Note to any scientists out there who may have a conversation with trump in the future:
When he says something so incredibly incoherent that your brain reboots, please do your best to quell your default “nice” response (in this case “Oh, no one’s ever asked me that before”) and instead take a moment to formulate a thorough critique:
“I’ve never encountered a person with such a limited understanding of so many topics who was actually willing to apply that knowledge in a conversation, let alone a pointed question about the safety of batteries. I need to teach you about how sharks, boats, water, batteries and electricity work before I can even begin addressing that catastrophe of a question.”
I’ve had this conversation with people who send me big brain conspiracy videos on topics I actually know things about.
“Look, this is wrong in a very specific way but for you to understand why I’m going to have to take you through a physics class.”
There’s this baseline thing that I don’t think we teach in school very well about words and language. We can be using the same words to say things, but our underlying meaning can at times be so different as to be in opposition. Science uses words weird, so a lot of times people who don’t know that very badly misinterpret the meaning of what scientists say.
