Neil deGrasse Tyson — "My biggest problem with flat-Earthers is that they're not asking good questions.…"
My biggest problem with flat-Earthers is that they're not asking good questions. They're starting with the answer and working backward.
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More from Neil deGrasse Tyson
"The more I learn about the universe, the less convinced I am that there’s some sort of benevolent intelligence behind it."
"You know, the nice thing about science is that it’s an equal-opportunity destroyer of belief systems."
"The universe is a classroom, and we are all students."
"We are part of this universe; we are in this universe, but perhaps more important than both of those facts is that the universe is in us."
"The universe is a journey, and we are all travelers."
About Neil deGrasse Tyson (born 1958)
American astrophysicist, Hayden Planetarium director, and Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey host who carries the Carl Sagan public-science mantle. Closely associated with Bill Nye (fellow science communicator) and Brian Greene (theoretical physicist and string-theory popularizer). For an intellectual contrast, see Ken Ham, founder of Answers in Genesis and the Creation Museum — Ham's career has been organized around defending biblical 6-day creationism — exactly the science-education position Tyson's mainstream-science communication is structured to refute.
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Understanding this quote
What it means
When you begin with a predetermined conclusion and selectively gather evidence to support it, you've abandoned inquiry entirely. Real understanding requires following evidence wherever it leads, even when the destination surprises you. This describes motivated reasoning — a cognitive trap where belief becomes identity, making contradictory facts feel like personal attacks rather than useful corrections.
Relevance to Neil deGrasse Tyson
Tyson built his career on rigorous scientific method as director of the Hayden Planetarium and host of Cosmos. He regularly confronts pseudoscience publicly, distinguishing bad questions from good ones. His frustration isn't with skepticism — he champions it — but with people weaponizing skepticism's language while practicing its opposite: confirmation bias dressed as independent thinking.
The era
Flat-Earth belief surged dramatically around 2015-2020, amplified by YouTube algorithms and social media echo chambers that reward engagement over accuracy. This coincided with broader epistemic crises: vaccine hesitancy, climate denial, and election misinformation. Tyson spoke into a moment when scientific institutions faced unprecedented public distrust, making the distinction between genuine questioning and motivated reasoning critically urgent.
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