHgqFAgEKg0IACoGCAowm_EEMKAiMPtZ
"It Was Cultural Anxiety That Drove White, Working-Class Voters to Trump"
Scientologist voted for trump. "The Silent Majority"
DeleteFrance declared scientology as a cult years ago. The IRS must not accept Scientology as religion. It is a scam and full of con artist.
DeleteThis is bullshit. Cut out the nonsense.
ReplyDeleteToday in History. Everyone should read today in History TODAY. Today L Hubbard produced a book that relates to this story by IM and explains what we are dealing with in this election scam. It is a must read. Go to Today in History and read up!! Dianetics a book by L Hubbard a wacko from California and the cause of ignorance we are witnessing today. Trump is under audit? yes by scientology con artist. He has caused this great nation to suffer temporarily and will pay the price for it ultimately through our justice system and laws.
ReplyDeletehttps://weather.com/science/space/news/stephen-hawking-100-years-new-planet-earth
ReplyDeleteOf course, religion has a major role in this disintegration. The more educated and fact-based you are, the less likely you are to be religious. So, religious leaders are putting lots of efforts into dumbing down America (and the world) to protect their power.
ReplyDeleteHuh? You might want to rethink that. Jesuits run some of the best universities in the country. Georgetown, Marquette, Fordham, Boston, Gonzaga, Loyola, Holy Cross, and then there are the Benedictines too.
DeleteThere are some science-denying fundies, but what do they have. Nothing to compare to the schools i just listed.
The GOP never did have much grasp on reality or history. So I guess we shouldn't be surprised that the GOP hasn't a clue about science.
ReplyDeleteBeaglemom
...and there are so many, many of them!! and home schooling (religiously abusing) their many, many kids.
Deletehttp://www.politicususa.com/2017/05/09/democrats-finally-figure-ad-work.html
ReplyDeleteThis, and so much more, is why I'm glad to be getting old with no descendants. I won't have to see again what has played out so many times over the centuries.
ReplyDeleteFascism and Dominionism is winning, again.
" will allow insurance companies to require people who have higher health care costs to contribute more to the insurance pool,” Brooks claimed. “That helps offset all these costs, thereby reducing the cost to those people who lead good lives, they’re healthy, they’ve done the things to keep their bodies healthy. And right now, those are the people—who’ve done things the right way—that are seeing their costs skyrocketing.”Brooks’s explanation, and his close association of morality and health, with the idea that “good lives” produce good health, is just a recasting of the prosperity gospel." partially rejected the role of science in public health and encouraged a view that faith, virtue, and good works could be enough to secure healing."Health is wealth."
ReplyDeletedat" wealth and success as something to which disaffected working-class people might aspire, however irrationally. "
"Trump’s rise came as a preacher of the prosperity gospel. His promise to repeal Obamacare and replace it with just about nothing in particular relied as much on dissatisfaction with the current law as it did the delirious optimism of prosperity, and the idea that the real way to better America was to make life better for healthy and wealthy people, and to further link the two."zeal can often defeat numbers, and men like Trump and Ryan are prosperity-gospel zealots in a way, although their inspiration may be less than divine. "
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/05/the-prosperity-gospel-of-american-health-care/525264/?utm_source=atltw
https://www.facebook.com/RichardDawkinsFoundation/photos/a.496176595154.294030.8798180154/10155099885485155/?type=3&theater
ReplyDeleteFor once in my life I am glad I have no children or grandchildren to leave behind when I die. The know-nothings have taken over and it's not going to have a happy ending.
ReplyDeleteNot surprising from a country whose education system ranks at the bottom of developed nations. There's no where to go but down from here, unfortunately.
ReplyDeleteYes, we're in a bad place, but I hope that it's not "the beginning of the end". I am encouraged that the results of this awful election have maybe gotten the attention of the Silicon Valley billionaires, and that they, a mostly liberal group, will feel the need to throw their brains and resources towards getting the nation back on track. Combine that with the majority of the population actually being left-leaning, and hopefully now energized to actually get out and vote, then we will address climate change and preservation of the environment (hopefully we have time), universal health care (single payer), etcetera.
ReplyDelete"Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Richard Branson, Jeff Bezos, and pretty much every other crazy rich tech leader you can imagine have announced that they’re banding together to combat climate change with a new partnership called the Breakthrough Energy Coalition. Through the partnership, the group’s members have committed to use a substantial portion of their hundreds of billions of dollars in collective net worth to invest in early stage clean energy companies. Zuckerberg framed clean energy as foundational to solving so many of the world’s other problems. “Solving the clean energy problem is an essential part of building a better world,” he wrote. “We won’t be able to make meaningful progress on other challenges—like educating or connecting the world—without secure energy and a stable climate.”
I personally have been donating $20/month to Tom Steyer's NextGen Climate organization. If we all join with these guys, we can solve this. And the beauty of it is that it will be good for our economy!
This is exactly what the new Fed. Gov't wants to happen: it takes the pressure off them to pay for it.
DeleteNote what NY state is doing re health care -- a singlet payer system which may pass their Senate (the need 2 votes to do it).
It works on a small scale, too. Municipal gov't threatens to tear down a beloved old building and the grass-roots community will move heaven and earth to pay for its renovation.
Too little, too late. We had a good run but this experimental Democracy is on the decline and the brakes on the car are all worn out.
DeleteOnce the majority population possess a lower-than-median intelligence level the country is doomed.
For those of us aged 50-60, things should be okay as we are generally invested in personal retirement (especially since we've been reminded over and over that we won't enjoy Social Security or Medicare) and have paid off our mortgages and purchase things such as cars with cash.
However, for the below 50's their America is going to be a very different experience than for us olds who are financially self-sufficient thanks to wise investments during a period of unprecedented growth.
Glad I don't have children because their situation would make me sad, especially knowing that they won't be part of the same "America" that I was.
All good things come to and end, but I never thought I'd live through the end of America as I knew it.
Absolutely fading. Young scientists are being recruited from countries around the world. Why come to the US to be hassled when you can work in Asia or Europe? As a commenter remarked elsewhere, my parents left their homeland for a better life in America, now Americans are leaving for a better life elsewhere.
ReplyDeleteI left during the Vietnam war -- for Canada. So glad I did.
DeleteYou guys had 8 years of hope & progressive ideas realized despite a NO congress -- 'cause you didn't vote Democrat in 2010. If you had, what could have been accomplished? Certainly more Democratic state legislations and less extreme gerrymandering & vote suppression...
82 million people didn't vote in 2016 -- why the fuck not? You better vote in 2018 -- cause it now can take 3 Dem votes to 1 Republican.
"It's the beginning of the end," Dr. Tyson said. If he supported this prediction with his expertise as an astrophysicist, it might be valuable.
ReplyDeleteWhen he strays outside his field, his opinion doesn't carry any authoritative weight. He strays a lot, and resents being corrected.
This is a man who thinks bats are blind; believes that 500 years ago everyone thought the earth was flat; doesn't understand auto-rotation of a helicopter after engine failure; insults the medical profession; and thinks that any species that didn't find sex pleasurable would become extinct.
This last booboo was made even worse by his response to Emily Willingham's factual examples disproving Tyson's claim. He dismissively referred to her as "a woman with a blog." She also has a Ph.D in biology.
He should enjoy his astrophysics work and have fun pointing out factual inaccuracies in sci-fi movies, and leave futurist predictions to experts in any of the multi-disciplinary fields which qualify people for that.