- Posts tagged Skeptical
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A Primer on Skepticism
After a year of blogging it's time to reflect on the value of this rag, what it's accomplished, who it's speaking to, and what it has to say.
The answer? Beats me.
Well, I guess that's not true. I suppose one has only to look at the most commonly used tags column on the page to get an idea; science, animation, skepticism, art, and design round out the top 5. I suppose that means that the blog is about those things, but as I've tried to come clean about before, there's something nefarious at work concerning the subject matter. As a core mission, this blog aims to take mankind's unique ability to recognize and experience beauty, and to use it as the context within which to make a key point; that a naturalistic, or skeptical, view of the world is not a vacant one.
Here be Reality
This is a film about critical thinking made by Brian Dunning, and although I haven't fully finished watching it yet, if I know Dunning, the entirety will be as on-point as what I've seen so far. Yeah, it's pretty amateurishly made, and isn't what I'd call a date movie. It speaks to a very limited audience, an audience I'd call 'skeptically leaning'; someone who tends to sense that there's a lot of bullshit out there in the world, and not in the conspiracy theory sort of way. Someone who wonders, to quote Will Ferell's character 'Mugatu' from the movie 'Zoolander', if "everyone's on crazy pills".
Dunning has a short, weekly podcast called Skeptoid, and I'm smack dab in the middle of devouring the whole series. Unlike some other podcasts focusing on the same issues, many of which I love, Dunning's brilliantly written episodes manage to argue their points in about 10 minutes, on average. He has a gift for slicing up complex issues into easily understood terms, and doing so within a very efficient word-count.
The movie is intended as a primer for skepticism and critical thinking, ideas that Dunning, and this bumbling blogger, hold very dear.
So I post this for anyone with lots of curiosity, a fair measure of patience, forgivingness of low production value, and a general dislike for bullshit.
Wikipedia, My Eternal Love
How much you fulfill me, how perfect a match are we? It seems I don't know the man I was before we became one. I look back at my history and wonder how I ever functioned without you in my life.
Oh how you stimulate. Where else could one find, in the span of 15 minutes, comprehensive summaries of ideas as varied as neotny, quantum entanglement, and coprophagia?
What other companion could I arouse from it's slumber, troubled by a throbbing question about the origins of the Shangri-La myth, and who would then drop everything to quickly satisfy me?
Oh yes, there are naysayers that claim that relying on you for fulfillment isn't good for me, that since you're a user-edited resource, you're prone to bias and can be inaccurate. However, as is often the case, these people are just repeating an idea they heard somewhere without doing any critical thinking on the matter.
I'm sure most of them are unaware of the study published in 'Nature', one of the world's foremost peer-reviewed science journals, that found you and Encyclopedia Britannica to have the same prevalence of errors, seeming to make you as good a casual resource for information as any on earth.
And I doubt that they've heard the endorsements I have. Many a pre-eminent expert in a variety of fields, when reviewing articles on their area of expertise, express shock at how comprehensive and accurate you really are.
I'm certain you're not incorruptible, and as any good skeptic must, I keep my mind open and critically examine any information you tell me.
Nobody's perfect, and I assume the same must be true for you. But love is blind to such things.
Marry Science, Bang Art, and Murder Business
I just couldn't help myself. Here's the first real podcast, in that is has a theme and isn't just some rambling nonsense claiming not to be a podcast. It's short, but it's here.
Just give me 5 minutes of your time, and I'll waste it.
