US
Neil deGrasse Tyson Lambasted For Constitution Proposal
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Physicist Neil deGrasse Tyson was widely lampooned after he called for the establishment of a virtual state, Rationalia, with a one-line constitution.
Earth needs a virtual country: #Rationalia, with a one-line Constitution: All policy shall be based on the weight of evidence
— Neil deGrasse Tyson (@neiltyson) June 29, 2016
Academics, scientists, public intellectuals and writers mocked the proposal.
Law professor Stephen E. Sachs of Duke Law School thought Tyson’s model would make an excellent theoretical example of how not to write law.
This would actually make for a great intro to a Con Law class, with the first 20 min dedicated to how wrong it is. https://t.co/SYLIC1iaGy
— Stephen E. Sachs (@StephenESachs) June 29, 2016
Author and editor Charles C.W. Cooke tweeted a rendering of revolutionary France, which made the worship of the goddess “Reason” the state’s civic religion.
#Rationalia pic.twitter.com/t82OobZv2h
— Charles C. W. Cooke (@charlescwcooke) June 29, 2016
James Taranto of The Wall Street Journal reworked a famous excerpt of George Orwell’s “1984,” in which a fictitious omniscient super-state committed to empiricism lied brazenly to its people about which country they were at war with, arguably because the lie was the government’s most rational course of action.
We have always been at war with #Rationalia.
— James Taranto (@jamestaranto) June 29, 2016
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry, a writer and fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, accused Tyson of holding a dogmatic commitment to anti-dogmatism.
Simultaneously proving that reason is a venture of faith and that all faiths have their fundamentalists. #Rationalia
— (((PEG))) (@pegobry) June 29, 2016
The New York Post’s Seth Mandel pointed out pure rationalism is often hindered by rapidly changing facts.
Uh oh, #rationalia was wrong again https://t.co/2kiqcpwbbN
— Seth Mandel (@SethAMandel) June 30, 2016
Others pilloried the proposal in long form. Kelsey Atherton, writing in Popular Science, said the Tyson approach “would lead to vast human suffering and stifle the progress of knowledge.” National Review’s Kevin Williamson described in convincing detail the practical impossibility of such a model, invoking computer science professor Dr. Melanie Mitchell, and Noble Prize-winning economist Friedrich Hayek.
Tyson’s Twitter has been silent since the #Rationalia tweets.
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