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By BaS, on October 1st, 2009%
 Image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/somerslea/321513270 Note: I addressed the following essay to the general population of the No Agenda Forums, a community that I cherish despite frequent frustration. It is peopled by many conspiracy theorists and champions of various “alternative” things, such as alternative explanations, alternative medicine, etc. In short, people I cannot really reach on a level of reason. What I say may not do any good, but if even one in a thousand of those readers can see the light, then I am proud to have played a small part in the emergence of a rational mind.
Continue reading You make and break your own religion
By BaS, on September 15th, 2009%
Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/surrealmuse/4757004
Science consensus
Bucked by genius, and morons.
The latter . . . → Read More: Emit poetry
By BaS, on August 18th, 2009%
Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/59422307@N00/213496044
I love everything about this Skeptoid post, in which Brian makes great points about the peril of debating when the truth is on your side. It’s counter-intuitive on first consideration, but as I’ve mused previously, debating has relatively little to do with truth and mostly pivots on charisma and debate tactics (many of . . . → Read More: More debate fail
By BaS, on July 18th, 2009%
Density plots of hydrogen's electron
Reading this analysis of yet another god of the gaps argument, I noted an intriguing passage:
With quantum mechanical uncertainty and the chaotic unpredictability of complex systems, the world is now understood to have a certain freedom in its future development. (…) It is thus perfectly possible that God might influence the . . . → Read More: A god detector
By BaS, on March 15th, 2009%
 Image credit: flickr.com/photos/markfbennett/2223565383 Debating
Like most sports, I’m not much good at debate. I say it’s a sport because it’s a competition with a winner and loser where the participants’ skills have the largest bearing on the outcome.
I think that most people casually lump debate and argument into the same mental bin; if not as exact synonyms, then as different degrees of the same thing. But they are really quite different! A debate has almost nothing to do with logic or the correctness of stated facts, but these things are crucial to the outcome of an argument.
Continue reading Argument > Debate
By BaS, on March 15th, 2009%
 Image credit http://www.flickr.com/photos/go_kusano/2679175875 As Orac states:
Science as it is practiced today relies on a fair measure of trust. Part of the reason is that the culture of science values openness, hypothesis testing, and vigorous debate. The general assumption is that most scientists are honest and, although we all generally try to present our data in the most favorable light possible, we do not blatantly lie about it or make it up.
Science is a massively collaborative endeavor, with each researcher relying on the existing mesh of literature as a starting point for their own contributions. When everyone is being honest, a good methodology and peer review will prevent most obvious problems of bias and rigor. In other words, the facts are pretty well understood, and everyone has a pretty good idea about how robust various theories are.
This is important, because it means when research is invalidated (or some theory is shown to be inferior to a new one), it tends to be an incremental change, not a destructive one. Anything we learn will update, clarify, and add to our existing understanding. Any new theories we employ will work at least as well as the old ones they unseat. Relativity is more correct than Newton’s laws, but that doesn’t mean apples must be re-checked to verify that they do in fact fall toward the earth instead of levitating or falling toward the moon.
When a researcher repeatedly confabulates data in a case of massive fraud, it knocks everyone for a loop.
Continue reading Dishonesty in science: we still win
By BaS, on January 1st, 2009%
 Photo credit: garryknight from flickr We suck at thinking, all of us– humanity. It’s poetically tragic given that we haven’t met any life forms who can do a better job of it yet.
We skeptics enjoy thinking of ourselves as rational and reasonable, smugly superior among a vast sea of credulous, closed-minded believers. But we’re not nearly as clever as we think, nor are we very different from the true believers.
Continue reading Closed-minded, all
By BaS, on October 24th, 2008%
There are so many fallacies and biases that I can’t keep them straight, even though critical thinking is something I value highly. I’m not much good at debate, and although I’d love nothing more than to engender critical thinking and skepticism in others, I don’t have any good ideas on how to do that, except maybe hitting them with a WWIT? question.
But what about aspiring skeptics– people who already have the spark of reason but haven’t yet learned to see the fnords on their own?
Continue reading A critical baseline
By BaS, on October 22nd, 2008%
I saw this somewhere on the Internet a few days ago and have since forgotten the source. But it’s so elegant that I want to spread the meme. Plus, a post on Friendly Atheist reminded me again.
“What would it take to convince you that you’re wrong?”
That one sentence is all you need to figure out whether . . . → Read More: What would it take?
By BaS, on July 6th, 2008%
From Skepchick:
I love that most everyone here is willing to be wrong about everything.
Through disagreements, we are able to see our views reflected back at us and change them if necessary. Or, even if they don’t change, we may gain insight into just why we hold a particular view.
That’s how I try to approach my whole . . . → Read More: Willing to be wrong
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