Q&A after
the lecture for Dr. Neil DeGrasse Tyson’s new book in June 2012.
Q:
Philosophical question – would you rather die now or live forever?
Neil:
“I’ve kind of
bought into the concept of a natural life.
“I know
philosophers like having those kind of debates but I never believe that the
options available to a creative person are ever limited by the choices offered
by a philosopher.
“So, for
example, if there’s a lifeboat and there’s only a certain amount of food for
four, but there’s six people, so do you throw them overboard? Otherwise
everyone dies, or do you eat them? So these choices…so I’m saying maybe we can
invent a way to draw fish from the ocean so we don’t have to throw them
overboard. See, I like solutions to problems rather than the blunt do A or B.
“And part of
this, I think, is because we grew up in a multiple choice school system.
Sometimes answers exist beyond the choices you have thought up as the person
who wrote the exam.”
