StarTalk Podcast: Coronavirus & Conspiracy Theories, with Michael Shermer & Neil deGrasse Tyson

this is star talk i'm

neil

degrasse

tyson

your personal astrophysicist with me is my co-host comic chuck nice chuck hey hey

neil

how are you still tweeting a nice comic thank you sir yes i have to remind people that you're a comedian well i have to remind myself to myself that that's the problem, yeah, I'm not worried about them, it's me that I'm worried about, you know, so, this will be another part of our multi-part series on different angles of the

coronavirus

and yes in this episode in particular we will address

conspiracy

theories

about the

coronavirus

, oh my goodness, so we will be here for a few days.

I'm afraid and, more generally, skepticism and scientific literacy and how do you invoke coronavir is just one example of how You can invoke skepticism, but this list is endless and there is only one person who is the ideal guest candidate. for this and it's the one and only Michael Shermer Michael, welcome back to Star Talk, that's right, I'm the returning champion, you're a founding editor of skeptic magazine and a best-selling author, you've been our guest on Star Talk for several times and you have a recent book, you have several books, in fact, if I look closely at your shelf, what a coincidence, you have some.

Other books, it's always fun to see what people put on the shelves behind them in this pandemic era. Well, our most recent issue, as you can see, is about conspiracies that were before the pandemic, so it was a good time that I've never seen before. The spread like a virus of

conspiracy

theories

like this is really crazy, which is why in your latest book, giving the devil his due reflections of a scientific humanist, you now have a book with the word devil in it, why do you expect to sell it? that book, yes, there it is, yes, you just cut the candles in half, at least right there, well, yes, but what are your main arguments there and why is the devil in the title?

Well, the devil is whoever disagrees with you. or anyone you disagree with whose opinions you don't like, someone whose point of view diverges from yours and the reason why those demons should be given is so that, for your own safety, that is, if you approve censorship and silencing of people. for expressing your minority position, what happens when you are in the minority, when you are the only voice opposing the mainstream, when you want to oppose dogma and you have signed on to silence people who disagree and then I will come after ti so the title comes from a play called a man for all seasons about this is the play by Robert Bolt that was made into a film about Sir Thomas More in his collision with King Henry VIII over his divorce from Catherine. of aragon and the church, you know there are a lot of different threads there, but one of which is um thomas moore arguing with his future son-in-law about tearing down the laws to chase the devil metaphorically speaking and uh and more he's arguing that we have to give him to the devil his due for our own safety i.e. the laws are there to protect people for example the first amendment so if you say well we have to make an exception for this person because he is really very bad . and he is fine, what is wrong with this person because he is also very bad?

And you know, you start with something like you meet an extremist conspiracy theorist like Alex Jones and you say, "he's okay, we have to silence him and cancel him." about this person here david ike what's up with this guy what's up with that guy what's up with this coronavirus skeptic well wait a minute maybe the coronavirus theory skeptic maybe he's right maybe we can learn something from them in other words, there's a kind of The concept of creep or the container that we put things in that we think are dangerous gets bigger and bigger, so it seems to me that we've all heard the phrase devil's advocate and, if I remember correctly, this would be in the trials of the Catholic Church.

Yeah where someone you know is accused of heresy and the church appoints someone to defend you against heresy and of course you're on the devil's side so we need someone to defend the devil and devil's advocate so it seems that even though the entire system was rigged against them, it's good to see that this court is not biased. I'm already on the devil's side because I'm being prosecuted for being on the devil's side, but that has an idea of ​​what you're saying, I think so, it's true, actually, the devil's advocate position, the devil's advocate , it was the position of the Catholic Church also to act as a skeptic against claims of miracles, ie. everyone and their brother had someone they thought should be canonized and you have to be, you know you have to.

I forgot that there were like two major miracles and three minor miracles to begin with. It's a checklist. It's a checklist. It's a checklist. You know, everyone had a story about crying statues and bleeding pictures and miraculous cures and stuff like that, so the Catholic church realized that most of these are fake and they appointed a skeptic, essentially someone like you or me, to go out and investigate. and find the natural explanation and then once all those are eliminated and if there are any left and they could well say that one is a miracle now you and I wouldn't go that far of course, but they did it centuries ago so the lawyer of the devil it was actually a valuable position a skeptical position yeah yeah so I'm going with the blue oyster cult oh blue I'm I'm living I'm living forgiven the devil is due that's where I come in and I.

I'm on fire, I'm on fire, I'm on fire for you, so tell me there's a song in there, okay, but you, but you, you need freedom of speech to combat conspiracy theories, yeah, it's true, so, you know, here I am taking, so let's go. Let's bring this back to coronavirus, so how does this play out? Works? So the reason we need freedom of speech is because most of us are wrong most of the time and therefore the only way to find out is to listen to what other people have to say. so the moment you think, well, we have the final truth, no, we don't have the final truth, we never have the final truths, there are enough capital-t truths in science and the coronavirus is a perfect example of this, there are so many unknowns and you.

I know that while I greatly admire Dr. Fauci, he's not omniscient, okay, he's not God, he may be wrong about some things and the CDC is the same, etc., so it's good to hear from people you know who they walk away from it or they know they disagree a little bit it could be this it could be that it's a biological weapon or it's a genetically modified virus or it's a bat virus well now we have the answer to that but it's okay to talk about it because you know maybe it's this or that and the thing with conspiracy theories, Neil, is that a lot of them there are enough of them that are true, so it pays to be a constructive conspiracy that's a little bit paranoid, you know. , and uh.

It's not that you know that we think Bill Gates is going to take over the world or that 5G is causing the coronavirus, but we do know that pharmaceutical companies have hacked the regulatory system to cheat standards and make more money. We know that Volkswagen was hacked. emission standards to make money we know that government agents and politicians lie and insider trading and Wall Street enough this kind of thing that happens when someone says you know I'm a little skeptical about what the people said CDC or what the Chinese are telling us is not a crazy position, you know, in other words, enough happens already, there is a kind of logic in hearing some of that, at least now you get like 10 percent away from the fouchy , You know? mainstream at 20 for david ike thinks it's the 5g towers and bill gates, okay but the problem with silencing him let's say he got kicked off youtube because he appeared on this british tv show, a youtube channel, wait who got kicked out, uh this guy named david ike who's who is kind of like alex jones from england yeah i mean he's so far away he thinks you know lizard aliens are secretly ruling the world and all this okay i mean , he's very far away, but you know, Chuck thinks that, by the way, Chuck.

Chuck is totally behind it. They are more amphibian than they are, so I'm sorry I was wrong. No, no, no, hey, don't lump me in with the crazy ones. I'm talking about frog people, you know, there's a funny story about that that the 911 reals are a little divided among themselves about, um, you know if there really were planes or not, there's an extreme group of the real people who think that the was. They are called non-planers which were holographic images that people think they saw planes but in reality they were just explosive devices and the real 911 regulars who just think it was an inside job of the Bush administration say oh those non-planers are crazy, so yeah, it's funny that they discredit each other and, um, and there are divisions like that and creationism and flat earthers are divided about their arguments, so it's fun to see them attack each other, but that's part of it. of freedom of expression, that everyone has their voice, it will be quite obvious which ones are crazy and which ones are not.

Can I ask this Michael um regarding health issues, like a pandemic, misinformation has consequences and misinformation has consequences. uh, for people who spread conspiracy theories to the detriment of society at large, how do you handle that? Here's a person who says we shouldn't do a b and c. I don't care what it is, let's just say but a b and c. actually contributes to the public good by keeping us all safe from each other and mitigating the spread of the disease, what do you do with someone like that who poses an imminent threat? Yeah, well, I agree with you on that, and there's a difference between that. which is the actual action or behavior that people take compared to the words they say.

I care less about the words they say, but going out without a mask or mixing with other people when you're sick, you know a lot of things. Americans have this crazy idea that freedom means I can do whatever I want, like that viral video last week of the woman in the target, it could have been Costco, you know, intentionally coughing in someone's face, you know that I'm an American and the constitution says I can do anything I want, no ma'am, that doesn't say you know you're not free to drive on the left side of the road.

Give up that freedom for the safety of safer driving on the right and simply continue on the right. From there, there are a thousand freedoms that you give up every day for the national interest or the security of your community, whatever, and you know the kind of libertarian notion that can go too far, I mean the freedom to you moving your arm ends in my nose and the freedom of your son coughing in my son's face when he has, you know, a communicable disease that ends with my children, you know, health, so you know, to the anti-vaxxers who say, well, I should be free, not vaccinate my child well, okay, maybe, but then my children should be free from your children, so you can't send your child to public schools, public libraries, public pools You know, don't let them leave the house because you know that's a risk.

So we make those kinds of sacrifices for health and safety all the time, so coronavirus has pushed people into this. You see these people very confused about what freedom means. So Mike, my question is what makes coronavirus more susceptible? for conspiracy theorists that another thing that could be in the news is because we don't have complete and total control over this and that leaves room open for people's imagination. I think the cause and effect of this, yes. to quote one of your heroes, Aristotle, you know that nature abhors a vacuum, the mind that pours out a void of explanation and we will fill it with whatever we have, so we didn't know for a while what was happening. coronavirus and you know the new coronavirus, that's why it was called it was novel, you know, we had never seen it before, the origin was, you know, some kind of dark China, it wasn't exactly the most honest regime and the most trustworthy regime and and then the Cleveland 19 uh pandemic that comes from the coronavirus, so we weren't sure how fast it was going to spread and in retrospect, it's like, we should have shut down the economy a few weeks earlier like Germany did, because look now, We're coming out of this sooner than we are, but no one knew that's in hindsight, we just didn't know and you know I was there when at that Ted conference when Bill Gates gave that famous speech that has now gone viral on video.

I think it was 2015 saying this is coming, this is the next big thing and we were all like, yeah, yeah, we've heard this before you know, h1n1 and bird flu and swine flu and ebola and so on every two years. . There's one of these things and everyone says this is it and then it disappears,healthy between believing in a huge conspiracy and being a very Cautious Skeptical person and this is for some, not for you of course, or Neil, but it is for some, perhaps the beginning of the slippery slope. I start out as a skeptic and then before you know it, I don't believe in anything, this is it. bs, yeah, carl sagan had a great line that I quoted in my first book why people believe it was stuff about the kind of healthy skepticism that finds the problem between having a mind open enough to accept radical new ideas but not too open enough that your brains fall out and you believe all the crazy things you can think of and it's hard to know where that line is, essentially the demarcation line between science and pseudoscience, and it depends on the particular area, so while we're at it Speaking of conspiracy theories, I know that the bigger it is, the bigger it is, the less likely it is that the theory will ever be true.

Conspiracies like Volkswagen cheating on emissions standards or pharmaceutical companies cheating on FDA regulations. You know they are real conspiracies, but they are very limited and specific, as we know. why are they doing it to make money, you know, in this small area, you know, but the moment you escalate, you know, world domination is fine, you know, probably not, no, but you need the Cubans, the Chinese and the North Koreans, just keep going. adding them in there, you don't have anything right and the more people you have being involved right because people people are pretty incompetent and they stumble and stumble their way through jobs and you know the idea that you know you've created the perfect team to go out and achieve this, I mean, Nixon had a very good team, you know the Watergate thieves, right, I mean, these were g-men, you know, G Gordon Liddy, I mean, come on, and they couldn't even steal a office without getting caught, that's how things usually go with more items now.

Now there are a billion photos uploaded to the internet every day, you would have photos of things, even if you know the aliens stored in area 51, someone is sneaking a photo on their Instagram, you know, that's true, I actually use Wikileaks as an example of the absence of evidence is evidence of absence, that is, you know, the ufologists or the real 911 people would always say well, of course, we don't have direct evidence, shurmur, it's a secret, it's classified, you know, and okay, here we have 10 million. classified documents leaked by wikileaks there is nothing there about alien bodies from Roswell in area 51, you know, a Bush memo telling someone to put the explosive devices in the World Trade Center bill makes sense, wow, What is it, let's take another one. break and when we return our third and final segment conspiracy on the coronavers on star talk we're back star talk chuck nice

michael

shermer

mike I've known you for a long time, I'm just I'm glad to have this friendship that goes back decades uh we're fighting for the same causes, but in a different way.

I mean, I'm not in your face because I know you don't need me, you, it's you. Cara, you've got this, I just want you to know that I'm very supportive of your work and the life direction you've taken, so I just want to say, thank you. I appreciate that the operators are ready to take your uh, your donation is a joke, so chuck, give me some, it really takes all of us working together on this, you know, scientists from all fields stepping back in their areas, you know , all we are is kind of a collective body that says here are all the different, uh. statements and here are the experts in that, you know it, so all of us who know work with the same really illuminating idea that there is a truth to know, the truth of the small t and that science is the best tool we have to get there. check right keep it up okay eh let's go to maddalena grouper and magdalena says thank you for sparking the joy and curiosity of science in my 40s.

Could you tell me how to sell the idea of ​​skepticism to successful people so they get excited about being Skeptic I find it immensely difficult not to sound condescending or sarcastic when I try well, Matt Delano, maybe it's you, no, but Michael, you have to admit that there are many skeptics in the community who are fair and just like me. I'm just you, I mean, as an educator, it hurts me to see that exchange because I want to care about what someone knows and doesn't know, and I find that you know ways that I can communicate, not just talk down to them and you know . those people are in the skeptic community, what do you do about it?

Yeah, well, you tell them not to be idiots, but even so, that was the title of a speech given by our friend and colleague, uh, the bad astronomer, yeah. Phil Plate, yeah, that's right, okay, we'll give a speech, don't be an idiot, yeah, and I think that was pretty well received, although I know it got some pushback, but Carl made that point in the '90s, I think. It was like this. a passage perhaps from the demon-haunted world where he said something like it's easy to condescend to people. I feel the need to bubble and I have to bottle it up, we should all bottle it up and only talk about the positives. than we know how to recognize that the other person, you know, is intelligent, thoughtful or else they won't listen to you, you know, be respectful, there are certain kinds of basic rules of interaction or conversation and, by the way, that point of view is deeply imbued. within andrewian, who was co-writer of the three cosmos, so at all times we were talking about some crazy idea that people have the need to say this is just absurd, that need is so strong, yes, but then you know that you can .

No and you shouldn't go there, otherwise you'll just lose your audience, so you have to find a way to reach them organically so they feel like you care about who they are, how they think and where they come from. and that you're going to take them to a new place, yeah, that's right, I'm right in saying that no one in the history of the world has ever joined a cult, you know, they join a group that they think is good and just be. sucked down the rabbit hole and you know that only outsiders can evaluate that, but if you tell people that you know you're in a cult, you know that's not what they think is happening and, analogously , I say that no one is ever in the history of the world has ever been a pseudoscientist who goes to a pseudolaboratory to collect pseudofacts to test pseudotheory.

You know they think they're doing something and so you have to approach it on that level like you do. Do you know why you think that's the case? I know you understand these theories, what I call theories of everything, you know that Einstein was wrong, Newton was wrong and Hawking was wrong, and I've come up with this new theory of the universe in my garage you know, okay, you can't just say that you know what you're the 20th crazy person this week to send me one of these uh because you know that hurts them they don't believe that's who they are By doing it you at least have to listen I mean if you're going to interact with them you know the rules of conversation, listen to what someone has to say, let them finish their sentence and see if you can repeat back to them what they just said. the kind of command of steel instead of command of straw, you know, say it in a way that they would go yes, yes, that's what I'm arguing or are they more likely to go, no, no, that's not exactly what I want say.

What I want to say now is that maybe they did mean that and realized how crazy it sounds when you say it, so they correct it, but that's good too. The conversation is about adjusting our ideas and exchanging ideas, etc., and it was an honor, Michael, that you had invited. I signed up for your

podcast

for my latest book, which was letters from an astrophysicist. About a third of them I am communicating carefully with some of them. They were conspiracy theorists. There's a flat earther there and a Bigfoot person. I'm honored that you saw that in me enough to have me as a guest on your

podcast

oh yeah, no, that's that kind of exchange, I think it's super fascinating.

I love receiving those types of letters because it's interesting to interact with them and just ask. How did you come to this belief? What makes you think that's true? What would it take to change your mind? Know? It's very interesting to think about the psychology of why people believe what they believe and that's different from let's say refuting their arguments or whatever, those are two different levels of, okay, pull, what else do you have? Okay, uh, back to our corona, uh, our coronavers that we live in. Josh v says to mask or not to mask, that's the question, why CDC? changing their advice on the masses in the middle of the pandemic, do these types of changes fuel conspiracy theories or at least increase distrust in authority?

Well, yes, yes, I can certainly remember when that happened, part of the reason they were saying no masks at first. they were worried about the supply chain for health care workers to have enough masks and if everyone did a mass run there wouldn't be enough for health care workers, I think that was the first reason you know that, because they also I remember, yes, they are kind. of masking it by saying well, maybe you don't need it and then the science changed. I don't think science has really changed. I think it was more of a supply chain concern.

And you know we're still here again. It's just that they were recording, we still don't know 100 about, you know how many feet you should be away, you know six feet, where they got that number from, maybe it's seven, maybe it's three, who knows, you still know a lot about that, like that We know there's going to be a lot of hindsight bias in the next decade, you know, experts, uh, uh, doubt everything we did. You know, I saw some numbers today in Germany, it looks like they timed it right on time. of when to close the economy and they are starting to reopen now, but they are all experiments, different nations try different things, different states within the united states try different things, this is good, you know, experimentation is how we get to the truth, yes, but that is not the fluctuating border of what is experimentally true, it is not something that is taught in school, you think that science is something known and if a scientist says something different tomorrow than today, suddenly people she feels justified in dismissing the entire source of this. information yes the whole source is cancelled, true yes yes the problem with teaching justifies if science is just a set of facts it is too delimiting it is actually a method it is just a way of asking questions about the world and see what kind of answers you can get. that are reliable, so if maybe we were to adjust the perspective behind the way we're teaching science and the way it's received, the most important thing is to focus more on the discovery, yeah, yeah, see if it's about discovery, then it's okay for things to change we've discovered, for example, we thought it was all about surfaces, now we discover that it's not that yes, you still have to worry about surfaces, but now we also have to worry equally about our exchange with each other , uh, when it comes to speaking and being in our presence and distancing ourselves, but I think what happens is that this definitive and declarative nature of the arguments that are made is what makes people do well, so you don't know What the hell are you talking about. exit, I won't listen to you, you don't know what the hell you're talking about, chuck for surgeon general, yes, that's right, it would be better if we thought of failures as real successes, you know, we managed to discover the cause.

Isn't this, this, these, actually successes and this is the famous mantra in space exploration? It's if a rocket explodes on the launch pad and you say it's a failure, no, it's a data-rich experiment for the next experiment. That's funny, I don't mean the rocket exploded, that's not funny, no, no, no, Richard Data's parties might be right. Time to throw in maybe one or two more. Okay, here we go. This is Jessica Bennett and she wants to. knowing who controls the massive amount of Twitter bots that are pushing for masslessness and pushing to reopen America, that's something I didn't know, but we should ask Jack about that, the guy who runs, oh yeah, Jack Dorsey .

Yes, yes, because what do I know? I mean, maybe they're Russian or Chinese robots or whatever. I'm encouraged by recent research by Hugo Mercier, the cognitive scientist, about the influence of those kinds of robots on, say, the 2016 election. That the influence was negligible, if anything, that people were already pretty determined, you know. , and you know, the funny story is that you know if you think Hillary is running a pedophile ring out of a pizza place and I correct you that you are not likely to vote for Hillary. You know you're probably inclined to not be a big fan of her.

Anyway, she says, "Oh, she's not selling babies." I'll go for now, exactly agree. Did we answer that question? What is next? What is next? uh yeah, here's the next one um spin bourne sven bjorn bird wants to know this I've had we'vehad these questions before oh yeah, again uh and why not Aren't you telling me where these platforms come from? I'm giving that information, it's not here so it's okay, so how can you say the theories are conspiracies if China is not being transparent? So you know, and I think this is really emblematic. a big problem and that is that you have one fact that actually leads and supports a conspiracy but then it turns into thousands of things that are attached to it, yes that is correct, then this is the problem with authoritarian regimes that are not sincere , uh, they can be transparent and honest now, but how do we know?

Because they have lied so many times. It's a bit like that. That's why it's called China's Chernobyl. You know this because we know the Soviets took it like I did. I know that a week and a half, uh, and until the radiation started falling on Sweden and Norway, they said, uh, well, I guess we should be more honest about what really happened in Chernobyl, uh, that's the problem, so What if you lie and then say this correctly? time I tell the truth, you know how we know that that fuels conspiracism, of course, because that's part of conspiracy theories, is that someone is behind the scenes doing something wrong and, of course, they're going to lie about it. ?

That's true, so there's a good reason to be skeptical or conspiratorial, but what it means is that in the case of China, even if, like you said, even if they're telling the truth, you don't know if that's true because there's room so it could be a lie or a false interest false information you know, disinformation, truth, yes, well, in the words of xi jinping youI can't stand the truth, he was the one who said that. I was wondering where that came from. I'm pretty sure it was so, Mike, I want to spend the last few minutes.

Could you give me some of the most extravagant ones? Trial conspiracy theories regarding the coronavirus, I mean the first three, yes, up, well, as you know, 5g Bill Gates, uh, the bioweapon is a bioweapon, it's not that crazy, but now we know for the genetic analysis that was not designed, it's a bat virus, um, you. you know of course the anti-vaxxers were into all this very predictable, they jump on anything like this, we've been tracking them for a quarter of a century, every time something like this happens there are the anti-vaxxers and then , You know that's not great, just crazy, it's dangerous because you know that vaccines are one of the best things we've ever invented to save human lives and, you know, that's disturbing, not just crazy but, but, but , but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, dangerous, what does what?

Would the anti-vectors say, oh that, that the government, you know, or the big pharmaceutical companies are using the coronavirus pandemic as a scare tactic to force people to get vaccinated and then from there you go to them, they go to us to put a chip? all so they can track us uh or nanobot and then track us, you know, even track and trace, you know, this idea is part of that kind of new world order conspiracy theory that goes back to the 1980s and in in a way If you think about it, you know that we are all being tracked, we already have a chip, you have a smartphone in your pocket that has chips and someone knows where you are and maybe who you are talking to and where you are. shopping etc., somehow this has happened, but we did it voluntarily and it's not big pharma or big government, it's, you know, big tech got right into this and then what about the conspiracy that was ? maybe it's not a conspiracy or a cover-up that it was a lab leak, yeah, so you know, Nature Medicine magazine published the genome analysis of the new coronavirus and that it is like 98.5 similar to a bat corona virus, remember coronaviruses.

They are very common, you know, a third of all common colds are coronaviruses, the rest are rhinoviruses and another, you know it makes sense, bats live, bats are mammals, they are very susceptible to respiratory diseases, they live in giant populations. . There's a cave in Texas with like 20 million members like it's Mexico City and you know they have this kind of pandemic spread all the time so it makes sense the wet market in China, you know, wait for the bats Don't socially distance when you don't. They are hanging upside down next to each other, that's what makes it a little creepy.

They're making a nice batch of comics. Social distancing. I don't want to contract a human virus. Wash your wings for 20 seconds, but it's true that the uh, Wuhan is the site of an infectious disease research center, that's right, and there are biological weapons laboratories all over the world and you know that twice during the cold war, the Russian bile weapons labs had a leak one was I think a fire and the other was an accidental leak uh and just so you know it's again, it's not completely crazy to ask the question or explore the idea, but I think it's already is answered so chuck

michael

we're out of time but this has been very enlightening michael it's always great to talk to him.

I think you and your new book were released just in time for coronavirus because you knew you were planning for this. In fact, you were the one who closed the chamber and as soon as we hang up, I'll be heading back to my bioweapons lab. giving the devil his due reflections uh from a scientific humanist you are so uh michael it's always good to have you uh don't be a stranger jack I love you man, I love you too man yes, it's okay gentlemen, thank you, this has been a star talk cosmic consultations another edition of coronavirus, this one about conspiracy theories, as always I invite you to keep looking up