You may notice this as something of a constant when Tyson makes up an example: it’s always about how he and his audience are so much smarter than everyone else. Even if that means that he has to be “pro-science” for physicists, while regarding physicians as bumblers who repeat an unexamined consensus, leavened only by their own subjective feelings.

How is it that Tyson got himself into this intellectual mess? Here’s a clue: Tyson expressing a similar contempt for the discipline of philosophy. (Hat tip to Stuart Hayashi.) You really have to check this out to believe it: Tyson agrees with an interviewer that philosophers engage in “a little too much question asking” and ridicules them as people who “can’t even cross the street because you are distracted by what you are sure are deep questions you’ve asked yourself.”

It’s almost as if Tyson thinks physicists are the cool kids of academia, who like to make fun of those four-eyed nerds in the philosophy department.