StarTalk Radio - Cosmic Queries – Science and Morality

Episode Date: April 15, 2016

Explore the intersection of science and morality when host Neil deGrasse Tyson answers fan questions with the help of guest Michael Shermer, the founder of Skeptic Magazine and author of The Moral Arc. Eugene Mirman co-hosts. Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ on Apple Podcasts to listen to new episodes ad-free and a whole week early.

Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now. This is StarTalk, and I'm your host, your personal astrophysicist, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and I serve as the director of the Hayden Planetarium right here in New York City at the American Museum of Natural History. And this edition of StarTalk is one what we call Cosmic Queries. And we've solicited questions from our fan base and all the various social media on the topic of the role of science in the formation of our morality. And I can't do that alone.

I could try it, but we got people who thought way more deeply on this than I have. But before I get to our principal guest, let me just introduce my co-host, Eugene Merman. Eugene, hey. Hello, Neil. Hey, welcome back to Star Talk. Thank you. And there's a man sitting to your right. Eugene, hey. Hello, Neil. Hey, welcome back to Star Talk. Thank you. And there's a man sitting to your right. I know, I can see him.

So this is, of course, Michael Shermer. If you don't know this guy, he's founder and editor-in-chief of Skeptic Magazine. It's a magazine. I don't believe it. See, I've never heard that one before. And I've known your work forever And I'm glad somebody's doing Almost eternity, yes Doing the good work

You do all the hard work And I get to just tell people To have fun with the universe Well, unfortunately There's a lot of bunkum That needs debunking That we do, yes And so

One of your recent books Because you've got a lot of You come out with books all the time So be a regular guest for each book, please. And currently it's called The Moral Arc. Great title. Moral Arc, yeah. Great title.

Well, the title, of course, comes from Dr. King's famous How Long, Not Long. That would be Martin Luther King. That's right, yes. Not just a doctor named King. Yes. He's a cardiologist that I really love. But he had a moral arc, which is a good thing because, you know, doctors are supposed to heal. Yeah, exactly.

Actually, King got that from a 19th century abolitionist preacher named Theodore Parker, who first coined the idea that there's an arc to the moral universe and it's bending toward justice. And he quoted that verbatim in the speech. That's right, he did, yes. Well, he had a whole bunch of religious tropes, and so often religion is credited with a lot of the civil rights movements. But in fact, Dr. King's primary guide was Gandhi, that is nonviolent, peaceful protests and that sort of thing. And that particular march from Selma to Montgomery, which is now immortalized in film, was not just an accident. They really shopped around to figure out where can we march that will get the most attention for our cause?

Who is the biggest racist we have? The biggest bigot, you know, in the South. And this is Bull Connor in Alabama. And so that. Isn't it weird that there's like a portfolio of people to choose from? Yeah. On a scale of one to ten, who is really a badass? This is the guy we want.

Well, this category over here, now which one is right? So I hadn't paused to reflect on the fact that the entire civil rights movement is some steps towards morality in our species. Absolutely. The idea that... At least in the United States, of course. Well, really worldwide, at least in the Western world, since the scientific revolution and the Enlightenment, the idea that the universe is knowable. Just to be clear, I would date that from like 1600 onward, when we first start not only thinking about how the world must be, but testing the ideas and coming up with theories

for how and why. Exactly right. So you can start wherever you want to start, Copernicus or slightly after Kepler. But I really – This would be 400, 500 years from now. Yeah. So a big turning point, though, is Newton's Principia, which after that – Now, Newton's my man.

I know he's your man. That's why I brought him up. Just so you know. Just watch what you say. And he's not just your man. He was pretty much everybody's man. I got his back, okay? So just back up.

All right. So – You must get those letters and papers From alternative physics people That go, Newton was wrong and here's why Yeah, of course I don't know about this at all, but I get it And we can move on

You probably get wannabe comedians that send you material Yeah, that are like, Newton is wrong And I'm like, I don't think so Newton wasn't funny at all, but I am Well, you're right, He wasn't funny at all. He was very serious. Anyway, the idea was that the universe is knowable, and it's governed by certain principles and laws that we can understand and even put into equations. And after the Principia was published, everybody wanted to be the Newton in their field.

a book called The Spirit of the Laws, which was about what are the conditions by which people design certain laws and customs and economic systems and political systems. There must be some governing laws behind that. And this would eventually gave rise to the study of the economy as a knowable system. The economy is governed by laws and principles, just like the universe is. Solar systems, ecosystems, economic systems. And so this is what the Enlightenment was all about. By the way, I still think that's a wishful thing for economists, to analogize what they do to what physicists do in the universe. And you know that there's some physics envy going on in there. Well, of course.

Actually, you have a deeper point there, that maybe it's not doable. Maybe, sort of epistemologically, you can't ratchet up from a solar system to an economic system. Maybe there's too many variables. But that is what they try to do. At least – And people are the biggest variables there are. It's good that they're trying. I mean, we need a functioning society with an economy.

It's better than randomness. Yeah, it's true. It's better than – yeah. Chaos. Yeah. Like some economies. Yeah, sounds like you guys are really mad at, or you want bartering. But once you ratchet up to, say, social systems and then moral systems, I mean, they actually talked about the moral sciences.

What's that? Well, if human behavior is governed by certain laws and principles like animal behavior is, like planets are, then how we treat each other should be treated as a problem to be solved rather than a sin to be condemned. treat each other should be treated as a problem to be solved rather than a sin to be condemned. So instead of religion condemning people for their bad acts, let's look at what they're doing. Homicides, for example, killing each other. What can we do to decrease the amount of that? And that's what political systems began to experiment with. Let's try this.

Let's try that. And apparently— Free hats. Free hats. That did it. All the violence. And it's odd that the threat of going to prison apparently is not working, given the prison population. I think, yeah, threatening in general is often not the best way.

Well, the first book on that was by a guy named Cesare Beccaria, an Italian Enlightenment philosopher who wanted to be the Newton of his field. And his book was on how the punishment should fit the crime. It's an essay on crimes and punishments. He's the first to articulate. I just acquired that book two weeks ago. You did? Yes.

Seriously? Just from an old antiquarian book. You've been thinking about punishing a lot lately? I think I only learned that that book existed from reading some of what you've written. That's right. Yep. And he tried to figure out how do you match a punishment to a crime? Right.

And what do you go about to even establish that relationship exactly yeah i was very impressed with what that was at the time the death penalty was you know not only on the books but it was on the books for over 220 different crimes like like if you stole someone's moccasins that's right stealing moccasins death penalty off of your head wow you know so uh i mean you know we're we're distressed about ISIS beheading people. You know, states used to behead people right and left for any, you insult the king, insult the king's garden, and you could be beheaded. Really?

Shoplifting. His garden? This king sounds like a real jerk. Or a control freak. Oh, the gardens in the 17th century, 18th century, were very regimented, and they were supposed to be very geometrical. Well, the English gardens were. The French gardens are more

freeform, if I remember correctly. But to insult them in either place was... Death penalty. Wow, that does seem a little extreme. So Becquerea's idea was... Were they very nice gardens? Well, some of them were, but you know, I mean, come on. Were they insultable? Yeah, exactly. It's like, well, I don't know, maybe don't insult a man's garden.

Your rhubarbs are not quite lined up straight. Yeah, all right. Off with his head. Off with his rhubarb. So the idea that it's the principle of proportionality, that punishment should fit the crime. And what a concept. And we would sort of take it for granted. And we often abuse it and then come back.

So the crime wave of the 60s and 70s was followed by the prison wave of the 90s and the 2000s. And now we recognize, okay okay this has gone too far you know these severe punishers for you know a third strike of a half an ounce of pot you know of anything of anything right right oregano oh okay off with his head uh you know that's that's too far so but but the idea that we're going to experiment with things that's kind of a scientific idea yeah let's try this. Maybe you just dangle someone upside down for an hour and then they won't be criminals. Have we tried that?

Actually, this is not a bad idea. Shake up somebody's brain if there's a criminal brain. Anyway, what we're after here is how we can apply the methods of science to a political system, society, human behavior. That's precisely how we pose the question

to our fan base, knowing that you'd be with us in the studio here and now, visiting from Los Angeles. I actually knew I would be coming. Yeah, it was just data. So, Eugene, you have some of these questions. Neither Michael nor I have seen these questions before. No.

You're popping them on us. I'm asking you questions that people have asked. They've been sealed. Yeah, exactly. This is from a Patreon. This is a Patreon patron, Mark Miller. And his question is, with evidence proving we are all equally the same,

why do racism and bigotry remain strong in certain groups with strong ideologies? He's from Halifax, Nova Scotia. Right. Wow. Okay. That's the big question. Yeah. He jumps right to the... Well, okay. So first of all, one of the cognitive capacities we have is pigeonholing things. We classify things.

Planets, animals, other people. And unfortunately, we're very good at this. There's good reasons to do that. You know, it's good to be able to realize that those mushrooms are good to eat and these are bad to eat. And you can tell the difference by the color of the skin of the mushroom. You don't have to bite it and throw up or die. And die. That's right.

So, and it's good to get that. But if you did, that would be immensely valuable to those who survived. If they saw you. Otherwise, you're a dead guy by a bunch of mushrooms. Who knows what happened? And in fact, we have a brain mechanism that does just that. It's called one-trial learning. If you eat a mushroom and vomit and become violently ill, you'll never want to eat

that again. And that applies to any food. In my case, it was red wine when I was in college when I had way too much red wine. And it took me about 10 years before I could drink red wine again, just because my brain was, okay, that made you vomit. Don't eat that again. Only gin. Gin will keep you safe. That's what you would tell yourself.

It happened to me with, I got, what's that really bad one you get in your lower digestive tract? Well, there's Montezuma's Revenge. Salmonella. So I got salmonella. Do you eat raw chicken? Like chicken tartare? No, it was mayonnaise, likely. And at the time, the taste in my mouth was an orange soda.

And I went 10 years before I could come near orange soda. What about mayonnaise? You learned it wrong. I didn't have the taste of mayonnaise in my mouth. That's the difference. That's the confounding of the accuracy of the data that you would use it as a cause and effect. And in essence, that's what racism is. It's just a hijacking of a system that's there for good reasons.

And then say, okay, all people that look like X, that's in the category of the bad stuff, and we don't want to get near them. You see this now with, you know, that most of the ISIS terrorists is related to Islam, so therefore we just lump into this big category. That's just so predictable. How much of it isn't just tribalism? Well, that is in part what tribalism is. Although, see, tribalism is whoever is going to be your kin and kind and the people you grew up with and hang around a lot with. And share closer DNA.

And those are typically going to be racially similar to you and so on. So we naturally just look at people in other tribes unless there's some way to interact with them to reduce the amount of anxiety and increase trust. Which is where pop music comes in. Pop culture and pop music. Music is actually one of the great unifiers. If you like Bono and I like Bono, take your pick. I'm okay with Bono.

Okay, good. So then we're less likely to... So maybe the real answer is to get ISIS some first of all, you two. And then probably from there just be like well okay maybe we can agree on len zeppelin well that would be good so so that'd be a good start the we're wired to be racist yeah yeah so we're wired to be tribalist now is it possible to for the tribalism to relate to your proximity to them rather than to what they look like in such a way,

then people in your city, however large, become your tribe. That's right. And the way that happens is through interactions of any kind. Trade. Oh, okay. Interstate trade reduces the likelihood of a conflict between two states by a significant percentage. It reduces it by like 100%. By 100%? Sorry, I got that. That's very exciting.

Actually, I missed by 50%. Oh, okay. That's so much more believable now. Coming the other way, it would go up 100%. Yes. Going from 50 to 100, you've increased by 100%. Yes. Going from 100 down to 50, it's only 50%. I mean, the Chinese are fairly different looking from us,

but one reason not to go to war with them is they make your iPad there. And so because they do that, we don't want to bomb them. We want to give them our money, and they want to give us their products. So there's a mutual exchange. But that works with ideas or music or any kind of pop culture. So it's a mutual exchange. But that works with ideas or music or any kind of pop culture. So it's a leftover evolutionary force. As you said, I love the word you used, hijacked or co-opted for completely nefarious reasons. That's right.

So it's an evolutionary shortcoming in our species. As Jared Diamond likes to point out from hanging out with Papua New Guineans, indigenous peoples, if you run into a stranger on a hiking path, you should either try to kill him or run for it because he might try to kill you. The idea of reaching out and shaking somebody's hand is just insane because in the ancestral world that we evolved in, that would have been suicidal to do that. So if one of you had turmeric and the other had gold. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. So you, you make a swap. So that's one of the reasons why anthropologists have documented like the potlatch where I'm going to throw a big party for you and you throw a big party.

It doesn't matter what it is. We're exchanging something. And that tells me I can trust this guy. You know, he gave me something. I gave him something. He trusts me. I trust him. And that breaks down the natural tribal barrier.

So the idea would be if we could expand it to the whole city. So if we could have a worldwide party, let's call it Christmas. And exclude only – no. New Year's. Let's call it New Year's. New Year's is probably better. New Year's is pretty good. How much violence happens on New Year's?

I mean, think about it. Well, probably – I don't know. Probably less than on Christmas. Way less. And so I've always been fascinated by the leftover evolutionary baggage we have simply to have us survive in the past that then would interfere with our survival. Absolutely. And you can turn it back on, unfortunately, and that's what groups like ISIS do. They tribalize things and they're the enemy, we're the good guys. It's that sort of dividing people up into black and white, good and evil. And it's easy to turn those things back on. Fortunately, we're pretty good at turning it off just through all these different mechanisms. And so one of the things states have done by making their borders more porous,

say, what's the chances of Germany and France going to war? All these scientifically literate adjectives. Yeah. The porosity. Porosity. That's good. The gelatinous mass of the economy. Yeah.

Stop talking about Greece like that. But where, you know, for 500 years, the great powers of Europe were at war with each other pretty much every year. It just stopped in 1945. Until they started trading transistor radios and stuff. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

It's cheaper for the French and Germans to trade with one another and cross borders and so on. Well, now with the EU, you don't even have to show your passport. Right. It's like going from here to Texas or, no, wait, where are we? Oh, okay, not here. So, Eugene, a couple of minutes left. Can we slip in another question, do you think? I think we can.

All right. Here's one from George Isaac on Facebook. All right. Here's one from George Isaac on Facebook. Neil, how far do you want human space exploration to be by the year 2115? So 100 years is what he's talking about. So here's an interesting fact. And to the point of your book, The Moral Arc, the International Space Station, which is a collaboration of various nations, including the United States and Russia,

is the largest collaboration of nations outside of the waging of war. Bigger than just trade in general? Well, you talk about how many nations are involved and the value of that mission How many billions of dollars it represents Yeah, I guess there's trade Okay But yeah, I see what you mean

You can interconnect economies So I'll grant you that But they're not people working together In front of one another As it is in the space station Someone, upon hearing that, thought Well, maybe the World Cup is like that Or the Olympics

But the cost of going to space exceeds this and the economic commitment is greater and there's no real private enterprise return on it. So it's really nations just trying to cooperate. And I'm fascinated by the possibility that maybe the best way to have the world cooperate is to put them all in one boat, basically, space boat. And now they got to treat each other right. A common enemy in the form of an alien is a popular sci-fi story that unites all nations to fight against this evil enemy,

something like that. But what would be more interesting is if we had a new society set up on Mars to see what kind of government would they come up with. Just 10 guys, and then there's 50, and then 100, and then 1,000, 10,000. What would they do? They'd kill one another. They'd have some version of Canada until it got too confusing.

Then they'd go to war. Or Lord of the Flies for grown-ups. When we come back, more of Cosmic Queries with Michael Sherman on StarTalk. We're back on StarTalk And I've got Eugene Merman, my co-host Eugene Hello Yeah, and our special guest today is Michael Shermer

Hey And he's publisher and editor, Graham Puba of Skeptics Magazine Hair director Hair director And every time I turn around, you've got a book out, and the moral arc is your latest, I think. Yep, that's right. And I think I even blurbed this book. You did.

You blurbed it. You know, my goal is to be the shortest blurb on any book jacket. Yours is the shortest blurb. I did? Good. Shermer's great. Read this book. No, I try to be a little cleverer than that.

Yes, no, you are. Like your tweets, they're very thoughtful and clever. Okay. I mean, not everybody does that. Yeah, no, yeah. it's usually self-serving The self-serving ones, the blurbs go on for like half the length of the book It's like, no, this is my book Right

You just needed to say, this is very good, please buy this book So we're fielding inquiries from our fan base This is the Cosmic Queries edition of StarTalk And we're fielding questions related to the role of science in the formation of a moral philosophy. Because historically, that turf has been, at least in the popular belief,

has been granted to religions as a source of moral code. And so to come out with a book that takes another take on that, for some people, that might be fighting words. It is. In my chapter four, Why Religion is Not the Major Driver of Moral Progress, it has raised a few hackles. And let me say right off the bat, of course, religious people can be as good as anybody else. And vice versa, atheists and seculars can be as good as religious people. I'm not talking about individuals. I'm talking about ideas that change the world. So back to Newton, the Enlightenment, you know, Adam Smith and

Immanuel Kant and David Hume, these were all skeptics, secularists, and their idea was that instead of arguing, this is the way things should be because our religion says so, or our holy book says so, or God says so, let's see if there's certain ideas that I can articulate and convince you by the power of the ideas alone. And not by the power of the authority of a religious text. That's right. So the idea of rights. Rights were invented in the Enlightenment, really the late 17th century, early 18th century, and then came to fruition around the late 18th century with the American and French revolutions. The idea that just by dint of being human, you are born with these certain inalienable rights. Now, there's certain arguments beneath that,

you know, natural rights, by nature, what does that mean? You know, where, you know, through the telescope or microscope, where do I see rights? You know, at some point... It's written on the... You didn't look to the left of the constellation? Yeah, yeah. It's on the sky, clearly.

Right. And that I can't just force you to accept my argument. I have to convince you. Well, you could force them to accept your argument, but that isn't probably your intent. Right, that's a different kind of government when you do that. Yeah, exactly. And so immediately, a lot of these Enlightenment thinkers,

we call them philosophers. Today we would call them scientists. I mean, they really had a grounding of... We wouldn't call them bloggers? They might have been bloggers. David Hume, he's got the biggest Twitter following of all the social scientists. I wonder how many Twitter followers

the great philosophers would have had. Yeah, I don't know. I think they might have been wordier than 140 characters. But the idea is that, so we have a human nature, they recognize that we're born with certain characteristics,

certain inner demons and better angels, and the idea is structuring society in a way to attenuate the inner demons and bring out the better angels. How can we do that? So certain laws, customs, economic systems, you know. They help inform this trajectory. That's right. One of the founders of economic science before Adam Smith was the...

Adam Smith's great work, The Wealth of Nations, 1776. That's right. The same year of founding. But the real title of it is An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. It's a scientific treatise. He was a professor of natural philosophy, but what we would call science.

And so he's looking for cause and effect relationships. Okay, if supply goes down, what happens to demand? This is where we get these ideas. Things move around. So it's an exploration in the causes and effects of things. That's right, of everything, right? Let's see what questions we've got coming for us. And we haven't seen these questions, and they're just from...

And do we know the source? We do. We're going to say the source. Yes, please. At R.N. Straw on Twitter says... Asks. He does ask. It's true, technically.

Hey, guts. I think he means guys. Was that spellcheck? Hey, guys. What is the effect science has had morality on us as a race? Have we become kinder or started to grow cold? So let me shape that a little differently because you've already addressed pieces of that.

There's scientific outlook that has informed people's attempts to arrive at a moral philosophy. Are there any actual scientific discoveries you can point to and say, that discovery will shape this current or future morality? Well, I think there's certain things, like certain technologies are somewhat neutral,

say the atomic weapon or something like that, that can be used for and against. But just the... You mean for good or evil? That's right. But just the improvement of the general conditions of humanity, I think helps. Just like the technologies of the internet

that expands our moral sphere to consider other people as just members of our honorary family, our honorary group, even if I don't see them. That technology, I think, helps. I mean, one of the ways of tricking the brain into thinking of a complete stranger as an honorary friend or family member is what nonprofits do when they want you to adopt a child. You've seen those late-night commercials adopt this. I've done this. And studies show that if you show people a picture of like 100 starving kids in Kenya, they'll give X amount of dollars. If you show them one child and ask them to give, they'll give three to four times more money for a single child.

Because they're helping an individual. You give them a name. You can even use the name the child has. That's right. You don't even have to make up a name So that's the shaking the hands with the person Who's on the outside of the city walls Absolutely

So it tricks the brain You sort of bond with it There's a little oxytocin there Some dopamine Like okay I'm feeling good about this person And I think I'll be nice to them Rather than be nasty to them So I shouldn't criticize those efforts

For how crass they are in their salesmanship because they really understand the shortcomings of the human emotional state. That's right. Because they're effective. Yeah, because they're effective. The big NGOs and nonprofits, they've tried. NGOs, non-governmental organizations. And so they know what to do to raise the most money, and that's okay.

Again, they know how to trick the human brain into caring. Yeah, trick drunk people at night into helping each other. So there's the whole side of psychological sciences that helps us understand the failure of our reasoning. And then when you're equipped in advance, you can compensate for that. That's right, absolutely. And say behavioral game theory has helped us get through the Cold War. It's like, okay, they're rational actors. We're rational actors.

We don't want to die. They don't want to die. Mutual assured destruction. Reagan and Gorbachev or Nixon. Yes, mutual assured destruction. It worked. It works if one of the other side doesn't want to die.

That's right. So this is the problem we face now. That's a big assumption. This is the problem we face now. There's people that are willing to die because they have this supernatural belief and they're going to heaven with the 72 virgins and oh boy i'm gonna you know blow myself up okay they're not going to calculate rationally you really only need like 10 virgins to think it's

reasonable that's right yeah what's the diminishing returns on that i don't know i don't think there's been any studies on that i remember hearing uh joe rogan uh a great podcaster in MMA. I guess he's ex-MMA. He shows up every now and then to, I think, to host some of those contests. But he commented on the power of sex on the human male mind, that it can be promised even in another dimension. And you completely alter your behavior to be served in that way. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, what's the ancient Greek play, Lysa Serges, where the women said, if you men continue to go off to war, no more sex. And then they said, okay, let's see if we can work out a peace program here. That's Spike Lee's current movie. It is? Yes. Yes. His current movie, it's Chirac. It's Spike Lee's current movie. It is? Yes. Yes. His current movie is Chirac.

It's a blend of Chicago and Iraq. So it's a movie that taps the theme of that play. And so all the women withhold sex from the men who are otherwise engaged in gang warfare in the city. But even our discussions on gun controls, like what kind of measures

can we implement to bring down the rate of homicide, suicide, and accidental deaths? Over 30,000 a year in this country. Yeah, it's the same as car accident deaths. A hundred a day. It's appalling. 14 died in San Bernardino and yet that's how many die every couple hours just from gun accidents, suicides, and homicides. Yeah, I tweeted that, a sequence of three tweets. One of them them the third of which got the most attention i just put up the number 3 400 number of americans who have died

from terrorist attacks since 2001 3 400 number of americans who have died from firearms since five weeks ago and that works at any five-week interval so that's right so these can be very telling to people. Right. So the question is, why is it that it doesn't happen in other countries? What conditions do they have that we don't have? This is a social science question. This is a statistical variance, multivariate analysis.

What factors can we play? It's very complicated. It's hard. Yeah. But there are some things we can do that really can make a difference. Obviously, if a country has no guns, there's certain European countries, no one has guns. But in Germany, where my wife's from, they have fairly strict gun control, and mass murders like that are almost unheard of. Right. Well, I think there's also the misnomer that it somehow can't work.

There's also all this false data, basically, that is... There's also kind of a magical thinking about guns. For Americans, guns are almost like a superstitious ritual. data basically that is there's also kind of a magical thinking about guns for americans guns are almost like a superstitious ritual they almost are it's like but have they always been or is that the last like 20 30 years it's really just been the last few decades yeah the nra people tell you all goes back to our founding no not really uh you know the nra used to just be a safety gun safety yeah and like marksmen and hunters and then then in the 70s, they kind of went crazy. They went political.

Yeah, they're the biggest lobbying organization in the country now. They have more power than probably any other lobby. It's pretty scary. So some would say it would be immoral to not have a gun. That's right, they do. So their argument would be something like a mutual sure destruction.

No criminals come into my house if he knows I have a gun so ergo if every house has a gun no criminal will go to any house yeah well unfortunately you know there's certain studies show that you are 20 to your gun is 22 times more likely to be used in a homicide suicide or accidental gun shooting within your family and home than it is against an intruder yeah Yeah, between you and someone you know. Yeah. Yes, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, you get mad at your spouse, vice versa.

You have a depressed sibling or daughter or parent that shoots themselves. Or the gun just goes off. I mean, one of the most disturbing things that are almost funny are the YouTube videos of people who accidentally shoot themselves. Yeah. I mean. I didn't know that that was a thing. Oh, it's a thing.

There are hundreds of these videos. Oh, my God. I mean, there's like one kid, he's doing the Clint Eastwood thing with the gun sideways, and you know, like, I'm a bad ass, bam! And he's like, oh, my mother's going to be so mad at me! It's like so much for Dirty Harry. You know, so the idea of arming everybody is a bad idea because of accidents, also because of human nature.

Some people have a short fuse. And all of us, under certain circumstances, could become violent. The potential is there. So what else you got from our fan base? So here's Josh I on Twitter asks, If we found life on other worlds, how would that affect the way we look at life on our world? Yeah, so let me try to shape that. So if we find aliens,

and they have a different social contract with one another, are we in a position to say, no, that is morally low, we have a higher moral fiber, here's what you should do? Because it's kind of what Star Trek did every now and then. The prime directive is don't interfere with the civilization, but they always did. Oh, these people are awful.

We should go. These Greek-dressed aliens are so sexual. Goodbye! I saw that one. They're all in togas. Half the episodes of the 60s. Togas and miniskirts. How unusual that they've adopted the fashion of the 60s and 5ogas and miniskirts. How unusual that they've adopted the fashion

of the 60s and 5,000 years before that. So is there... Well, two things. Is this moral arc something that not only goes beyond our species? I think so. That's audacious, you know.

I know, but you've got to think big. How many aliens have you talked to? Six Self identified Let's see my wife's from Germany Is that an alien? You have to be an extraterrestrial alien Oh I see extraterrestrial

Well so I do speculate about this At the last chapter toward the end of the moral arc That if we encountered aliens would they be good or evil As you know Stephen Hawking came out with that statement you know i think the aliens will be evil they'll conquer us they'll be colonialists and so on i argue just the opposite you can't become a viable spacefaring civilization say a type 2 civilization and be like the romans or the nazis or you know some conquering imperialistic you know 18th century you know constantly a war-type country.

So your claim is Battlefield Earth is unrealistic. Yes, that's right. I think really you'd have to be a peaceful, more cooperative. You'd be more like the contract world. No, no, part of that argument is if you are that expansionist and everyone feels that way about being expansionist and you fight wars to accomplish it, as you start colonizing planets,

your expansionist attitudes then conflict with one another. Right. And you basically self-destruct. Right. So there's got to be some sense of peace and cooperation deep within how you function as a species to not implode under your own shortcomings. The thing that got you there in the first place.

So Stephen Hawking said that because advanced civilizations, under your own the shortcomings so I think that got you there in the first place so so Stephen Hawking said that because advanced civilizations when they go to a new place generally do attack their example that that is in that case on earth actual knowledge of how humans treat one another right not on any hand knowledge he could have treated not on any real knowledge he acquired from aliens right this is a point and I I'd lean towards you yeah yeah yeah i mean uh you know when putin uh took over that portion of ukraine that was very unusual and it's really the first time any borders have been redrawn of it with any significance in decades it's really unusual now for countries to like uh expand their territory and bust in and take stuff you know right and it's more likely that just there's just regular war and besides the aliens are going to traverse the vast instances of interstellar space and come here and take stuff. It's more likely that there's just regular war.

And besides, the aliens are going to traverse the vast instances of interstellar space and come here and take our coal? Right. I mean, surely their technologies have gone beyond fossil fuels by the time they get here. But maybe they want all our pretty birds. I heard a radio show back when I was in college, a radio play while I was driving,

and aliens were coming, they thrive on hydrogen, and they came to Earth and were sucking up our water supply to take the hydrogen out of our water. And I said, they must never have taken Astrophysics 101, because 90% of the universe is made of hydrogen. You don't have to come to Earth for water supply.

Just open the window. And then separate the molecule and take out the hydrogen. When you can just take, where would it be in Astrophysics 101... Every star is nearly 100% hydrogen. Every gas cloud, everything. Yeah, yeah. Jupiter is 90% hydrogen. Oh, they'd go to Jupiter then. Yeah, just scoop up some gas.

It'll take out a damn water supply. So, when we come back, more Cosmic Queries with our special guest Michael Schur. Oh, yes, Michael Shermer. We're back on StarTalk. We're talking about morality in the universe and whether science can inform that. And my friend right here, Michael Shermer, has written a book on this called The Moral Arc. And the subtitle is? How Science and Reason Lead Humanity Toward Truth, Justice, and Freedom.

Man. You running for office? Yeah, I know, right? Right. And so this is Cosmic Queries. We solicited questions. I haven't seen them. You haven't seen them.

And so let's see how many we can, like, squeeze into this last segment. Okay. Okay. Yeah, let's go for it. Eugene. Let's do it. Martin Badg asks on Twitter,

How has our moral standing affected the pace and direction of scientific discoveries? Oh, in the opposite direction. Well, I do think a more open society where there's more liberties and freedom, freedom of speech especially, and especially freedom for women to be involved and minorities and so on, all that just makes science more appealing and more people involved in all the different scientific enterprises. So then I think it becomes sort of a feedback loop.

More science and reason is good for morality. More just and open society is more conducive to science. But how about some of the experiments that you might say, why are you doing that? For example, if you can get the DNA from a mammoth that just got thawed out from a receding glacier line

and then clone it and then create a mammoth in modern times. And I always joke that how unfortunate for the mammoth because he was just fine for the Ice Age and now bring him out just in time for global warming. How cruel can you be? Well, Canada.

Yeah, you leave them in Canada? There's plenty of room up there. You plunk them down at the right latitude. Yeah, that's right. Good answer. Maybe you put them all at the top of Everest. I bet it's quite cold. Siberia, there's plenty of space up there

Good answer, I had not thought of that Okay, that's my first one Because they couldn't get there before Because they would ultimately be broken off Now we can drop them out of airplanes I mean, the Canadian population is decreasing As is the Russian population So, more mammoths

Okay, so that's good Another one is, I was speaking with Richard Dawkins And he said something that While I agreed with it I didn't want to agree with it. He said if we have the power of cloning from any genetic sequence, then he would be interested in creating the common ancestor between us and chimpanzees.

If you did that, it means a chimp could mate with that as well as humans. That would be so much fun. I can only imagine how popular on the internet that would become. I'm just saying, when he said that, I was like, why would you? Right. It would be under specific conditions. So is that morality or is that just ethics? Okay, there would be a moral question.

Or is it ethics? Is it the same thing? That is, do they have rights? So I think in order to allow that ethically, we would have to grant the offspring. Rights. And then it would have to choose who it made it with. Right. Right.

You know, there was a novel, a French novel in the 1950s called You Shall Know Them by an author named Vercoers, V-E-R-C-O-R-S. And the story opens with this scientist who kills his son or something like, yeah, kills his son. And then, you know, he calls the police. I've murdered my son. The police show up. And he's basically mated with a female chimp and had an offspring and killed it. And now he's on trial.

For what? For murdering what? Is it a human or is it a chimp? Okay. So that got into the, you know, what are? Is it a human or is it a... So that got into the... What are the characteristics of a human? This is back in the day, you know, are chimps humans? Do they have tools, language, reason?

You know, that kind of thing. But, you know, as Jeremy Bentham pointed out, as I talk about in the moral arc, that it isn't can they reason or can they talk, can they feel and suffer? So always our moral consideration for other animals, including possible hybrids or a clone,

would be are they going to suffer by us bringing them into existence? If they have a good life, then why not? Right. Okay, so then we can diversify the very species that we ever consider to be human. I mean, if we explore space. It would be like X-Men. We'd have other kinds of. That would be really fun. And nothing ever It would be like X-Men. It would have other kinds of... That would be really fun.

And nothing ever goes wrong in the X-Men universe. So I would like more of that. Wait, so would this creature be able to... He has a point. He's got a good point. I retract. I retract it. Yeah.

Would it be able to learn and speak and sort of... It'd be... Well, that's what... I mean, what Richard is after there is... Richard Dawkins. Yeah, what can they do? Do they have language or not? Can they throw parties?

Okay, so the morality is not whether you did that experiment. The morality is the product of that experiment needs to be reckoned as someone who is part of the citizenry of the system. Right, let's give them a seat in the House of Representatives. I think that would be a reasonable and fair thing to do. They may be a little smarter than the current bad. But same thing with the mammoths. I mean, we shouldn't bring them back if we don't have any place to put them. They can't live a normal life.

Well, we can hunt them. See, this is the argument the gun people make, is that we're actually saving the ecosystem by allowing people to kill the animals. You know, it's a reasonable argument, but in the long run, we should give them their space to just live and not be shot. So, Eugene, what else do you have? Kelia Silvis asks, with eugenics atrocities in the 1900s, can humanity ethically use human gene editing tech? Yeah. Ooh, yeah, good question.

Well, okay, so, yeah, good question. Well, okay, so again, we have the products of science. But before you go there, let me ask. Yeah. The Statue of Liberty and the writing, that poem from Ezra, who's the author of that? You know, give us your weak and your poor. Yes, yeah. All right. That was the moral opposite of the eugenics movement that was trying to parse people by their desirability.

Over that same time, so you're an immigrant coming past the Statue of Liberty, you go to Ellis Island, and you have people trying to invoke eugenics on how to sort you. Right. So what's that about? Conflicting political ideals, I think. On the one hand, the idea of eugenics was really kind of a liberal movement at the beginning. It became more of a right-wing movement later. But at the beginning, it was, let's see how we can engineer society from the top down in all things, with laws and so on, but also with genetics. What was it exactly?

The eugenics movement? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it was an attempt. I know what it is The eugenics movement? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, it was an attempt. I know what it is in Star Trek, but I don't know. Even before the century, the turn of the century, there was a lot of thinking about, well, now that we understand that there's a thing called, you know, your genes,

and some genes are desirable, others are not, let's breed a race of desirable genes, a race of humans with desirable genes. Right. And the early thinkers were thinking maybe you could do that for the entire planet. I don't see anything that could go humans with desirable genes. Right. And the early thinkers were thinking maybe you could do that for the entire planet. I don't see anything that could go wrong with

that plan. But then it becomes localized and you have Nazi philosophies and things. Well, you know, the state of Virginia and the state of California both sterilized more people in the 1930s than the Nazis did. So at the Nuremberg trials, one of the defense of the Nazis was that, hey, we got the idea from

the Americans. And they had a point. But this was all part of this. Why were people being sterilized? Well, if you're mentally, they judge that you're, they don't want any more of your genes moving forward. Right. Oh, wow. Yeah, yeah.

You're mentally deficient or deformed in some kind of way. So they started with, you know, physical handicaps and then mental handicaps and then things like work shy. He's work shy. In other words, he's lazy or doesn't want to work. They started moving to more social things. Oh, yeah, yeah. And that was legal in America? Well, that was in Germany.

I don't know about it. Oh, yeah. But Germany did a lot of terrible stuff. That's well documented. But not anymore. And just to be clear, in these cases, they wouldn't kill you. They would just sterilize you. They'd stop your gene pool.

But in Virginia, they didn't do this. Well, they sterilized mentally retarded people. Right. And it was a famous Supreme Court case. Three generations of imbeciles are enough was the final line. I remember that line. Yeah, I read that. Yeah, it's very disturbing.

Well, okay, so that's obviously a negative use of science. But again again science is neutral morally neutral in some respects uh how it gets used is a political decision and a social decision well so my back to science my argument is that but but socially politically we're becoming more reasonable and rational and realizing that doesn't work and besides that the moral agent is the person being affected we should ask them first that's the idea of individual rights and autonomy you know before you tell somebody you know what their to do with their genes let's ask them first and then if you don't like their answer then you

can do what you want well sometimes that happens in some countries and i forgot what what network it's on is it a and e which is one of these networks where they follow a group of dwarfs. What's the one where your long bones are short? Is it dwarf or midget? I think it's dwarf. Yeah, but they're called little people, I think, is the general term. There is a couple who are both

dwarfs, and they have children who are all dwarfs. It's their family, and their house is a little different because it serves them and not us. And so here's a whole TV show, a reality show based on their lives. One of the encouraging things to me is the Flynn effect. You know about the Flynn effect?

IQ scores are going up three points every 10 years for about the last century. And not on the mathematical vocabulary, things you can study for, but on the abstract reasoning portions of the IQ test. No one quite knows why this is, but the best ideas by James Flynn, the eponymous James Flynn, the Flynn effect, is that in general, as a culture, we're getting better at abstract reasoning. Just by the diffusion of scientific knowledge and the jobs people hold are more abstract in reasoning capacity.

Only 3% of the world's population is in farming now. It used to be about 97%. Oh, yeah. More people would create more food on less land than ever before. Yeah. So we don't need as many farmers. So more people are working in information technology. And then that is affecting people.

Just your capacity to reason abstractly. That's hopeful. It's very hopeful. It's very hopeful. Also reading. It's looking at some preliminary studies I cite in the book is that reading novels,

good novels, really makes you better at mind reading. That is the capacity to think about what other people are feeling and thinking. And the reason for that is because in a novel you become the character and you're looking at the world

through their eyes. And that retrains your brain into... Movies don't have the same effect? And movies do, too. Oh, good. Good. That might be a shortcut. Actually, comedy has an important role in the moral arc

in the sense that comedians can bring about social criticism of leaders, and particularly political leaders, that in the early stages if you get people to laugh they they kind of go along with you before they realize oh wait a minute he's making fun of the commander-in-chief you know an op-ed writer may get nailed for this in certain countries beheaded centuries past but comedians can get away with a lot and that helps bring things about change from the bottom up just everybody's sort of making fun of him now and yeah so Mike we got to go to the lightning round and so that was this Bell you heard a second ago so lightning round it's like this

we're testing your sound bite it to okay okay I'm ready yeah all right go gene if it's a lightning round I can you take 20 seconds getting into the question. Ready, go. Question for Neil. How can a scientist defend agnosticism? You don't have to defend the absence of evidence for why you think what you do. Honestly, it doesn't need a defense. If you want to defend something, you want to defend a belief which you have that would

not then have evidence. I mean, that's would you agree with that? Yeah, absolutely. It's always okay to say, I don't know. It doesn't mean anything. It doesn't mean you're committed. It's just okay because we don't know everything. Yeah, yeah. Right. Good. Next. Okay. James Miller asks, as purveyors of truth, should more scientists publicly speak out

on questions of morality and ethics? Ooh, good question. Absolutely. Yep, definitely. But that implies they've studied it and thought about it and could say something coherent. Not everyone has that background That's right, Einstein spoke about war He didn't really know what he was talking about But it's okay, it brings us all to the table

Of like, hey, let's talk about this rationally Okay, so you want that to happen more More, yeah Okay, more, okay, go Does modern science back up any old moral platitudes That modern society ignores? Oh, absolutely, The golden rule. I mean, that's reciprocal altruism.

I'll scratch your back if you'll scratch mine. Do unto others as others do unto you. Absolutely. That's the oldest rule, and evolutionary biologists continue to find that to be true. Does that include even game theory? That is. Absolutely. Okay. Nice one.

Go. Jason asks, will we ever get to a point when we profile or flag individuals with criminal-like brain waves? Well, we... Sterilize them with lasers from the sky. Modern phrenology, go. No, not criminally, but scientifically, we might want to know, are there certain conditions that the brain is under where you lose control? For example, lack of control, lack of prefrontal cortex

activity means your impulse control is lost, and a lot of violent criminals have low-functioning cerebral cortex. And it's nice to know if someone is susceptible to that. That's right. You got it. Maybe make them wear a red hat that says, I'm a menace. Michael, we've got to end it there.

Thanks for being on StarTalk. Not your first time, not your first rodeo but we want to get you back every time you have a book sounds good alright Michael Shermer thanks for visiting and Eugene Merman

always good to have you I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson your personal astrophysicist and we're here on StarTalk in New York City we're signing off and I bid you in that process

to keep looking up