HAPPINESS, HUMILITY, AND MY CONVERSATION WITH NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON

A few weeks ago I was having drinks with some friends, and I guess I said something about the state of the world that wasn’t particularly optimistic. If you know me well, this doesn’t surprise you. An old friend who had joined our table, and who was pretty buzzed (and prone to speaking his mind), raised a sermonic finger and declared robustly, “I think Brett Miller enjoys talking about things that depress people!” He wobbled, then followed up with, “Now, I don’t have any evidence for this, but….” Another friend quickly interrupted, “I do.” Thankfully, these two witnesses were not followed by a procession of fake-smile friends testifying to the ways I had rained on their respective parades; and no one steered me toward the door where there was a car waiting to spirit me away to the Rainbows and Butterflies Center for Cognitive Realignment and Social Reeducation. 

As I said, it isn’t breaking news – that I have a propensity for awfulizing situations (or “seeing reality,” as I sometimes call it). I think it’s always been a quality of mine. Am I just seeing ugliness where I look, or is the way I’m looking making things ugly – a social construction, a sort of rhetorical Hawthorne effect? It’s an important question, and one I wrestle with. I’ve generally quit talking to people as much as I used to, because I don’t like making people sad. I’m not a glass-half-full type, but I’m not really a glass-half-empty kind of guy either. I’m more of a powerful-forces-and-structures-escaping-our-conscious-awareness-have-convinced-us-we-possess-a-glass-to-contain-our-possibilities-but-there-is-no-glass-or-at-least-it-isn’t-our-glass-and-we-should-really-try-to-think-beyond-the-glass-for-fuck’s-sake-so-we-can-physically-and-mentally-contend-with-the-reality-around-us kind of guy. In any case, my words have become annoying enough that people have moved beyond polite silence and sideways glances to public critiques. And that’s okay. I appreciate my friends being honest. Frankly, it’s in those moments I am able to take stock and consider changing my behavior.

But we live in fraught times. Leaders we were supposed to trust are being indicted; schoolchildren are getting combat training; and differences over music, beer, and politics are a zero-sum game. I could go on (trust me). Everyone is working harder to maintain a sense of emotional balance and well-being in this world of, what Tina Fey called, “landmine hopscotch.” In the meantime, tolerance for negativity has dropped. 

I return a lot these days to the idea of cognitive dissonance – the mental discomfort we experience when the world around us doesn’t align with our beliefs. It’s an unpleasant thing, disharmony. We’re heavily motivated to reduce it. We respond to cognitive dissonance in a number of ways: aggression, avoidance, justifications, blame-shifting, gaslighting, conspiracy theories, crucifixion, gunfights, binge-watching, alcoholism, and TikTok. Sometimes we actually change our beliefs in light of new evidence, but not often. Most reactions to cognitive dissonance involve some form of rationalization. We decide what we want to believe and how we want to feel, and we arrange our world to make our truth real. We “hear what we want to hear, and disregard the rest.” And, when there are no real agreed upon facts or truths anymore, it’s pretty easy to do. We even make new realities out of whole cloth. 

Since Aristotle, humans have pointed to rational thinking as the thing that sets us apart from the rest of the animal kingdom. But what seems to truly distinguish us is not our capacity to think, but our propensity for rationalization – to reduce our mental discomfort by telling a new story – rearranging the facts, fictionalizing, or shifting the narrative. 

Part of the problem is we see cognitive dissonance as obstacle, not opportunity. We focus on ridding ourselves of the uncomfortable feelings, instead of considering the new ways we could learn and grow. Cognitive change requires epistemological humility – understanding that what we know to be true may not line up with what’s actually true. Such humility is a mental practice that requires wisdom and discipline.

My favorite F. Scott Fitzgerald quote on the subject is from a 1936 essay in Esquire, where he wrote, “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless yet be determined to make them otherwise.”

In 2018, when Betsy and I had been on the road for a year or so collecting stories, my friend Stephanie Schierholz set me up with the opportunity to interview Neil deGrasse Tyson. It was one of the most interesting and baffling conversations we had. 

Even though I generally have no objections to Tyson’s claims, and I recognize that neither he nor science need me to believe in them, we got into a bit of a kerfuffle over the idea of humility. Someday I’ll share a fuller account of our disagreements that centered around Thomas Kuhn’s philosophy of science. When it came to the idea of epistemological humility, I think it would be fair to describe Tyson’s reaction to it as dismissive. According to him, if you’re right you’re right, if you’re not you’re not. Simple.

We were often talking past each other. He was focused on science – often rephrasing my questions or comments to fit snugly with what he wanted to say – while I tried to broaden the discussion to the nature of public discourse, and how we move beyond data into meaning-making through symbols.

A pivotal moment came when I was trying to understand what he was arguing:

Me: “If you encounter someone who is completely resistant to the facts, to science, is it your position…”

NdT: “I don’t have positions.”

Me: “…that I have better things to do with my ti—”

NdT: “I don’t have positions.”

Me: “…okay…”

NdT: “I don’t have positions. I don’t have opinions about people. I have objective assessments of ideas. I explain to them that this is a free country; they can think what they want, but if you’re in denial of science it comes with a price. Science is an engine of the growth of economies, science is an engine of the preservation of your health, science is an engine of the maintenance of our security. If you deny science, you’re putting each of those three things at risk. And then I go home. I don’t debate it. You’ll never see me debate anybody. I’m an if-then person. If you want to think this way, free speech allows that, protects that, but here’s a consequence. I don’t think a lot of people understand the consequences, either of their actions or inactions.”

Me: “But if they deny the premise of your argument, they won’t accept the outcomes or consequences.”

NdT: “No, no, no. I’ve never had anyone deny that science promotes health, that science promotes the economy, that if you’re more scientifically proficient you’ll have a better security force. No one has ever denied that. So, I take them to a place that is unimpeachably true, then let them deal with it.”

I told him he should probably talk to folks where I come from. In fairness, we were having this conversation in 2018, a couple of years before it became entirely commonplace for millions of people to deny science, to, in fact, use the word “science” as a pejorative. 

I learned a lot during that conversation, and as I’ve replayed it many times since. I think we were much closer to agreement than it seemed at the time. The conversation didn’t tarnish my view of epistemological humility. In fact, I committed to it even more vigorously. Was my reaction rational or a rationalization? An act of self-preservation and justification? Don’t know. 

I remain committed to the idea that when we face a reality that disrupts our perspective, if we confront it honestly and with humility – even if that means, in the end, we don’t back down one damn bit from our original belief – we will make better meanings and be better people in the meantime. 

My model for humility these days is my soon-to-be-three-year-old grandson, Emmett. When you say something to him, he often replies with, “Huh?” It’s not a dismissive rhetorical move, it’s a genuine desire for understanding. When you say, “It’s not a trash truck, it’s a cement truck,” he repeats what you say, as a question, “It’s not a trash truck? It’s a cement truck?” He’s checking in, verifying information through sources he trusts, and remaining open to new information. There’s a purity in it. Every time he looks at me with his wide, brown eyes, so full of love and honesty, it makes me cry. Partially I’m crying for the joy of it – what a thing, to see someone so true! But, partly I’m crying with dread. The day will come when he has to grow his guard, his protective shield, and become more critical and less trusting. I get it. That’s just the way it is. 

If he ever gets where he has too much distrust and is bringing everybody down, I hope he listens when his friends call him out.