Thought-provoking articles are a source for many articles I write, and I often use them as a springboard for my own thoughts. An article by Trent Horn, Neil DeGrasse Tyson Shows Why Science Can’t Build a Utopia[1], is my springboard for this article.
Neil DeGrasse Tyson, of course, is an outspoken and popular agnostic ambassador of science. The Horn article was precipitated by Tyson’s tweet:
“Earth needs a virtual country: #Rationalia, with a one-line Constitution: All policy shall be based on the weight of evidence”[2]
and Horn’s counter-tweet:
“@neiltyson ‘Rationalia’ is as useless as ‘Correctistan,’ or a country whose constitution says, ‘Always make the correct decisions.'”
To illustrate what Horn means by his counter-tweet, he used the example of a driverless car. Fatalities have already happened with them and will undoubtedly happen again. Knowing that fatalities are unavoidable, the question becomes: how should driverless cars be programmed when confronted with two options: 1) to run over pedestrians or 2) to run into an object that may destroy the car and kill the passengers?
How does Tyson’s “Rationalia” weigh the evidence to determine which is the best course?
Continue reading “The Myth of Objectivity”
