5th Day’s Links Sceptique for May 17, 2012

I hope your Norse Storm Hammer God’s day is doing better than expected. This week, I’ve got a few interesting bookmarks that I just had to evilly inflict upon you, my unsuspecting readers…

MuaHaHaHaHa!

*ahem*

First, I’ve found a piece on Big Think that’ll prove very handy in debating theists on social media like Twitter, Getting Apologists to Go Off-Script…and making them think on their own for a response to inquisitive atheists!

Well, I’ve done a bit of posting on Blaise Pascal’s pet argument this week, but for every argument around for that long, there’s a counterargument — so forget Pascal — I’ll place my bet on the Atheist’s Wager instead!

Should atheists leave religion alone? — As the author suggests, hardly. Especially when would-be theocrats strive evermore to keep their social privilege and get more of the same in the culture wars with secularists.

Space is big — mindbogglingly big, more so than our monkey brains can easily handle — and here is how we go about measuring the universe despite all that.

This is something I’ve posted on myself as a recurring theme on this site, but not as well as this on The Curse of Certainty and the Liberating Embrace of Uncertainty, on NPR…

Once again, that cranky English guy who gave us gravity and the Laws of Motion is making the rounds in a set of incredible videos of Ike Newton’s experiments with alchemy…and some of the chemistry tricks that alchemists used to con people into thinking that they transmuted elements…

Looking for new ways to get better search results? Google Knowledge Graph: Search Results Packed with Worlds of Information — ’nuff said.

The search for the mythical Mokele Mbembe is on! (Again???) Jurassic Lark? Expedition to Seek Living Dinosaurs in Africa — Ah, more fun from the cryptozoology enthusiasts — even as untrained amateurs, they just might discover something of interest, but I’m not holding my breath on it…

This touches on one of my favoritest (sic) topics — on extraterrestrial life, somewhere, in some form — The 6 Most Likely Places to Find Alien Life.

On two of the less illustrious and campier episodes of the original Doctor Who series, its in-your-face politics!

Finally, though I’m hardly fit to determine how much of this is real, it looks good and totally rocks, too!

Dr. Who Meets Metal!

5th Day’s Links Sceptique is a selection of links to blogs, news outlets, and cool little sites on the Web that relate to science, reason, skepticism, atheism, the fringes and borderlands of science, memes relating to science or skepticism, and anything that catches my eye or which I’m deluded enough to think might arouse the interest of you, my perspicacious readers. 5th Day’s Links Sceptique is published on Thursdays on the Call.

5th Day’s Links Sceptique for May 10, 2012

Well, this week has been fairly uneventful, with some interesting discussions over the past few days, including a debate with a troll on Twitter which I found rather amusing — but I’m being evil again, and I need to quit that for now…

This is something I thought was pretty cool, the Munker Illusion, one that really plays havoc on the human perception of color.

Here is an interesting post on why can smells unlock forgotten memories.

Also, Greg Laden poses an important question, “Should there be a Science Debate in Minnesota?”

As an interesting historical note, an article on Brain Pickings, The Age of Insight: How Art and Science in Early 20th Century Vienna Shaped Modern Culture

I almost forgot to post this link — Oops! — on the identification of neurotransmitters that lead to forgetting.

This is a nice time-lapse video on spectacular aurora borealis in Norway, and the accompanying tunage isn’t bad either.

Also in the news, researchers at MIT have developed something really cool…the first self-replicating, self-assembling machines using magnetic cubes, though at present the research is limited to using 2-dimensional objects due to the size and processing ability of the cubes. It’ll be fantastic once they scale this up to larger and more durable 3D objects.

By A.C. Graying, a video I posted on The Unconsidered Life.

Also, some very good reasons offered by bdwilson1000 on why Common Sense is Worthless in Science…

On TED, sculpting waves in wood and time…

A post I had fun posting earlier this week on Critical Thinking and Motivated Reasoning…

And finally, courtesy of the Left Hemispheres blog, reblogged here, and don’t forget to skip to 3:30 in the vid to get to the meat of the talk…

Daniel Dennett: Is Science Showing That We Don’t Have Free Will?

5th Day’s Links Sceptique is a selection of links to blogs, news outlets, and cool little sites on the Web that relate to science, reason, skepticism, atheism, the fringes and borderlands of science, memes relating to science or skepticism, and anything that catches my eye or which I’m deluded enough to think might arouse the interest of you, my perspicacious readers. 5th Day’s Links Sceptique is published on Thursdays on the Call.

Critical Thinking & Motivated Reasoning

The Spinning Dancer appears to move both clockwise and counter-clockwise (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The skill sets of critical thinking, often called a baloney detection kit, are useful to an extent but they can also be misused, fallaciously applied out of context, and even mistakenly employed as a mechanical rote substitute for thinking.

This is especially the case when we use our critical faculties to rationalize from a conclusion rather than reason our way from a set of facts or assumptions to a likely conclusion through a rational process.

The two processes are mirror images of each other, one we unthinkingly do all the time, the other when we exercise caution and diligence in our thinking.

The former we do when we want a position we hold to be true even when it is not, and the latter when we take due care in accounting for our biases, thinking clearly and deeply, and reaching a reasonable conclusion on what is probably true even when we may not like it very much.

We are all of us to some extent guided by our biases, our world views, our preconceptions, our prior beliefs and knowledge, our expectations, wants and desires, our many cognitive flaws, including the confirmation bias and the availability heuristic.

There are also the limits and flaws inherent to our sensory equipment and the perceptual models our brains construct for us. These take our sensory data and weave it into an apparent unity from the disconnected chaotic bits that we see, hear, smell, and perceive through other senses.

We are subject to hallucinations, even the sanest of us, optical illusions, and the tendency to note patterns in what really amounts to nothing more than random sensory noise.

Cover via Amazon

This applies to everyone. Scientific skepticism is the ability to overcome this, to recognize our limits, flaws, routes of self-deception and the wariness to guard against them with care, skill, and scientific thinking.

Motivated reasoning is the opposite of critical reasoning, when we attempt to use our baloney detector, filtered through unnoticed biases, wishes and preconceptions, to rationalize and muster our arguments for ‘the cause’ even to the extent of accusing our opponents of using the very same logical fallacies and factual errors we are. The line between self-deception and willful charlatanry is not easily drawn, and most often lies somewhere in between.

Falsifying evidence and counterarguments are ignored or dismissed, while any data and arguments that could support the predetermined conclusion, even if they are weak, invalid, or don’t have any relevance or meaning, however appealing they may be, are sought out, quickly noted and seized upon by the proponent as ammunition.

I see this often, among religious apologists, conspiracy theorists, science and history deniers, and even those who deny the very existence of reality and knowledge itself. All attempt to defend their belief systems from falsification and themselves from cognitive dissonance, often completely unaware of the direction they argue in or of the fallacies they commit. Not always, but often.

This is especially so when one has only the most superficial understanding of critical thinking, only able to go through the motions at best, and an unhealthy dose of the Dunning-Kruger effect — when we are too incompetent to recognize our own incompetence.

5th Day’s Links Sceptique for May 3rd, 2011

The 5th Day’s Links Sceptique is back this week, after a several week hiatus…My bad.

Have you ever wondered what would happen if H. P. Lovecraft trod the dark path of “Dear Abby” and “Anne Landers? Here is the advice column of the Author of Providence, and the eldritch horrors unleashed upon the people who write him…

This article on Freethought Blogs by Ben Radford notes that “People Don’t Read, and Why it Matters to Skepticism…” This is something I’ve noticed myself now and then over the last 4+ years of blogging.

My friend Steve on G+ sent me this a while back — an exquisitely drawn book on marine life using an artistic style originating in the Bihar region of India…

Here’s a Periodic Stress Test — see how you score! — on Scientific American…

So you think Lolcats originated with the Internet? Think again — here are examples of the humorous kittehs of the 19th century! Thanks to my friend Kate for reminding me I still had this bookmarked

Neat! It seems that recently, the researchers of CERN have uncovered a new kind of particle using the LHC. It’s discoveries like this that can open up brand new areas of research…

Feel like getting real? Here’s A Look at the New Skepticism…

Here’s a parapsychologist I can respect, Stanley Krippner, and even James Randi likes him! That’s saying something, in my book…

A good discussion on the Psychology of Fraud: Why Good People do Bad Things, and why I find it more helpful to understand even charlatans.

David Brin discusses the Need to Restore Optimism to Science Fiction, and the need is more urgent than many suppose, after with story after story being dystopic or otherwise dark ‘n gloomy…

Here’s An Optical Illusion that Explains the Origins of Imaginary Monsters…

Why we ignore science — What’s Rational About Risk?

The answer to a common question — What has science ever done for us?

And, my favorite Astrophysicist responds to the question…

Atheist or Agnostic?

5th Day’s Links Sceptique is a selection of links to blogs, news outlets, and cool little sites on the Web that relate to science, reason, skepticism, atheism, the fringes and borderlands of science, memes relating to science or skepticism, and anything that catches my eye or which I’m deluded enough to think might arouse the interest of you, my perspicacious readers. 5th Day’s Links Sceptique is published on Thursdays on the Call.

Is Science a Special Interest?

Is science fatally biased? Does it actually constitute a partisan special interest? Should we rightly ignore scientific claims or dismiss them as pseudoscience or a hoax when they or their implications disagree with our political views or religious beliefs?

Not unless reality itself is a partisan special interest, not as I understand it, and I have over the years taken great pains to do just that — To understand science as best a layman can, if nothing else as an educational pursuit.

Science is far from solely the purview of academics, though like any learned skill, it takes training and experience to do well. But anytime you methodically try out an idea in the real world using some reliable observational method, employing these to reach a more accurate view of the outcome, then you’re doing science, even if you do it in a kitchen while microwaving different popcorn brands to compare their kernel popping rates rather than experimenting with test-tubes of exotic chemicals in a lab while wearing a respirator.

But because it’s done by people, and people are flawed, science is messy, imperfect, sometimes prone to error, and with regard to the context of discovery, culturally dependent. But it’s the process of justifying discoveries, not just making them, that best reflects the virtues of science, its universality in the process of testing our hypotheses to see if they really make the cut.

Discovery is all well and good, but a new idea, no matter how revolutionary, must be put to the test, or it is of no use. Science uses methods designed from the bottom up, confidently established by the repeated testing over centuries of accumulated experience to do what it does — to tell us how the natural world works — and it does this better than anything else to date.

It’s the process of justification more so than initial discovery that makes science progressive in its findings, ever closer getting us to a clearer picture of the world.

Science is not itself an ideology, or a belief system, or a philosophical position on the way things are, but is a set of methods, though far from pristine and perfect, the system of values, assumptions and techniques of which work very well when not hobbled by external ideological interference.

Most ideologies by their very nature do not lend themselves well to an objective search for truth, especially those whose doctrines favor, promote, nurture, and exploit the biases of their adherents, especially those whose doctrines involve some form of fact denial, or which fail to acknowledge established facts of human behavior — including the realities of human greed and selfishness…and altruism.

I’ve heard from people I know a view which I think is mistaken, that double-blinding an experiment or study is irrelevant when the researchers involved have a bias or vested interest in the outcome, such as the political or financial implications, of a study they are conducting.

The problem I have with this view, the reason I think it’s mistaken, is that it ignores the whole purpose of blinding studies in the first place, showing an unfortunate lack of understanding of what blinding is and why it’s done.

For those unfamiliar, double-blinding in a nutshell:

Double-blinding is a procedure that involves keeping certain key pieces of information out of the hands of both subjects and experimenters in a study. For instance, it would be used in a medical study testing the safety and effectiveness of a new drug on human patients, in which neither those in the test group nor the control group know which one they are in, and whether they’re taking the real drug or a placebo…

…and most importantly, neither do those directly conducting the study while it’s being carried out.

Because experimenter expectation and bias can unconsciously influence the results of such a study, through the interaction of patients and experimenters and subtle behavioral cues given out and not consciously noticed by either, double-blinding is an essential tool for sidestepping this problem by effectively taking it out of the picture.

Best of all, it works.

Merely criticizing a such a protocol as ineffective by cynically accusing those using it of a suspected vested interest or bias, when this is not only irrelevant to the method used but also not even established, sounds suspiciously like an ad hominem attack or a fallacious appeal to motive.

Sure, you could argue that a given study wasn’t properly blinded, but how would you know?

Without proper grounds from credible experts in that field who’ve looked at the study in question, you’d need the data and the expertise to understand it, full knowledge of scientific methodology, and of access to records of or even direct observation of the conduct of the study yourself before you can rightly make that argument.

In short, you need to have a basis for knowing what you’re talking about. Failing all else, you’d need to be an expert in the field yourself — not a likely prospect without training, knowledge background, and experience.

Any valid argument to that effect requires much more than suspicion of ideological interests, more than just allegations of academic misconduct supported only by, for example, hacked and stolen emails, possibly doctored and posted anonymously online without any real context.

If you don’t like the facts, however politically or theologically inconvenient, it does little good to attack the fact-finders…

…for doing so shows that you can’t tell science from politics or religion.

References –

Tools of Thinking: Understanding the World Through Experience & Reason, by Professor James Hall, via the Teaching Company, 2005

Your Deceptive Mind: A Scientific Guide to Critical Thinking Skills, by Steven Novella M.D. via the Teaching Company, 2012

Blinded To Science

Religious symbols from the top nine organised faiths of the world according to Major world religions From left to right: 1st Row: Christian Cross, Jewish Star of David, Hindu Aumkar 2nd Row: Islamic Star and crescent, Buddhist Wheel of Dharma, Shinto Torii 3rd Row: Sikh Khanda, Bahá'í star, Jain Ahimsa Symbol (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I’ve sometimes been chided for dismissiveness of such alleged ways of knowing as faith claims and personal experience, particularly those of an extraordinary or mystical/spiritual nature. However, I’m also aware of many ways in which those can lead us to believe things that simply are not so, especially when we make assumptions of facts not in evidence.

I’m aware that our entire view of the world is literally a construction of our brains, a picture put together in our heads, through our limited and often faulty sensory systems, by way of our prior knowledge, beliefs, personal biases, our physical perspectives, and any of various mental and physical states we may be in at a given time.

Personal experience, often lacking any rigor or public accessibility, is an unreliable guide to the truth of a matter, and faith — I’m speaking here of the religious sort — seems to me bankrupt as a real path to knowledge.

Sorry. Nobody’s faith and personal intuitions outdo science — In the contest between faith and science, science has the better track record by far.

The best such faith can do is serve as a means of believing things to be so, not knowing them, so the claims of some to ‘know’ certain things on the basis of faith alone, much less certainly, are without support.

To assert claims to knowledge by such means at best shows a conceptual misunderstanding of what knowledge is, and at worst is willfully dishonest.

Claims to knowledge must be backed up with evidence. Hitchen’s razor — ‘Nuff said on that.

Often quoted is the phrase, “None are so blind as he who will not see,” and ironically, this applies to everyone, for most important to an accurate view of the world is not just seeing what’s there, but avoiding seeing what is only within the recesses of our own minds.

Superstition and magical thinking can be powerful ways of leading us on a merry chase toward folly, through our natural inclination to see meaning and purpose in the meaningless, simplicity on the complex, patterns on the patternless, and our wish to be connected to the cosmos, as well as our innate desire to see something more to the world than is immediately apparent.

But I think that a tendency to see the supernatural as real, far from completing the world and adding majesty to it, demeans the very real wonders and yes, stark terrors, that are apparent to the scientifically literate — it’s a literacy that makes the world look different from the simple, intuitive, neat, meaningful, and misleading supernatural picture of the world.

Are there things about the universe beyond what is immediately known? Certainly. It would be foolish to claim that our current knowledge represents the ultimate boundary of what we will ever know, and it is equally fatuous to say that one’s own personal understanding and intuitive sensibilities represent those same ultimate limits.

But if we are to learn anything about the universe of any real consequence, it will probably be through science that we find it out.

As important to many as purpose, meaning, and centrality to the Cosmos are, the fact that science can’t tell us everything right this moment doesn’t justify anyone’s just making things up and declaring this to be infallible truth merely by the arbitrary fiat of mystics and entrenched religious traditions.

As a former believer, I can see the need to somehow supplement the world with the constructs of our admittedly powerful but limited imaginations, but this does a great disservice to those pioneers of our species who labored to back up their speculations of the world using reasoning and data.

It seems to me that those who are closing themselves off to a real understanding, through blind wishful thinking, false hopes and fear, are denying themselves of some enriching, enlivening, enlightening things that would be evident if only they would permit themselves to learn and see what really is.

Related articles

• Science and the folly of faith (openparachute.wordpress.com)
• Blind faith (sixglassesofwater.wordpress.com)
• PZ Myers: Sunday Sacrilege / Sacking the City of God (alwaysquestionauthority.com)

Science & Nonbelief are Arrogant — Really?

I’ve often heard believers, religious and paranormal alike, accuse religious nonbelievers and advocates of science of arrogance in not acknowledging the validity, even the superiority, of their own “special ways of knowing” over vain, humanistic Western science.

I’ve met believers who are humble, good, wonderful people, very science-friendly, and I’ve met ideologically snobbish, willfully ignorant believers who would truly frighten me if they ever got into a position of political power.

This post refers to the latter sort.

There’s this little quote on Left Hemispheres from one of the wonderful Christian folk here in the ‘States…

The grotesque self-righteous pretense of superiority expressed in that quote just boggles the mind, and raises questions as to with whom the arrogance really lies.

For the record, science has proven its worth many times over, having been used to acquire the essential knowledge that engineers used to build the the internet and all of the technology we use today.

Not one bit of it, or any other advancement, came about through any imaginary alternative. All of it came about through peer-reviewed, tested, retested, and retested again science.

…and any useful method that gets incorporated into the process of science isn’t called “alternative” or anything else that pretentious, it’s just “science.” There is science, and then there are those things which aren’t science. Period.

Despite the occasional pomposity of scientists, science as an enterprise encourages humility and demands intellectual honesty and transparency, if for nothing else than the consequences of being called out on dishonesty and deception of any sort by one’s colleagues and rivals.

Let’s get something straight here: It’s not arrogant to have solid confidence in something that’s met the burden of proof every time it’s been employed, that has demonstrably revolutionized modern society, and will, with little doubt, continue to do so with the future of humanity.

If that last frightens people, they should take my advice and get over it — learn to live without their fear — if for nothing else but the fact that no one can stop the future.

Supporters of non-scientific doctrines pretending to be science have never been able to meet the burden of proof, and have almost universally failed to convince those who do not believe already, save through deception or force, whether force of law or force of arms — conversion at gun-point or sword-point, anyone?

So…

…To me the arrogance rests with those whose claims are at best unproven, and at worst, are demonstrably false.

…It lies with those who insist that their doctrines be imposed on everyone else, who insist that those doctrines apply universally, even to nonbelievers, and that these doctrines are absolutely mandated from some form of supernatural force or entity, and being thus directly inspired are eternal and infallibly correct

…It lies with those who insist that they must be special in the universe, more uniquely important than they really are, part of some divine or karmic plan or purpose, the center of a universe made just for them by an ultimate being, or ground of all being with whom they believe themselves to have a personal relationship.

…It lies with those who think their doctrines and belief systems are the final, unique moral and ethical authority, and that through sole virtue of scripture and teachings, they alone know the Truth that we silly nonbelievers are too blind to see.

…It lies with those who insist that nonbelievers are not and cannot be moral, ethical, happy, fulfilled, nor have any rights whatsoever, and are to be pitied and condescended to as pathetic morally malformed creatures inferior to true sanctified and Elect believers.

…It lies with those who demand unqualified respect for their unproven practices and doctrines while denigrating education, science, democracy, committing horrifically immoral acts in the name of their precious beliefs with a clear conscience, and attempting to deny and subvert the foundations of the very separation of church and state that in this country enables them to practice their own beliefs without persecution while they themselves strive to persecute others for believing or simply even being not as they.

Given that science has demonstrated its usefulness every single time it’s been tried, and supernatural claims have not, ever, it seems that the arrogance lies with those who insist that their doctrines are equal to or even better than science, despite not having any evidential legs to stand on, and further not even caring that this is the case.

After all, with the intuitive “will to believe,” who needs silly things like ‘evidence’ to prove anything?

Why Trust (Other) Skeptics?

I self-identify as a skeptic, but am not an active member of any organized skeptics’ groups. I don’t currently see myself as part of any monolithic movement of skeptics, either…I’m a loner, though skepticism is still important to me.

I’ve noticed a few things about the general public’s view of skeptics, and that we are not well-liked for the most part, especially given a public influenced by media promotion of paranormal, pseudoscientific and supernatural claims that infuse the global culture in this age of science and technology.

To many, the label “skeptic” is a byword for cynicism, knee-jerk debunking, dehumanizing materialistic scientism, absolute reductionism, cold logic, and humorless negativity.

Skeptics really get the short end of the stick when it comes to supernatural television programs and movies, often being the outright villains, diabolically determined to hide or destroy the evidence of the truth of the paranormal at any cost, even theft or murder.

Skeptics are seen as heavy-handed, stubbornly unimaginative, unwilling to look at the evidence that’s right before them, fervently dogmatic in disbelief, and absolutely incapable of considering the possibility of being wrong on any matter, particularly those that most concern the interests of believers.

Skeptics are thought of as irrational, delusional denialists and myopic naysayers who reject the obvious conclusion that the world is magical (Well, it IS, but not in the way that believers think!) and who can’t see the forest for all the trees getting in the way…

I used to believe all of that myself before seeing the world through a skeptic’s eyes.

I’ve over time come to trust most other skeptics, more than some other segments of the population, first with a bit of reluctance as a proto-skeptic, now, less so.

But let us not be credulous — sometimes one must be skeptical even of skeptics, not uncritically, not from mere base suspicion — even the most trustworthy sources can be wrong, though it’s important that other equally qualified sources show them to be wrong, not just assert that without fulfilling the burden of proof.

Even though I view some prominent skeptics as teachers, I must still be willing to question what they say — not to disrespect them, but to fully understand the lessons they impart — if you can’t, or worse, won’t inquire skeptically, then you are a poor learner indeed.

To learn to think with clarity, you must learn to think for yourself, and that means sometimes asking tough questions with no easy answers, and learning to be comfortable with what answers you get even if you don’t like them.

It also means learning to see what is actually there, not what you wish to when it isn’t, and having valid reasons for asking, not just being a contrarian suspicious of an authority because it’s an authority.

Be prepared to accept it when anyone in the role of a teacher says “I don’t know,” or “I was wrong,” or even “It’s up to you to find the answer on your own.”

Be prepared when people you trust make mistakes, though the best capitalize on these errors as opportunities for insight and understanding, for it is often by error that we learn, rather than by success — these are things I’ve learned not just from skeptics, but from my own experience with people in general.

The world is a wondrous and scary place, full of life and beauty, death and horror, of events and natural forces, and cynically manipulative people ready to pounce on the unwary at a moment’s notice.

Skepticism makes you more wary of your human limits on reasoning and objectivity, and offers ways to work around them.

Credulity just makes you a mark, a sucker, a victim, not virtuous or saintly as some might imagine.

With my…psychology…experience has taught me that it’s not to my advantage to think less clearly, to blur the line between what I want to be real and what I believe to be…but a really BAD idea.

From other skeptics I’ve learned that anyone can err, but that for error to exist, so must what we can really call knowledge. The notion of error entails the possibility of getting some things right, not the complete inability to know anything.

Being wrong sometimes is human, and admitting when it happens is a virtue and a show of strength of character, not a sign of weakness.

When doubts of objectivity are warranted, the red flags of doom are raised and the need for independent fact-checking becomes ever more the object of due care, even if the one whose facts are being checked is a skeptic or scientific research worker.

If I wanted intuitive, easy answers, timeless truths to the mysteries of the universe, I wouldn’t seek them from skepticism, or science… I could just believe, and I probably wouldn’t even care whether something was true or not, as long as I believed it was and it was meaningful to me.

But playing fast and loose with the truth, whatever facts bear it out, doesn’t sit well with me. There are those of us who care.

Thanks to the influence of Postmodernism, and dogmatic religion, people nowadays understandably get a bit antsy hearing anyone use the word truth, as if by the mere fact of its use there were at play some pretense on the speaker’s part of metaphysical certitude, a certitude of fact outside pure mathematics and formal logic.

But true, false, and probable truth or falsity are values that we really can assign to claims and statements of contingent facts, those facts supporting the more or less likely truth of the claims that concern them.

Just a note, and this is important, so I’ll be posting this to this site’s “About” page: I never use the term, “truth” with a capital “T” unless being snarky and/or mocking an absolutist position that I’m discussing, and if I’m being really snarky, I’ll even spell it with a “™” symbol at the end.

Also, I never use it in a manner suggesting that either I or anyone else, especially skeptics, has any sort of exclusive monopoly on it, or, for that matter, rationality.

There are three things that make a source of information more credible to me.

1. Background and training: From this derives the competence to discuss matters in any given technical field, such as professional conjuring, any of the sciences or engineering, and many skeptics have a good grasp of science literacy, more prominent and professional skeptics, especially actual scientists, even more so. From this also derives the basis of legitimately make statements of fact or opinion in the field this background and training concerns.
2. Direct observation: From this derives first-hand skeptical investigation, like that of many organized skeptical groups in the field, or the work of such notable full-time paranormal investigators like Joe Nickell. Skeptics who have actually gone on location and looked into a matter personally, doing the work to find out the explanation for a case have earned a great deal of credibility.
3. A good track record: This is never perfect, and can’t be — infallibility is humanly impossible — though I trust those sources more reliable than less, in their area of expertise, for therein do they tend to be more trustworthy, and like no. 1. have a better basis from which to make their statements.

I have few problems with a trusted source’s statements and claims when strong passions and personal biases don’t play a major role. Though skepticism demands that I be willing, and able, to question the mainstream when bias is likely to play a part, since as Carl Sagan noted, in science, “arguments from authority… are of little worth.”

Sure, there’s evidence out there to be found, cherry-picked, misrepresented, or fabricated, for any claim you may want to prove if you look hard enough — confirmation bias bites big time, even if you know it’s there.

But the thing I love about science is that ultimately, data trumps bias or personal prestige, and it works no matter what you believe, as long as it is not subverted by antiscience ideologies.

With science, the better and more frequently an idea is tested, the stronger the claim made for its probable accuracy, as with any vetted idea that successfully withstands the onslaught of facts and reality.

Sacred truths do not exist in science, just those ideas tested and confirmed beyond a reasonable doubt, as to come very close to certainty without being inappropriately obligated to actually reach it, so I’ve no faith at all in science or skepticism, since neither needs it. Rather, I have sound confidence in both.

That applies to skepticism and my fellow skeptics as well, hands down. Those skeptics, and former skeptics (this means you, Chris…) who have my trust have earned it, and that’s not something I give out lightly.

WLS | Web Links Sceptique for March 1, 2012

• I owe a hat-tip for this one — thanks, Millie… Fractal nanoflowers could restore sight to the blind…

• on i09… The Greeks had the technology to build a car in 60 C.E…

• by David Brin… The Japan Tragedy, nukes, maturity, uplift and more…

• on @sciam… “Time Crystals” could be a legitimate form of perpetual motion machine – though one we could never extract energy from… Sorry ;-(

• My brother sent me this one – The scale of the Universe – let this load, then zoom in and out from the smallest known (and possible) entities in the Cosmos to the very largest we can see…

• on CosmicLog… a critical take on the “Tomb of Jesus” claim from 2007…

• Davy Jones of the Monkees dies at 66 — He finally took the last train to Clarksville, R.I.P…

• I owe a hat-tip to Chris Trommater for this one — Fact or Fiction — Braveheart, 1/5

• M.C. Escher Documentary…

• on i09… Neanderthals were sailing the Mediterranean 100,000 years ago…

• on Salon.Com… The Scientific Argument for Being Emotional…

WLS is a selection of links to blogs, news outlets, and cool little sites on the Web that relate to science, reason, skepticism, atheism, the fringes and borderlands of science, memes relating to science or skepticism, and anything that catches my eye or which I’m deluded enough to think might arouse the interest of you, my perspicacious readers. WPS is published weekly each Thursday on the Call.

Reason, Reasoning, & Unreasonableness

People are reasoning creatures, which is to say we use a process of reasoning, of thinking things through and reaching conclusions, skilled or not, reliable or shaky, for coming to decisions on which to act.

But being a reasoning creature does not always mean being reasonable.

The Enlightenment ideal of Reason just doesn’t seem to reflect the ways in which people often think, as a century of psychological literature shows.

It’s not that people can’t reason, just that most of us don’t do it very well, and many of us rely on “gut feelings” as a shortcut to action, which can often get people into a lot of trouble, themselves or others depending on the consequences of their actions.

Reasoning well is a skill set that must be learned and practiced to do it reliably and effectively, particularly the sort of reasoning used in scientific thinking, hardly exclusive to the sciences but requiring some effort and not easy to sustain indefinitely — It’s a very high-energy mental state.

Scientific thinking isn’t beyond most people — we use it whenever we scrutinize our options, figuring out and solving our problems in a useful manner. But we often don’t do it rigorously, skillfully, and the notion of the completely consistent critical thinker is simply not well-supported by the data… I’d even go so far as to say that it’s a convenient fiction.

We all like to think of ourselves as being the rational, objective, unbiased ones, but come those matters on which we are passionate, strongly opinionated, in which our personal prejudices and (often mistaken) prior beliefs hold sway, we are often less than objective, less than fair-minded, less rational than we might be otherwise.

Even as rationalists, skeptics, freethinkers, atheists and nonbelievers of other sorts, we can be blinded by our conceits. Vigilance and rigorous self-examination are needed.

It’s situations like this in which we can commit fallacies, deceive ourselves, and skew our understanding that we must be especially vigilant, use due care in our thinking, and closely examine our arguments for specious reasoning. If we don’t, those we argue with will happily point out the deficiencies in our arguments.

We must strive to know as many of our own biases as we can, and employ what means we can to offset them when they may come into play. Not an easy task, save for the most skilled and practiced thinkers.

Does this mean that we should throw out Reason altogether as useless and fatally flawed, that anything goes?

Of course not. We don’t need to throw the newly hatched larva out with the proverbial bathwater.

We need reason, we need reasoning, and we need to do it well, to carry out our agendas, meet our goals, and attain our objectives effectively and reliably.

But we must do so without sacralizing the ideal, without elevating it too highly, for even it is imperfect.

We must seek to improve our reasoning skills asymptotically toward perfectibility while mistrusting perfection itself.

Why should we not do better what we already as a species sometimes do best?

Reasoning well is important, more than those of an anti-intellectual bent are willing to accept, but it’s only one tool-kit among others that we can use to attain reliable knowledge, along with introspection, sensory experience, and our memories, this last absolutely crucial for retaining data of non-simultaneous phenomena for processing.

These are important, despite their fallibility, and these along with our ability to associate ideas and recognize patterns, are essential for making any sense of the world.

And if reason can sometimes mislead us when based on fallacies or mistaken data, we are not likely to fix problems it gets us into with the even more mistaken application of unreason.

It’s been said that even in a functioning democracy — and by that I mean any form of governance by elected representatives, with or without a constitutional guarantee of civil liberties, rights, and responsibilities to a given nation’s citizen electorate, no matter what you call it — 300 million people cannot possibly have a meaningful discussion.

I disagree.

I think that it’s not a fundamental inability for that many people to engage in productive discussion. The educational and technological means to enable it exist.

I think that with the right skills in argumentation and a good understanding of its conceptual foundations, available to anyone willing to learn, 300 million people, or however many, can have a meaningful dialogue.

The problem, I think, lies in ideological polarization and fervent partisanship, on both the Right and Left. The problem is not an inability, but an unwillingness to discuss things reasonably, to admit to errors in one’s own position.

Political, religious, and economic doctrines and our ideological commitments can blind even the sanest of us.

Even now there exist poisonous, stupid, dogmatic ideologies that let people kill others with a clear conscience, in thinking that they serve their God, their country, the Almighty Dollar, or some other higher cause.

Dogmatic thinking can blind us to flaws in our reasoning, make us cherry-pick our facts, and cause us to ignore or disregard our own concern for the truth of a matter — hobbling our capacity to be honest with ourselves and others.

The more “right” we consider our own views, the less likely we are to subject them to testing and public examination by others — why test what is certain? — and the more we compromise our objectivity for the subjective truths of our own (often less well-founded than we think) opinions.

To argue against reason with reason is inconsistent, and to argue against reason without it puts one out of the playing field altogether.

I’ll close this with a quotation attributed to Bertrand Russell, succinct and to the point:

“One’s certainty varies inversely with one’s knowledge.”

Well said, 3rd Earl Russell, well said.

WLS | Web Links Sceptique for February 23, 2012

• on i09…Exactly what happened in “A Wrinkle in Time” explained as a one-page comic..

• on Measure of Doubt… How to want to change your mind…

• on Mashable… 5 Places to get digital textbooks…

• on YouTube… The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Atheism…

• by Daniel Loxton… Tribal Skepticism?…

• by Brian Cox… Why Quantum Theory Is So Misunderstood…

• on Gizmodo… Snow Art: Much Cooler than Crop Circles…

• on Gizmodo… Astronomers Discover a Planet Made of Water…

• on Wired Science… Faster-Than-Light Neutrino Results May be Due to Bad Cables…

WLS is a selection of links to blogs, news outlets, and cool little sites on the Web that relate to science, reason, skepticism, atheism, the fringes and borderlands of science, memes relating to science or skepticism, and anything that catches my eye or which I’m deluded enough to think might arouse the interest of you, my perspicacious readers. WPS is published weekly each Thursday on the Call.

WLS | Web Links Sceptique for February 9, 2012

• on Richard Wiseman’s blog… Alain de Botton: Beyond his Temple of Atheism…

• by Chris Mooney… Conspiracy Theorists More likely to Believe Factual Contradictions…

• on New Scientist… India’s Panel Price Crash Could Spark Solar Revolution…

• on the Santiago Times… Chilean Astronomers May Have Found a Potentially Habitable Planet…

• on Life’s Little Mysteries… Second ‘Sunken UFO’ Claim Doesn’t Hold Water…

• on Wiki… A Discussion on Hoyle’s Fallacy, a Classic of Flawed Statistical Argument…

• on Space.Com… Strange Life Found In Underwater Caves…

• on IBN Live… Indian engineers modify Microsoft’s kinect to help the blind walk with confidence…

• on SciAm… Russian Team Has Reached Buried Lake in Antarctica, not eaten by Shoggoths…

• on i09… The Crazy life and Even Crazier Death of Tycho Brahe, History’s Strangest Astronomer…

• on OneMoreLevel.Com… A Cool Interactive – The Scale of the Universe 2012…

• on HubPages.Com… “Pseudo-Science & Left-Wing Politics” – why debunking science should be done only by those who actually understand it… *Picard facepalm*

WLS is a selection of links to blogs, news outlets, and cool little sites on the Web that relate to science, reason, skepticism, atheism, the fringes and borderlands of science, memes relating to science or skepticism, and anything that catches my eye or which I’m deluded enough to think might arouse the interest of you, my perspicacious readers. WPS is published weekly each Thursday on the Call.

MNQ | Monday’s Noontide Query: Artsy Skepticism or Skeptical Art?

Hmmm. That title is just screaming to be read as a false dichotomy. No biggie. It’s late, and bedtime beckons with somnolent fingers of lethargic doom.

The inquiry and hypothesis testing of the scientific process is heavily skeptical in nature, even when it’s often our intuitive and imaginative faculties that enable us to see new ways of looking at things, to combine them in novel and different ways, to conceive new scientific ideas that we then must work a rigorous interrogation of the world to confirm or confute.

Though skepticism and science are so heavily intertwined, skeptical thinking is hardly unique to science, but part of any attempt to ask hard questions and gain answers about ourselves and reality, including objective facts about subjective states, such as our current feelings, perceptions, and attitudinal perspectives.

Some of these subjective states involve our views of art, and in blending that art with matters of fact and fact-finding, art turned to the service of science and skepticism.

Beside the numerous online sources dealing with this subject matter, many with broad mainstream acceptance, at least among internet denizens, there’s a good market for not only science and skeptically themed webcomic anthologies, but also for art in other media as well, like pendants, posters, clothing, paintings, statuettes and other sculpture, photographic work, music, and online galleries of digital art.

It should come as little surprise that some science and critical thinking nerds have no mean talent when it comes to artistic expression.

So,

What is the most memorable piece of science or skeptically-themed art or music you’ve seen or listened to in the last few weeks? Why?

MNQ is a question that I pose to you, my readers, and do feel free to comment…I’m not a baby-eating ogre, and I don’t bite…very hard. MNQ is published on Monday of most weeks at 12:00 PM.

Skepticism is hard — And your point is?..

Skepticism is hard work, and being a skeptic 24/7 is no bed of roses. This is because skepticism requires more effort than leaping to a quick shortcut by invoking the paranormal instead of conventional explanations for seemingly weird events.

It’s easy to believe in the supernatural, since it suffuses almost all cultures and is often uncritically promoted and reinforced by the media outlets we watch, listen to, and unfortunately, unthinkingly trust to reliably inform us on matters of fact.

It’s no stretch to say that claims of the supernatural are heavily advocated through childhood indoctrination by the world’s religious institutions, especially those with theistic doctrines, and most of those without as well.

Because of the ubiquity of such claims, drilled into many of us as we grow up, and because of the perfectly normal functioning of our magnificent brains, we find it a simple matter to use whatever first comes to mind when strange things happen, and dismiss all other alternatives as unnecessary or too complex, or too time-consuming, or perhaps as too counter-intuitive.

But reality IS complex, AND counter-intuitive, so understanding it more accurately takes time not all of us have, and more effort than we often find convenient.

That’s the availability heuristic at work, a particular rule of thumb our brains use, a, otherwise reliable shortcut for drawing inferences about our experiences, using what data is most easily at hand in our storehouses of knowledge and can be most easily recalled.

We are, even the smartest of us, cognitive misers if we aren’t careful.

During seemingly odd happenings this cognitive miserliness can lead us astray. Seriously astray, and sometimes dangerously so, when ignoring the possibility of a better explanation in favor of what we want to believe can get us poorer in the purse, sicker, injured, or killed.

Conventional explanations are different.

Few where supernatural beliefs are commonly held as part of the culture are well-acquainted with them, save the scientifically literate, and even they must take care in applying possible explanations and weighing them against each other and the world.

To those ordinarily accustomed to resorting to paranormal explanations, figuring out conventional explanations without having them at the front of one’s mind requires the skilled use of a remarkable trait humans possess: our imaginations, a trait often claimed by believers as exclusive to them.

It doesn’t necessarily require delusional mental illness or clueless gullibility to be fooled by strangeness and the lack of an immediate explanation, otherwise professional conjurors would have been out of a job long ago.

That’s why heuristics can be at once so useful, but when we are out of our depth so deceptive.

An active imagination is essential in explaining the world, especially in science, since one must spin as many different hypotheses as one can, compare them for testability, and then weigh them against that most harsh of taskmasters, reality, whether by experiment, observational comparison, or data convergence from many different fields all leading to the same conclusion.

And any idea that fails these tests should rightly be rejected, not considered ‘alternative knowledge.’

Science is the stasis, the fulcrum-point where imagination and skepticism meet: with skepticism used to winnow the golden ideas from the bullsh*t, the good ideas from the bad generated first by imagination, since most ideas conceived are ultimately unworkable.

Science is a method, not a position. Okay, I can grant that.

It is, however, a method for reaching a position, a tentative one, on the nature of reality.

There is a way things really are, and over time, scientific inquiry and similar approaches can get us closer to a serious understanding of those things.

Show me a better set of methods, and I’ll happily switch to that instead, hands down.

Related articles

• An Interview with Red Tani of the Filipino Freethinkers (randi.org)

WLS | Web Links Sceptique for January 26, 2012

• by Dr David Brin… “So you want to make gods. Now why would that bother anyone?..”

• at the Sydney Morning Herald… Science on wind-turbine illness dubious…

• on the Times of India… Scientists would tweet if aliens got in touch…

• on @SciAm… Study fails to confirm the existence of arsenic-based life…

• by Ben Radford… If you see a Bigfoot, shooting him could be a problem…

• WTF??… Oklahoma lawmaker wants to outlaw use of human fetuses in the production of food…

• Reeeallly?? Who’s been smoking what, and where can I get some?.. “Psychics” Say Apollo 16 Astronauts Found Aliens on the Moon…

• on i09… This bizarre tulip-shaped creature is related to nothing else on Earth…

• at CultureLab… Remembering things that never happened…

• on Space.Com… The most massive galaxies had a frenzied star-forming past…

WLS is a selection of links to blogs, news outlets, and cool little sites on the Web that relate to science, reason, skepticism, atheism, the fringes and borderlands of science, memes relating to science or skepticism, and anything that catches my eye or which I’m deluded enough to think might arouse the interest of you, my perspicacious readers. WPS is published weekly each Thursday on the Call.