Tag: Neil deGrasse Tyson

There are many fine comments on Tyson’s “I’m sorry I’m too smart for you” post. I will share some.

David Gorski Notpology. You didn’t really apologize for what you said. You just apologized for not realizing how badly it would be received, which is an entirely different thing. do better.

Kavin Senapathy You’re *just now* learning that facts presented without crucial context can be “true but unhelpful,” which shows that you haven’t learned the lesson you need. Anyone with the most basic google skills could have “offered up” a list like this–it reads like something a dime-a-dozen smart-ass account with a handful of followers would tweet, not at all something that “would be helpful to anyone trying to save lives in America,” as you say. People doing the work to save lives in America not only have access to available facts, but know to appropriately contextualize them within the flawed systems that allow for preventable deaths. It wasn’t only offensive, it was poorly-executed and not at all contextualized among all of the other relevant “facts.” You haven’t apologized here for your actions, you’re “apologizing” to those who took offense, as if it’s on them–it’s not.

tl;dr: Your “facts,” presented so callously, were not only not helpful during a time of tragedy, but could never be “helpful to anyone trying to save lives in America,” no matter when you presented them.

Jean Kazez Seriously bad response. The problem with your tweet wasn’t the unanticipated reaction, it was your bad reasoning. There are good reasons why mass shootings like the ones over the weekend upset people more than accidental deaths from disease and the like. They make us unsafe in formerly safe places. They are evidence of extremely sinister attitudes in our fellow citizens. We are doing nothing to prevent them, where we do a lot to prevent the other tragedies in your list. You didn’t think this through. That’s the problem, not people’s reactions.

Mine:

Good grief. “I’m sorry you misunderstood me” is not an apology at all, it’s a passive-aggressive insult.

And you’re the one who missed the point here. We KNOW there are other causes of “preventable deaths” but that’s not the entirety of the issue, to put it mildly. Even other shooting deaths are not a complete parallel. There really IS something special about people going to schools or Walmarts or bars in order to kill as many people AT RANDOM as possible. Add the fact that the intent appeared to be racist and that the president of the US incites racism every chance he gets, and it becomes pretty obvious why we pay extra attention.

Neil deGrasse Tyson bestowed a Facebook post on us yesterday, explaining that he’s sorry we’re too stupid to have understood his profound tweet on Sunday.

Yesterday, a Tweet I posted in reaction to the horrific mass shootings in America over the previous 48 hours, killing 34 people, spawned mixed and highly critical responses.

If you missed it, I offered a short list of largely preventable causes of death, along with their average two-day death toll in the United States. They significantly exceeded the death toll from the two days of mass shootings, including the number of people (40) who on average die from handgun homicides every two days.

Here it is again for us literal-minded peasants:

In the past 48hrs, the USA horrifically lost 34 people to mass shootings.

On average, across any 48hrs, we also lose…

500 to Medical errors
300 to the Flu
250 to Suicide
200 to Car Accidents
40 to Homicide via Handgun

Often our emotions respond more to spectacle than to data.

Back to Tyson’s explanation of how too stupid we are:

I then noted that we tend to react emotionally to spectacular incidences of death, with the implication that more common causes of death trigger milder responses within us.

Oh but that wasn’t the only possible implication. That’s part of the problem. It wasn’t particularly clear to me what the implication was, for instance. Was it that we’re just big stupid crybabies who don’t know how to count? Was it that we’re so clueless we don’t realize that more than 34 people die every day? Was it that everybody dies so what’s the big deal? Was it something to do with road safety? Was it an accusation that we pay attention to mass shootings only because we’re drawn to “spectacle”?

Those are a few of the possible implications, and there are more. The implication was far from clear. That’s not our fault.

My intent was to offer objectively true information that might help shape conversations and reactions to preventable ways we die.

But mass murder is not just another preventable way we die. My god. What a stunningly dense thing to say. If a woman close to him – a friend, a relative, a colleague – is raped, would he tell her there are many preventable ways we are injured?

Let me spell it out even more clearly. Murder is more than just a preventable way to die. That’s why it’s called “murder” and not just “death.”

So, cool about the “objectively true information,” but not so cool about the way it was framed or the timing of offering it or the general air of inhuman indifference accompanying it.

Where I miscalculated was that I genuinely believed the Tweet would be helpful to anyone trying to save lives in America. What I learned from the range of reactions is that for many people, some information –-my Tweet in particular — can be true but unhelpful, especially at a time when many people are either still in shock, or trying to heal – or both.

Ya think?

Yes, Virginia, some information can be true but unhelpful. I would say that’s the case not for “some” people but for all of us. I think possibly even Neil Tyson would see it that way if he had just accidentally chopped a finger off and a companion decided to take that moment to tell him how to get from Kensington to Peckham by tube.

So if you are one of those people, I apologize for not knowing in advance what effect my Tweet could have on you.

And that is just outright insulting. It’s “I’m sorry you’re too stupid to get my jokes.” It’s also…well it’s frankly kind of Trumpian in its failure to consider his own possible incomprehension. It’s a jeer at the idea that one could ever possibly suss out how a given remark might affect people – which is a jeer at the whole idea of checking what we say for the potential to hurt or shame or anger or frighten others. Neil Tyson is way too adult and accomplished to be that mind-blind.

I am therefore thankful for the candor and depth of critical reactions shared in my Twitter feed. As an educator, I personally value knowing with precision and accuracy what reaction anything that I say (or write) will instill in my audience, and I got this one wrong.

That sounds more as if he did see the point, but given what went before…I doubt it.