by Bill Nye
I found it challenging to abandon my earlier ideas about GMOs, but I managed to maintain an open mind through the whole process. I talked to many scientists and read through the literature, trying hard to avoid selecting the evidence for any particular point of view. I flew to St. Louis and Minneapolis, and I did those trips on my own dime. It took time and effort, and also some soul-searching. I had to make peace with the unsettling thought that I had been wrong. I also had to block out a lot of information that was clearly biased. Challenging your intuition is hard, but it is harder still when there are a lot of people on your (current) side urging you not to.
I recently waded into an anti-GMO rally in Manhattan while a documentary crew was filming the scene. I was struck, and not in the good way, by the ignorant views of some of the protesters. I tried to have a conversation about genetic modification with a few of the demonstrators, but the people I spoke with quickly derailed the discussion, or they conflated GMO science and economics with a bunch of other political issues. They did not seem open to listening or to changing their opinions—ever. In my view, that hard, ideological attitude made the protestors look silly. That in itself doesn’t tell you anything about whether genetically modified foods are good or bad, but it does tell you about the difficulty of nerd honesty. Many of the people at the rally thought they were being scientific. They had certain statistics or examples or arguments that they liked to recite. But they were lacking the perspective that is crucial in science. They weren’t filtering information from the Internet; they were uncritically blocking anything that might cast doubt on their side of the argument.
Changing your mind is not a one-off action. It emerges from a habit of mind that you embrace as part of your life philosophy. When you are trying out a new idea, you have to be ready to say, “It looks like this thing is working but I’m not sure.” When you weigh in on a controversial topic, you have to be ready to admit, “I’ve always thought that thing was true, but my own reasons aren’t enough. I need to get more information, even though that will cost me time and effort.” You have to internalize a restless curiosity. Hold on to a childlike sense of wonder so that “prove it” is not an angry challenge but an exciting opening to discovery. All this has to become the normal way you think. Your priority has to be wanting the most accurate facts and the best possible data, rather than being right about your hypothesis. My GMO investigation reminded me of this fundamental idea—very strongly.
You also have to be aware of our human tendency toward confirmation bias that we looked into back in Chapter 18. It is something I talk about in my public lectures, too. We did a whole Bill Nye Saves the World show on it. Let’s review: Say you grow up with a parent who believes in astrology. You’d tend to grow up believing in astrology, as well. When someone shows you evidence that astrology is bunk, you’d probably be troubled. “I spent my whole life reading my horoscope, and now you’re telling me it’s not true?” Yes, that’s what we’re telling you. You’d very likely look for counterexamples. You’d say something like, “Three days in a row, my horoscope said something that applied to me perfectly.” That’s confirmation bias: faulty filtering that lets in supposed facts that support what you already believe but block out everything else. It takes a long time to overcome it. That’s why I mention it again here. In my experience as an educator and just as a regular citizen, people have to be exposed to skeptical thinking many times before they are ready to question their assumptions. You also have to believe in your own fallibility. Most of us think we’re above-average drivers, right? If only. On average, we are average drivers, and average thinkers, too. How could it be any other way?
Even in science and engineering, there is a large and continuous problem of confirmation bias that we must continually push back against. It’s wired into our brains to see what we expect to see and to trust our own opinions. Physicists have to be careful to make sure they are seeing a real particle and not just a signal that they expect to see, ostensibly accounted for by their pet theory (pet particle?). Cancer researchers work very hard to make sure they are seeing a real response to a new therapy, even if they have a lot of hope and professional pride riding on a positive result. Climate researchers worked for decades to make absolutely sure that the effects they were detecting were real. It’s a difficult business. Even after years and years of thinking about science, I guarantee you there are things I believe that are absolutely wrong (but I also guarantee you that the seriousness of climate change ain’t one of ’em; there’s just too much evidence).
The good news is that, with humility and an open mind, it is always possible to learn more. You can arrive at a more honest and accurate understanding. As much as that open nerd-style may be contrary to your deep impulses, it taps into one of the best aspects of human nature: the ability to accumulate knowledge and improve the way we live.
If you keep thinking about things the same way you always did, and looking at the same sources who frame the issue the same old way, you will keep coming back to the same answers and the same assumptions. Embracing the possibility of changing your mind requires being willing to accept different inputs. I keep talking about how difficult that is, but in the spirit of change, I’m going to think about change itself in a new way. Why do people love going on vacation? They want to escape from their routines. They want to see a new part of the world. They want to get better at a sport. They want to see people they haven’t seen in a long time, meet with old relatives, make new friends. That’s exactly what nerd openness is all about. It means that, at a moment’s notice, you are always ready to pack your bags and take a vacation from the old ways you are currently thinking about the world.
I love—well, let’s go with like—getting out of my comfort zone. It’s important to get out of your bubble and see what’s going on in the bubble next door. That doesn’t require long journeys and advance planning; it’s something you can do constantly in small ways. I am not a Fox News kind of guy, but I watch Fox News because I need to know what other people are thinking and hearing. If you are convinced that the other side is not listening to you, that is all the more reason to listen to them and honestly evaluate what they have to say. That is the only reliable way to change your mind, to have a chance to change someone else’s mind, and ultimately to have a realistic shot at changing the world.
PART III
How to Change the World
CHAPTER 21
Are You an Imposter?
When I took on the job as CEO of The Planetary Society in 2010, I didn’t believe I was up to the task. My predecessor, Lou Friedman, cofounded the society and had been running it for 30 years. Meanwhile, I knew almost nothing about management (not the same as leadership) and nothing about the structure of nonprofits. The Planetary Society had employees on a payroll with sick leave and insurance benefits—and I was suddenly in charge of all of them. I felt pangs of imposter syndrome, an irrational fear that derives from expecting too much of yourself and from assuming that other people must be more capable than you are. It’s a distracting psychological bug in your brain that holds you back from doing the things you want to do. It is, in essence, overly critical self-critical thinking. The nerdier you are, the more susceptible you are to it. Since you are reading this book, there’s a good chance that you’ve experienced some form of it. And I hope we all learn how to deal with it.
Part of what changed my self-perspective was my interactions with three people. One is Neil deGrasse Tyson, who sat on the board of directors of The Planetary Society; you’ve probably heard of him or watched him hosting the new version of Cosmos, or maybe you’ve listened to a few of his (and occasionally my) StarTalk podcasts. Another influential guy for me is Dan Geraci, the chairman of the society’s board. Dan has an investment firm based mostly in Canada, and he has tremendous experience with money and managing people. And then there’s Jim Bell, a longtime friend. He is also the president of the board and a great source of insight, but the main thing we do for each other is make each o
ther laugh. The three of them got me to take the job, and all three still offer great advice and insight and support. I cannot oversell the value of a support network of friends who can peer-review your own strengths and weaknesses.
I was with Neil, Dan, and Jim at a meeting in Britain, where The Planetary Society was presenting Stephen Hawking with the Cosmos Award for Outstanding Public Presentation of Science. Hawking showed up in person to accept the award and took the time to have dinner with us, no doubt because of the legacy of Carl Sagan. It was a great coup for The Planetary Society, but anybody there could tell that we were not taking the best advantage of the event. The British press should’ve been all over it. A few Planetary Society members who were invited were not dressed appropriately. Fine for them, I suppose, but it put me a little ill at ease. It was Stephen freakin’ Hawking at the Oxford freakin’ Library, for cryin’ out loud! The youngest piece of furniture in the room was from the 1600s. The whole event just wasn’t what it should’ve been; we weren’t doing a good-enough job of telling an impressive, ambitious story about what we had all come together to do and to honor. My buddies on the board were thinking the same thing. The Stephen Hawking Cosmos Award evening could have been something much more memorable. This is when I realized the society needed a new direction or it might go out of business.
I had studied the society and concluded that it is the best nonprofit space-interest organization on Earth, but I also realized that I might bring the fresh perspective that the society needed at that point. So, with those three colleagues putting a little pressure on, I decided to take the job as CEO of The Planetary Society. I started going into the office before 8 a.m. every day because there were so many ways I wanted to make things better. Seven years later, the place is transformed. I’ll take credit for it, with help, insight, and diligence from a lot of other people, especially my Chief Operating Officer (COO) Jennifer Vaughn. She and I have overseen a change of tone that, in my opinion, is seriously for the better. Some of the changes were painful. I had to take responsibility and lay people off. I had to hire new people with new skills. And I had to learn some new skills myself, including the arcane techniques of double-entry bookkeeping. Once I figured all that out, streamlined systems enabled me to control costs and ultimately get more things done. With the help of our longtime finance manager, Lu Coffing, I reworked the budgeting for our LightSail, the experimental spacecraft that rides the momentum of sunlight. The first LightSail flew in 2015, and we’re planning to launch a second, more capable one to a higher-altitude orbit in late 2017.
Looking back, I can see that this process was really the flip side of the realization that everyone knows something that you don’t: the realization that there actually were some things that I knew that other people didn’t know, and there were some significant insights that I could contribute. As with every other kind of information, fear requires filtering. I needed to take a long hard look at my skills and home in on what I was able to bring to the organization that nobody else was bringing. Then I could find the right kinds of experiences and inner strengths to call upon, and also figure out the best ways to talk about the things I wanted to do going forward so that people had a clear sense of where I was going. I didn’t have traditional management skills, but in my engineering jobs, I had learned a lot about enlisting teamwork to complete complicated tasks. I had learned about budgetary challenges while working on The Science Guy show. I desperately wanted the society to succeed, and I had a clear vision for what that success could look like. Above all, I believe I had learned how to listen to others and how to recognize good information. I’m bragging a bit. But mainly I’m saying that we all have unique talents that we can bring to bear. Sadly, we can often be our own worst enemies when it comes to using the full breadth of our skills. Honestly identifying what your unique talents are gives you powerful protection against imposter syndrome.
If you are honest with yourself, it is also easier to judge whether other people are the real deal. Take the example of Elon Musk, the much-discussed founder of Tesla Motors and SpaceX. A lot of people love him, but he also draws plenty of skepticism. In the fall of 2016, I was at the International Astronautical Congress meeting in Guadalajara, Mexico, when Musk unveiled really far-out plans for sending giant rockets to Mars and building colonies there. He showed up with his amazing, photo-realistic electronic slides. I had to ask myself, as a guy who’s been around these rocket and space people a lot over the past 6 years, do I believe he’s the real deal?
Musk certainly does not seem to suffer from imposter syndrome, that’s for sure. You can watch his startling large-scale presentation from Guadalajara on the SpaceX Web site. A lot of it strikes me as unrealistic. I don’t think anyone will really want to colonize Mars any more than anyone wants to colonize Antarctica. A science base on Mars is one thing, with geologists and exobiologists coming and going every few months. Otherworldly homesteaders living on Mars full-time, raising families for generations, with obstetricians and swing sets, is quite another. Then again, Musk may be way ahead of me here. It could be that I am not dreaming big enough. Certainly his ideas are inspiring, especially for the people who work for SpaceX and other visionary space contractors. Musk’s employees come in at the crack of dawn and stay there until late at night. They may be the exact type of starry-eyed people needed to accomplish such a mighty thing.
Now, the saying, “Shoot for the moon; if you miss, you’ll probably hit a star,” doesn’t entirely make sense when what you’re discussing is actually traveling in outer space. But the gist of that saying is that you never know what you’ll achieve if you dream big, and that’s certainly the case here. As they work toward these goals, the people at SpaceX are already doing some very ambitious things. The company has what seems to be a great idea to reuse the bottom half of its Falcon 9 rocket. After launch, the first stage returns to Earth and fires its engines again to come to a soft, upright landing. SpaceX had a few rocky test flights, but now they can land those stages with great precision (most of the time). The plan is to use the first stages again and again, which should make rocket launches a lot cheaper. The engineers at SpaceX figure a booster can be reused about a dozen times, but nobody is sure if that is feasible. Will the company offer a discount to any satellite customer who puts their spacecraft on a rocket with the lower stage on its 10th or 11th reuse? Right now, the number of plausible reuses is low, and the cost of any failure is high, which limits the cost savings. This balance may change with more development and more experience. For example, if the bottom part springs a leak after a few flights, that is catastrophic. If it never does, that’s great. When a rocket fails, the failure is usually explosive and complete.
Except for the space shuttle, whose costs were out of this world, nobody has ever tried flying the same rocket over and over. SpaceX will, and they’ll get better and better at it. Does that mean SpaceX knows how to send people to Mars? Not yet. What I think Musk may not be fully addressing is how hostile Mars is. In addition, I question Musk’s claim that we need to be a two-planet species to guarantee our survival. If something catastrophic happens to Earth, will we really turn to Mars as our safe place to run off to and rebuild? I think it’s a great deal easier and much more practical to protect and preserve the Earth.
Weighing all the big talk against the actual accomplishments, I return to my question: Is Musk an imposter? My imposter-o-meter says definitely not. He created SpaceX from the ground up and is now competing ably with Boeing and Lockheed Martin. He runs the first company to have landed a rocket safely after launch. He’s not shaking anybody down for money to fund his Mars dreams. I’m a skeptic about whether Musk will be able to achieve all the grandiose things he wants to do, but he has shown that he can work his way through the design pyramid from start to finish and do things nobody has done before. The man is the real deal.
Full-on imposter syndrome—the phenomenon first documented by clinical psychologists Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes in 1978—can be a debilitatin
g condition. I don’t mean to treat it lightly. But as I learned from my experience at The Planetary Society, a milder form of imposter syndrome is not entirely a bad thing. If you’re riddled with insecurity, you will have a very hard time leading anybody. And if you have too little self-doubt, you can slide into self-delusion and hubris. Getting the imposter balance right requires filtering fear so that you keep things in proportion. That is a lifelong learning process. It reminds me of advice that the television host Tom Bergeron (you probably know him from America’s Funniest Home Videos and Dancing with the Stars) told me: “Turn your nervousness into excitement.” In the theater, in front of a microphone, while running a small nonprofit, or anywhere in life, a certain amount of fear means that you are taking a risk, challenging yourself.
There is another wonderful admonishment for stage and screen performers: “If you stop being nervous, it’s time to quit.” Nerves mean you are embarking on something daring and important. When you feel fear, you will know that you are on the right track. Let the fear come on, then take the time to reassure yourself that you can do this thing, that you can handle it. If need be, write down some of your favorite accomplishments that preceded this time of self-doubt. These touchstones need not be famous acts. Maybe you had a great time in a high school play, and maybe your buddy Rusty wrote that you were masterful. And you trust his judgment. (That happened . . . to me.)
