Neil deGrasse Tyson's Peer Review of Terrence Howard's Treatise

Neil deGrasse Tyson critiqued Terrence Howard's treatise on physics and mathematics with thorough and honest feedback.

### Neil deGrasse Tyson Critiques Terrence Howard's Treatise on Mathematics and Physics
* 📜 Neil deGrasse Tyson received a **36-page treatise** from Terrence Howard, in which Howard attempted to **"reinvent mathematics and physics."**
* 🧠 Tyson believes it is essential to **critically evaluate new ideas**, as not all ideas will turn out to be **correct**.
* 📚 The Dunning-Kruger effect is discussed, where individuals **over-assess their knowledge of a subject** based on limited information.
* 👨 Becoming an expert requires years of study and looking through journals where **new ideas are published and contested**.
* 🔍 Science is about **reproducibility of results**, and ideas supported by **compelling arguments and experiments** are accepted.
* 🌍 Howard criticizes the adherence to "**antiquated and obsolete beliefs**," but Tyson emphasizes the importance of **scientific processes**.
* Howard's claim that "if we place a candle in front of a mirror, the **measurement of light is doubled**" is refuted by Tyson.
* 📝 Tyson provided strong criticisms of Howard's reasoning and conclusions, but acknowledged the **beautiful illustrations** in the treatise.

I recently learned I got name-checked by Terrence Howard on his recent appearance on Joe Rogan. I reached out to Neil deGrasse Tyson. Neil deGrasse Tyson, he was like, Hey man, yeah, I'd love for you to come on my show, do my radio, do my TV thing, would love that. I was like, Yeah, but let me, I've got something I want to introduce to you. I got name-checked because 8 years ago he sent me a 36-page treatise, and it was only 36 pages. So, this is Terence Howard attempting to reinvent mathematics and physics. A little backstory there, I took initial interest in Terrence because my mother said to me, Do you know Terrence Howard? I said, Yeah, I know you mean the actor. She said, Yeah, well, I heard him interviewed on NPR, and there he said that like when he was a kid, he wanted to be like a scientist and study the Universe. I said, Well, that's cool, okay, maybe we'll get him on Star Talk, we love to talk to celebrities who.

have a soft geek underbelly. At the time, I didn't quite know how to get in touch with him, but we met at something called the upfronts, which is where networks present their next season's TV shows. I saw him at an event, um, uh, upfront, and then this came in my inbox. In this particular case, since I basically solicited it from him, I actually spent time reading every line of all 36 pages, and I commented. My comments are in red here. You see that? So I spent a lot of time on it, and I thought, out of respect for him, what I should do is give him my most informed critical analysis that I can. In my field, we call that a peer review. You come up with an idea, you present it either at a conference, or you first write it up, and you send it to your colleagues. It is their duty to alert you of things about your ideas that are either misguided or wrong, or there's a mis... the calculation doesn't work out, or the...

logic doesn't comport. That's their job. Not all ideas will turn out to be correct. Most won't be. But to get to that point, you need to know things like: What has everyone else said about this same subject? Am I repeating someone else's work? Is this a new insight that no one else has had but has foundations that are authentic or legitimate or objectively true? Am I making a false assumption? Am I making an assumption that someone else has already shown to be false? All of this goes on on the frontier of science. Let me make it clear that I'm delighted when I see people with active minds trying to tackle the great unknowns in the universe. It's a beautiful thing that people want to participate on this frontier. What can happen is if you're a fan of a subject, let's say a hobbyist, let's call it, it's possible to know enough about that subject to think you're right but not enough about that subject to know that you're wrong. And so there's this sort of

Valley in there a valley of false confidence. This has been studied by others, and it's called the Dunning Krueger effect. It's the phenomenon where a little bit of knowledge, you over-assess how much of that subject you actually know. And then when you learn even more, you realize, no, I didn't know as much as I thought I did. So then there's a sort of a lull there. And then when you learn even more, you come back up, ultimately learning enough to know whether you are right or wrong. To become an expert means you spend all this time. It doesn't happen overnight. You can't just sit in an armchair and say, I'm now an expert. It requires years and years of study, especially looking through journals where new ideas are published and contested. That's what we have learned. Learned is the most effective means of establishing that which is objectively true or determining that which is objectively false. Both of those work hand in hand to move the needle on our understanding of the universe. I'm going to read you just my opening line.

here it's titled 1 * 1 equal 2. So I lead off by saying this is an ambitious work that is a clear indication of a Restless active mind with in these Pages. However, there are many assumptions and statements that are underinformative greater than the initial number squared for that would expose a loose thread within the fabric of our understanding, a loose thread capable of unraveling the very ground rules of mathematics. That's a bold statement. So then I I just say this opening thesis is false. There are plenty of examples of this that have escaped your attention. His statement is shown to be false for every number that's less than one and greater than Z. For example, the square root of 64 is 8. 8 is bigger than 64, and it's a larger number than the original, and 64 squared = 496, a smaller number than the original. To the extent that the next 35 Pages depends on your stated thesis, this fact undermines your claims and assumptions and conclusions. It's not about feelings here, it's about objective.

reality. So, at the time, I considered Terren a strong acquaintance and we hung out a bit and had much exchange. We haven't spoken much since then, but go to page two. In here, he mentions people who he declares were persecuted because their vision exceeded the myopic view of their contemporaries. And he mentions Walter Russell, Nicola Tesla, John Keeley, and many, many more. Regarding your list of people who have made brave sacrifices, I note that to be a genius is to be misunderstood, but to be misunderstood is not to be a genius. The work of Russell, Walter Russell, has eluded any experimental support, and the work of Keeley is generally not reproducible. Science is about reproducibility. I can have the most brilliant, crazy, fun idea ever, and if I perform an experiment and no one else can duplicate that experiment, it belongs in the trash heap. It's me in my own world, thinking I have landed on an objective truth when in fact I haven't. That's how science works.

reproducibility of results. As for the work of Tesla, much of it had very real value to physics and our understanding of electromagnetism, and that value is duly recognized by my community in the naming of a unit of electromagnetism after him. You can't get more badass than having a unit named after you. Newton has a unit named after him, for example, the metric unit of force is a Newton. Much of the rest of his work was fringe and unrealized, either for violating known laws of physics or for being simply impractical. Just because you do some good stuff doesn't mean everything you ever did is going to be great. I will further affirm that just because an idea sounds crazy doesn't make it wrong. The system of research and publications in peer-review journals has the capacity to spot crazy but true ideas, provided they are supported by compelling arguments and ultimately supported by experiments and observations. Newton's Laws, Einstein's relativity, quantum physics were all revolutionary ideas that appeared in peer-review settings or journals.

meanwhile, most of the work of Russell and Keeley had no such success with their ideas. So, I think on Rogan Terren said that I trashed those three researchers' attack that I had immediate that I talked about Walter Russell and Victor Shaw Berger and John Keeley as and Tesla as the people that I looked up to. So, he threw on on. He was like, well, Tesla Tesla stuff worked but Tesla was never really respected and out there when I'm just simply stating the fact. I don't think of that as trashing. I think of that as being honest. I mean, I could have softened it but I don't think that's what people who care about you should do. People who care will be honest with you about ideas, about thoughts. The world is changing so quickly and so is everything around us. Unfortunately, we have chosen to remain handcuffed to antiquated and obsolete beliefs. We have put an enormous amount of faith into the methods and practices of old that are as dead today as the men who propagated the notion that the world was

flat so I say here regarding your world was flat reference it's not widely appreciated that the idea of a flat Earth predates the introduction and development of the methods and tools of science as we practice them today. Those processes date back to around 1600 coincident with the invention of the microscope and Telescope. Before then, truths were whatever seemed right to the senses. Afterwards, and to this day, truth was whatever the verified data obtained by your instruments forced you to believe if your senses otherwise contradicted the data. This fact means that there's no such misunderstanding on the scale of the Flat Earth in the era of modern science. And in multiple places throughout the treaties he's attaching a number to a physical idea or a physical object. That idea goes way back, by the way, go back to Pythagoras famous for the Pythagorean theorem, which we all learned in 8th grade. Was it or nth grade? Pythagoras was also a philosopher who tried to understand how things worked. He felt among others in his group that if you

assign a number to something. The number can imbue that object with certain meaning and significance, which means then, if you manipulate the numbers, that you gain insight into the objects themselves. Once you've assigned a number to it, there's a lot of that that permeates this document. Uh, but it's a long disproven approach to the world. Again, there's nothing wrong with a failed idea. Now other people know to not do it, right? That has value. If we place a candle in front of a mirror, the measurement of light is doubled, is it not? It does not measure as only one light source. We actually see two lights. A light meter will show twice the intensity of light. This is false. He attacked it so with such vitro. Maybe that's too blunt. What else should I say? I'm a scientist. That's what I would tell a colleague. A colleague who then say would thank you. And then we go out for beer after, 'cause that's how that works. And there's an old saying. I first heard it from Michael Dell of Dell.

Technologies, if one day you find yourself the smartest person in the room, change rooms. I say this is false. The light in the mirror appears dimmer than the source of light itself for several reasons, starting with the fact that no mirror is 100% reflective. But more importantly, the candle in the mirror is always farther away from you than the candle itself, so the light meter will always read less than twice the actual value of the candle itself. I will note that from this work, Terren produces art, sculptural art, which I find to be intriguing, even beautiful, to me more intriguing than beautiful, because you got to look at it and you keep looking at it like, What is that and what's going on there? I just want to read you my end and comments here. I could not follow the reasoning on these last few pages, but the illustrations that derive from them are beautiful regardless of how they were derived. My notes have been strongly critical of your reasoning and conclusions. I was candid and blunt out.

of respect for the energy you have clearly invested in this work. But if you're sure that you are still right and that I have completely misunderstood your thesis, then you will need to look for another person to evaluate what you have done and solicit their comments. In any case, like I say above, the images and illustrations in your final pages are beautiful works of art, unlike any I have seen. Best to you, Neil. So in case people wanted to know what actually went down 8 years ago, just always be cautious of the Dunning-Kruger effect. You put in a little bit of work and you have an idea, and then you think your idea is right and that Einstein is wrong and Newton is wrong and that everybody's wrong and that all of modern astrophysicists are wrong. That's bold, that's audacious, that's bodacious. When continental drift was proposed, it was like, what land masses are moving on Earth? Sure, that's a weird idea, that's going to be a hard sell. We think there's sort of upswelling of the

yes locally, but whole continent move. That's crazy. It would take a few decades until, ultimately, when we're mapping the bottom of the ocean, we find that there's a Mid-Atlantic Ridge, that the ridges are separating. It's like bada bing. So, the resistance to jumping on the idea that continents move was not because people were stubborn, it was because people are cautious. Any new idea needs to be put through the ringer. That's how science works. You put it through the ringer, every possible test you can. Not just 'cause it happens to look like South America fits with Africa. Any better evidence than that? Oh, wait a minute, fossils matched between the west coast of South America and the east coast of Africa. Not recent fossils, fossils from millions of years ago. That's interesting, things that make you go hm. That brought some more people over to the camp. You keep that up and you reach a point where enough evidence is brought to bear on the question and then you have a new emerging truth. But at the, the vibrant

energy that goes on it conferences, and the contest of ideas. That's how we roll, that's how it works. When Einstein came out with relativity, saying SpaceTime curves, Albert Al, what are you saying, what are you doing? Well, you can test it, the total solar eclipse. So the idea comes out in 1915, is published in 1916, 1919, we measured light around the edge of a total. So during a total solar eclipse, 'cause you can't see the stars during the daytime, you see the light, the light rays bent from their actual coordinate positions on the sky. Sir Arthur Edington, an astrophysicist, provided the first experimental evidence for Einstein's general theory of relativity, which by the way was published in a peer-review journal. Crazy idea. The platform to be accepted for the ideas is not social media, it is not Joe Rogan, it is not my podcast, it is research journals where attention can be given on a level that at the end of the day offers no higher respect for your energy and intellect than by declaring that what's

in it is either right or wrong, or worthy of publication, or not. I wanted to post this to my website so you can see my comments mixed in with his treaties, but uh, you got the sense of it. Thanks for listening, thanks for watching. Neil deGrasse Tyson here, as always, keep looking up. [Music]

My Response to Terrence Howard

Science meets pop culture on StarTalk! Astrophysicist & Hayden Planetarium director Neil deGrasse Tyson, his comic co-hosts, guest celebrities & scientists discuss astronomy, physics, and everything else about life in the universe. Keep Looking Up!

StarTalk

Terrence Howard's 36-Page Treatise and Neil deGrasse Tyson's Response

Neil deGrasse Tyson acknowledged Terrence Howard's desire to be on his show after being mentioned on Joe Rogan's podcast.

Howard sent Tyson a 36-page treatise on reinventing mathematics and physics, which Tyson critically reviewed as a peer in the field of science.

Tyson expressed delight in seeing people tackle the unknowns of the universe but highlighted the importance of being open to peer review and self-critique in the pursuit of knowledge.

The Dunning Krueger Effect and the Path to Expertise

The Dunning Krueger effect explains how people with a little knowledge tend to overestimate their understanding, leading to a false sense of confidence.

True expertise takes years of study and the willingness to learn and re-evaluate one's understanding.

In science, the ability to reproduce and validate results is crucial in establishing objective truth and separating it from individual assumptions.

The Impact of Historical Figures on Science

Tesla's work had real value in physics, leading to the naming of a unit of electromagnetism after him, despite some of his work being considered fringe.

The system of research and publications in peer-reviewed journals has the capacity to validate revolutionary ideas, as seen with Newton, Einstein, and quantum physics.

The idea of a flat Earth predates the development of modern science, with truth now being based on verified data from instruments.

The Misconception of Assigning Meaning to Numbers

Assigning meaning to numbers is a long-disproven approach to gaining insight into objects.

The idea that placing a candle in front of a mirror doubles the measurement of light is false, as the light in the mirror appears dimmer for several reasons.

Despite strong criticism of the reasoning and conclusions, the artistic value of the derived illustrations is still acknowledged.

The Importance of Caution in Embracing New Ideas

New ideas are often met with resistance because of the need for thorough testing and evidence.

The proposal of continental drift was initially met with skepticism, but the discovery of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and matching fossils ultimately led to its acceptance.

It is essential to subject new ideas to rigorous testing and evidence before they can become established truths.

The Experimental Evidence for Einstein's Theory of Relativity

During a total solar eclipse in 1919, Sir Arthur Eddington conducted an experiment that confirmed Einstein's general theory of relativity.

The experiment showed that light rays were bent from their actual positions in the sky, providing the first experimental evidence for Einstein's theory.

The acceptance of scientific ideas is found in research journals, where they are rigorously reviewed and validated.