Starry Messenger: Cosmic Perspectives on Civilization

by Neil deGrasse Tyson

One can’t realistically expect people to argue in the same way scientists do among themselves. That’s because scientists are not in search of each other’s opinions. We’re in search of each other’s data.

Leonardo da Vinci would be in full agreement: “The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinion.

Social, political, or legislative attempts to require that everybody agree with your personal truths are ultimately dictatorships.

T. S. Eliot once mused,3 We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time.

How long is the human gestation period? Doctors will tell you 280 days (40 weeks), which is not entirely true. That’s the count of days from the last menstrual cycle. Hardly anybody gets pregnant then. You probably got pregnant when you ovulated, two weeks later. So the actual time to make a full-term human baby comes to 280 days − 14 days = 266 days. Now let’s ask about the time it takes for the Moon to cycle through its phases—full Moon to full Moon. You can look that up: it averages 29.53 days. Nine of these cycles comes to 266 days. That’s interesting. A full-term baby takes about nine cycles of the Moon to develop in the womb. So to be born under a full Moon, romantic as it is, simply means you were likely conceived under one, romantic as it was. No need to appeal to new physics or mysterious forces or supernatural events to explain the non-result. Rational inquiry took you there.

Other than climate change and modern biology, there’s very little else about science in America that conservatives deny, despite liberals lobbing broad science-denying accusations at them. Okay. Then what about the liberals themselves? Turns out, the following list of beliefs and practices lands squarely in their corral: crystal healing, therapeutic touch, feather energy, magnetic therapy, homeopathy, astrology, anti-GMO, and anti-pharma. What all these ideas and movements have in common is a flat-out rejection of some or all mainstream science relevant to each subject.

Next, include the total federal outlays per capita received by that state. The difference between these two quantities directly measures how much a state depends on government programs to function, and how much the government depends on the state to run. When you conduct this exercise, you find that eight of the top ten states that pay more per capita to the federal government than they receive are blue states. On the other end, not including Virginia (home of the high-budget Pentagon), six of the ten states that receive more support from the federal government28 than they pay are red states.29

The health and wealth of the nation remains highly dependent on the economic strength of blue states, with New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Illinois leading the way.

it. Every year we continue to lose upwards of 35,000 people on our roads, yet the US military has spent $2 trillion on our post–9/11 war on terror,27 mostly in Iraq, precipitated by the singular deaths of September 11. America was angry and did not want to live in a state of terror. This wasn’t a cost-benefit calculation about saving lives. It was a cost-benefit calculation about how we feel.

All I ask is to see accurate and authentic data, analyzed from all directions—free of bias and tunnel vision—before I layer my emotions upon it. In the end, we must live with the consequences of our decisions. After all input of facts and statistical analysis, our emotions may defy reconciliation with data. That’s okay too.

What happens when your sense of superiority applies not to an individual whom you just beat at, say, a game of chess, but to an entire demographic? Most of those people you have never met and will never meet. You feel superior because somebody told you it was okay to feel that way—your parents, or some political or social authority. You might expect cultural bias to get handed down from one generation to the next, or nationalistic delusions to override rationalistic thought. You might also be convinced by a spokesperson for God that your religion is better than everybody else’s. But what happens if a bona fide scientist tells you that you’re superior? Will you accept the conclusion, riding high on the feeling, or will you explore possible sources of bias?

Superiority is hard to concede when, in your mind’s eye, you’re the superior one.

Science itself did not reach experimental maturity until engineers developed tools to hone, extend, and even replace each of our five senses, themselves highly susceptible to our accompanying mental states. Not only that, we’ve discovered senses that lie far beyond human physiology. Indeed, our five biological senses pale when compared with the dozens of “senses” that science now wields, each offering extraordinary access to the operations of nature.

On reflection, however, a purposefully conceived computer would not likely be capable of all the inane and irrational behavior that we’ve exhibited in the history of our species. Computers are better than that. So this could be the best evidence yet that we don’t live in a simulation. Call it the inanity defense.

Were you conscious before you were conceived? Did you complain, “Where am I? How come I’m not on Earth?” No, you simply didn’t exist, and if you’re lucky to be born, your nonexistence before life bookends your nonexistence after death.

On death, I’d miss out on the adult lives of my children. But no tragedy there. Just a selfish yearning against something that is natural and normal. I’m supposed to predecease them. The real tragedies are when your children die before you do. Something Gold Star families know all too well, with sons and daughters and brothers and sisters lost to wars.