NDT Gets Serious About Science Denial | Joe Rogan

So my brother's an artist. My brother's an artist. What kind of art? Fine art, but also he paints and he teaches history of art. So I've had this sort of baptism my whole life being exposed to him. I'm the sibling scientist, but they have an artist in the family. Everyone should have an artist in the family. I've got an uncle. And of course the whole STEAM movement, Science, Technology, Engineering and Math, the artist got in there and said, wait, the STEM movement, Science, Technology, Engineering and Math, they want to throw in the A to get art as part of that movement. Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Math. Change it from STEM to STEAM. It's a STEAM. So you get full STEAM ahead. STEAM is a better word in that. Well, they're both good words for what they need. That just sounds like a bunch of awesome stuff. It does. You're not throwing in comedy and building houses. It seems like you're getting very, it's like the LBGTQAI. Things get really squirrely when you start adding more letters. Yeah, you can add letters, but if it doesn't spell anything, then the memorization has to kick in. But STEAM, you don't have to memorize that. It's already there for you. So it's cleverly conceived. I think the abbreviation was, it's tacit recognition that these are elements in society that advance civilization and grow the economy, actually. So in fact, there's hardly any growth economy in the world that isn't growing because it has been, not having been touched by science or technology. Everything. Just think about it. So if you're around running, you don't have them on your show, but if you run around saying, I don't like science, science is bad, science is evil, okay, well then you will die in poverty if you elect officials who believe that as well. Who the fuck thinks that science is bad in 2019? And how did they express this? Did they express it through science? Okay, so. You know what I'm saying? Like, are they saying it online? I have a book coming out in a month called Letters from an Astrophysicist. Okay, it's not out yet. But I've got it. It's not, how did you get a copy? I don't even have my copy yet. Okay. But I'm saying in there, there's a whole chapter on just angry people who don't like anything including science. And one of them, it's a riff. He just said, I hate that science is bringing some of the worst things that's ever happened to humanity and pollution and this. He goes on and on and on and on and on. And so I reply. There's letters from an astrophysicist and I reply as calmly and as rationally as possible when you get attacked that way. But what I'm saying is not everyone embraces everything that science does and some will cherry pick it. You have the science deniers for global warming. You have science deniers with vaccines. You have science deniers with GMOs. There's all manner of science denying going on in modern society. And in a free society, what are you going to do? People can think what they want. But if thinking what they want influences policy, which then affects everybody, then your science denial has consequences to the economic health of the nation. And by the way, it's not only economics. The economic health, it's your physical health because medicine flows through advances in science as well as our security. Well, there's people that deny some aspects of science while conveniently using other. That's where it gets weird, right? You're driving a car that's relying on GPS. You're using a phone to complain about the global warming hoax. Correct. One of my more sort of popular tweets was, you remember when we had the photo of the black hole from a distant galaxy? And it was banner headlines, maybe a year ago, less than a year ago, banner headlines. And first photo ever of a black hole. And it was an astounding engineering achievement to accomplish that. There was multiple telescopes all around the world pooling the data to get it right. And it was one of the greatest collaborative efforts we've ever undertaken in my field of astrophysics. Okay. And everybody was loving the results. So all I tweeted was, scientist report first photo of a black hole. Public. Ooh. Ah. Scientists report humans are warming the earth. Oh, you brought it up. Okay. We produced the first ever image of a supermassive black hole 55 million light years away. The response, ooh. Scientists we've concluded that humans are catastrophically warming the earth. Response that conflicts with what I want to be true so it must be false. That is the cherry picking of science. It is the cherry picking of science. The global warming thing is very much connected to a certain type of ideology. A certain type of person thinks themselves is a no nonsense person. What I'm saying, yes, it does matter. What I'm trying to say is that is a demographic that has cherry picked science to deny human caused global warming. There are other demographics that have cherry picked other science to deny other things. And it's not all located in one political spectrum. I mean, in one political branch. So you tend to find liberal folk complaining that the conservatives who have embraced no global warming platform are denying science and they need science on their side. And many of those same people are rubbing crystals together to be healed by the crystal energy or they're denying vaccines, thinking that they're somehow bad for you. And so all of this requires some or total rejection of mainstream science. And we're living in that world now. I don't know. I don't think it'll stop the progress of civilization, but it can certainly slow it down and occasionally stall it. Well, that is certainly a problem. But how big of a problem is it? Like how many people are really in denial of science in 2019? And it's got to be for me in a free country. That's not what matters. What matters is in a free country that you elect officials who are not official. Yes. You elect people who are scientifically literate. Yeah. They don't have to be scientists. And if they're not scientifically literate, they should be self-aware of that and then listen to people who are. Right. So... Don't you think what they're doing though is they're doing what their constituents would like them to do? That's why I don't beat politicians over the head. Ever. I don't do that. We're a republic, we're a democracy. Whatever they believe, if they think the earth is 6,000 years old and they got elected, it's because the people elected them believe the earth is 6,000 years old. Or because they're willing to let that one go because they believe in their policies. Possibly. That's a good point because you have a portfolio of thoughts and beliefs. Or because he's such a profound Christian. I mean, he's so profoundly Christian that he just wants a literal definition of the Bible. There are plenty of Christians who are connected to science that don't, including the Pope, by the way. Can you get more Christian than the Pope? Yeah. He believes in science now. This new Pope is pretty interesting. Yeah, if you read his encyclical from a couple of years ago, it's a scientifically literate document. Yeah. And no, there's... Okay, so it's not... He's still religious, right? So Jesus still rose from the dead and there was still miracles and all the rest of that in the New Testament. So he's not in denial of that. But given that, he is saying, oh my gosh, here's something we, the religious community, and scientists can partner behind and that is we want to save life on earth. And so we have to be better shepherds of what is going on on this earth. And one of them is we don't want to flood low line countries in the South Pacific where the average sea level is 10 feet above sea level or whatever it is. You're going to lose these countries if you keep melting our... Ice caps. The ice caps, because that would include a north and there's no land in the north. So the glacier ice, that's land-based ice, right? Because any ice that's in the water floating that can melt in is not going to change the water level. So... Okay.