For those of you not familiar with either Richard Dawkins or Neil DeGrasse Tyson, both are respected scientists... And I just watched a clip online of Tyson "rebuking" Dawkins. The transcription below (as well as corrections and punctuation) are mine, and this is what Tyson says about the difference between being an advocate and an educator: "One of them is you put the truth out there, and like you said, they either buy your book or they don't. Well, that's not being an educator; that's just putting it out there. Being an educator is not only getting the truth right but there's got to be an act of persuasion in there as well. Persuasion isn't always: 'here's the facts, you're either an idiot or you're not,' it's, 'here are the facts and here is a sensitivity to your state of mind;' and it's the facts plus the sensitivity, when convolved together, that creates impact."
I wish that I could have attached the clip... But there's un-bleeped language from Dawkins at the end and, well, I'd rather spend ten minutes transcribing than two hours responding to emails about how I let a university professor drop profanity onto my blog.
Also, "convolved." New favorite word. ;)
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