Neil deGrasse Tyson Isn’t Going to Take Your Hyperbole Lying Down
by Boobie
Neil deGrasse Tyson is a smart guy. It’s a bold statement, but I’m confident it’s true. But to paraphrase a quote often falsely attributed to Albert Einstein, if you judge a fish only by its ability to swim and breathe underwater, it will eventually believe that it kicks ass at climbing trees due to the excessive positive reinforcement, and we’ve long since passed that point with our pal Neil, who through some series of events last night decided that he was fed up with the concept of hyperbole, disrobed, strapped on his finest evening diaper, and took to Twitter to air his grievance:
Imagine that. Picture Neil, a well-respected and even beloved man of status, approaching 60, with his Perd Hapleyan air of general wonder and affability, reading or overhearing the word “awesome,” becoming enraged, and sputtering like a 1994 Toyota Camry before saying aloud, in his recognizable baritone, “No. Enough is enough.”
Although a preference for precision is understandable for a scientist, it’s ironic that a man who’s made his (positive) imprint on popular culture by explaining in easily-digestible terms the inconceivable vastness of the universe, and who has said that the most astounding thing he knows is that humans are made up of the matter gave birth to that universe trillions of years ago, would be flummoxed by something as simple and ever-present as the evolution of language. He might as well be lamenting the fact that no one speaks Latin anymore even though it was the language of the intelligentsia in the past.
This isn’t the first time Neil has shown his crotchety side. He laments the changes the world has undergone since “his day” pretty often, which speaks not to the man who is delighted by the wonderment of the universe and human progress so much as one who thinks progress should only happen on his own terms. In that way he’s similar to the more negative perceptions of Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg than he or his acolytes would like to admit.
The problem with Neil not understanding that words changing meaning over time is a feature rather than a big isn’t really Neil himself, though. The problem is the people enabling that bastardized fish-tree metaphor I referenced earlier. He’s like a walking Rick and Morty in that his cult of personality is inhabited largely by people who think that loving him by itself makes them smart and rational. He’s the Beyonce of the Dunning-Kruger Effect. I’ve trolled Neil’s mentions for years now for my own amusement, and the people who take offense when he’s called a nerd or told to shut up are the types of people who tweet with paragraph breaks and a thesaurus on hand, like if you got rid of Ben Shapiro’s abhorrent views and kept his awful personality. They imbue all of his thoughts and opinions, from Old Man Yells At Cloud-ish gripes like “words don’t mean what I want them to mean :(“ to “The Titanic is an awful movie because I noticed the constellations were wrong but James Cameron said they were right!” with the same gravity they would lend his insights on his areas of expertise.
This isn’t just a Neil deGrasse Tyson problem, of course. There’s a reason that fake quotes are so often attributed to Albert Einstein and Abraham Lincoln. People’s strengths and weaknesses both intellectually and personally are generally too complicated to be effectively communicated to people who don’t know them or work closely with them, so they’re boiled down top “he’s smart” or “he’s good.” Lending a quote you like the weight of that oversimplified understanding of intelligence ups its wisdom factor. The issue with that way of thinking, tempting as it is, is that it leads to things like Donald Trump being President and people clamoring for Oprah and the Rock to take him down.
Neil deGrasse Tyson getting mad about how a word is used, in a world in which many people who spend a lot of time on the internet probably hadn’t seen the word “thick” spelled with a K for 16 months until just now, is probably a decent teaching moment, assuming you can see past the blind annoyance for a second. Or, you can be like me, not learn your lesson, and keep calling him a geek until people with 148 followers and “intellectually curious” in their twitter profile who think Neil would be friends with them if he just gave them a chance break your spirit. Free will is an awesome thing.
