Tyson has claimed that:
1) at least one member of Congress didn't understand the difference between 180 degrees and 360 degrees, and,
2) at least one journalist wrongly thought that “Half the schools in the district are below average." was newsworthy.
In 1998, U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) said of Republican Rep. Henry Hyde “You have done a 360-degree turn,” Waters told Hyde. “I’m a little disappointed. Never in my wildest imagination did I think that you would have such a conflict in views about perjury and lying.”
Tyson's quote of an unnamed member of Congress was: "I have changed my views 360 degrees on that issue.” Not an accurate quote, but it's hard to see it as a complete fabrication. The key point is that the speaker thought that turning 360 degrees left you facing in the opposite direction.
Here is a quote remarkably close to #2: But it doesn't exactly follow the wording of "Half the schools in the district are below average." so Tyson's opponents can claim that he invented the quote.
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7 comments:
Tyson is trying to get people to wake up and realize what's going on by telling parables. He was trying to get across serious issue in a few sentences in a way that would entertain an audience. He could have detailed it to his audience as scientists talk to other scientists, but then there'd only be scientists in the audience. The things that members of congress and presidents don't bother to understand now are more complicated than degrees on a compass, but the compass story illustrates what's going on in a few sentences. The situation he is trying to illustrate is far worse than his parables.
Yet more evidence that Tyson is a useless deadweight. Carl Sagan and Richard Dawkins would never have fabricated a quote.
Now IF, Tyson can prove it was said (and he refuses to ID the alleged member) then context matters. Because it's actually tersely descriptive to say your views have changed 360 degrees. I've had it happen myself. Your views evolve over time, and given enough time you may find that your views evolve (180 degrees) and keep on changing, and you find yourself once again holding your original position. It's a nice way of saying you changed your mind and changed it again.
https://youtu.be/HgmeoDQWGLQ?t=80
The person who wrote the second comment, it's ok. You'll die and be forgotten and they'll still be studying Neil's theories.
It would have been fine but for the quotation marks.
Tyson will be remembered much more often than Sagan and Dawkins because of the way in which he teaches. Plain talk. Where I disagree with Tyson, if we must. Are his views on the "unnatural world", and his lack of explaining what I believe he is very aware of, and that is that the Greeks admitted they lied about the birth of early science and discovery. They did so because they did not want the actual people that began the early advancement of science, education and most everything else to black people. Tyson, in my view, spends all of his time idolizing white Europeans.
His point is still valid though. She didn't understand the difference between 180 and 360.
This Hater whining pit is hilarious. Both of the phrases are things I encounter used frequently, and while both are examples NOT of people being unintelligent, by simply of snatching at idioms without considering their meaning, they also aren’t surprising.
NDT’s implication *could* be based on more interactions with the speakers.
BUT…!! YOUR claim that he’s lying has even less credibility than his that it happened because Tyson factually knows one of the people involved (himself) and you know neither
I’m willing to wager this whole thing sticks in your craw because you have been called out for making the same mistake of misusing those ideas
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