In today's noisy world, so many opinions are expressed all around us. Having views on things often shows that you care, and a healthy debate can widen our perspective. But it's important for opinions and arguments to be based on facts that can be scientifically validated, as far as possible. People are entitled to have their own views, but they are not entitled to have their own facts.
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From personal interactions on social media to public rhetoric from politicians, we all shape the world through the views we express. But how often do we stop to consider whether we're being responsible enough? If the seeds we sow in the minds of others are seeds of hatred and violence, or seeds of compassion and reconciliation?
Watch the full interview on HODO STATION, for the Japanese tv channel @tv_asahi_news: https://t.co/bS746x2nc7 (recorded on 19 October 2023)
Pale Blue Dot is a photo of Earth that was taken by the Voyager 1 space probe in 1990 from a distance of about 6 billion kilometers (3.7 billion miles) as it was leaving our solar system. This is what Carl Sagan said about the photo:
"Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it, everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor, and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every 'superstar,' every 'supreme leader,' every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there โ on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand. It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.โ