Global warming, vaccines, evolution…it's pretty clear that scientific ideas aren't doing a very good job winning out. Neil DeGrasse Tyson has proposed building a country called Rationalia that would be entirely ruled by the evidence. But do scientists like Neil DeGrasse Tyson even know the evidence? Sadly, after over 200 episodes, it seems like they don't. The majority of them have become such narrow specialists that they don't even bother to read what other scientists have been up to and so many people with PhDs have heads filled with magical thinking.

In this episode, we go through some of the different kinds of magical thinking that many scientists believe in from beliefs about their own brains, other people's brains and how ideas move. Hunter used to be the same way. Basically, he was like that dickhead in the Harvard bar in Good Will Hunting who thought that because he knew a bunch of facts that he had a realistic view of the world and the right to intellectually bully others to make himself feel big. Then, he hung out with a bunch of actors who talked endlessly about their feelings and he got so annoyed that he went off to see what science had to say about emotions. What he found left him profoundly humbled. The more he's read the more he's gotten a real education and come to realize that when Will talked to that Harvard dickhead he was talking to most people with fancy degrees:

"See, the sad thing about a guy like you is, in 50 years you're gonna start doin' some thinkin' on your own and you're going to come up with the fact that there are two certainties in life: one, don't do that, and two, you dropped 150 grand on a fuckin' education you could have got for a dollar fifty in late charges at the public library!"

The world believes in the magic of degrees. That's what you're paying for. But if you want a real education that allows you to achieve things in the real world you can study for free in the Mental Dojo of Master Kim (aka Bryan Callen). You can be Will and learn how to make Harvard dickheads submit and beg for mental mercy.

While science's principles are perfect so is the Christian principle of loving thy neighbor as itself. Just because science has perfect principles that doesn't mean that the most powerful members of the institution built on those principles actually live them. When Jonathan Swift satirized science hundreds of years ago, he gave us a good idea of what Neal DeGrasse Tyson's country would look like. It would be a floating island filled with eggheads who were so interested in theories that they never bothered to question how they might be out of touch with reality.

Featured Links

The Reluctant Mr. Darwin
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Gulliver's Travels