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Dropping the Bomb [Repost]
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(Warning: this post gets a bit personal, but says what needs to be said — because the truth is paramount and I owe it to you, my amazing subscribers. What’s posted here is no great, dark secret that I felt a need to hide, but something that save once before and again here, there’s simply been no occasion to mention. The original post dates back to March 24, 2010, and this repost is identical to the original in text and context.)
Hey, guys. Many of you might have found out about James (the Amazing One) Randi’s recent ‘coming out,’ and it gave me the idea to open up to my incredible readership in revealing a little something that hasn’t been mentioned in great detail in the past, though I’ve occasionally alluded to it from time to time.
Some of you may have suspected it from my writing style, some from my early comment responses, others of you already knew, to more than just a few this may be a bit of a surprise, and some probably just won’t give a crap…
No, I’m not gay — not if any of my ex-girlfriends have a say in the matter — but I do harbor a rather bothersome medical condition that I’m not particularly proud of, nor especially happy about, but which I’ve seen no reason to hide in person, and as of now, here…
I’m schizophrenic.
This condition is one of the most debilitating neurological disorders known to Man (or Woman for you readers of the fairer sex), and something that I have struggled with ever since my early twenties.
My particular condition is one of a family of related disorders, having nothing to do with ‘split-personalities’ as they are popularly termed (That is actually referred to, if I recall correctly, as Disassociative Identity Disorder, an entirely different class of condition) in the media, and this is one of the many reasons among others that I’m a skeptic, since keeping better in tune with reality is a Good Thing™, as this enables me to stay out of trouble more easily than would otherwise be the case.
Is skepticism effective for combating mental illness? I would venture not by itself, and I recommend to others with mental illnesses that you stay on your treatment plan and follow it scrupulously, just to be on the safe side.
You are not alone.
For me though, skepticism is a useful adjunct to my basic treatment. Learning to think clearly is always a good thing with or without a problematic condition.
Few with the more extreme variants of my condition can benefit from skepticism, and many often require physical care as well. But fortunately my illness is mild enough and sufficiently amenable to treatment to allow me to function in daily life and do the things I enjoy, like post on and administer this blog.
I consider myself lucky, to the extent luck actually exists, that I got treatment for my affliction during the early stages before it became too advanced, otherwise I would not be typing this into my browser window for you all to read.
Pushing the ‘publish’ button for this entry was not an easy decision, but a necessary one. Some things are important enough that they need to be said. The Randi-Meister was a big factor in this…
As one of those ‘fervently dogmatic, pseudo-skeptical, pseudo-intellectual (and according to one recent commenter, ‘unread’) debunkers,’ there is no point in pretending to be what I am not and can never be — perfectly normal, ‘just like everyone else’ — since the truth should always be paramount.
Hence this post.
I have little doubt that this entry will be used as a convenient source of ammunition by those online who’ve expressed impatience towards my ‘attitude’ as a skeptic, and that’s fine with me — as long as any disagreement between me and others remains bloodless and gentlemanly — including disagreements with those I’ve annoyed in the past. And believe me, I’ve annoyed quite a few…
For the past couple of decades, I’ve worked at a vocational rehabilitation business as an administrative assistant, only retired as of last December, and this has helped immensely in my personal growth and experience in the workplace.
The people I met and knew there, clients and employees, will always be a reminder how much stigma is still attached to mental illness in this country, as well as others. They will also be a reminder of the incredible resilience of human courage, hope, and ability.
I plan to diversify the subject matter posted on this site to include advocacy for the rights and well-being of those with disabling psychiatric conditions, both like and unlike my own.
I’ve so far immensely surpassed where I was when my illness first popped up some years ago, and I plan to do better still, helping others like me as well. You, my readers both locally and around the world are an absolute joy to write for, and this blog is a wonderful journey & learning experience for my Troythuluness.
Let’s travel and learn together.
Like it says in my collector’s edition copy of the Principia Discordia– Fnord.
Like this:
Skeptismo for Non-Skeptics
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I’m going to risk violating the membership conditions of my Team Skeptic card and relate an anecdote from earlier last week, since we all know what skeptics normally think of anecdotes…
A good friend of mine was recently in the hospital for diabetic ketoacidosis, which very likely would have killed him if not for the excellent treatment he received.
He’s currently at home, doing relatively well, and he related an incident during his stay in the ICU that he suggested I post about here. For legal purposes and to protect his privacy, he shall remain unnamed.
At one point during his hospital stay, he experienced a period of a delirium, with what he described to me as a state of paranoia, in retrospect stemming from a number of factors, including an infection that otherwise would have gone unnoticed and untreated had he not the presence of mind to alert the doctors to his distressed mental state. His ability to remain relatively lucid during his delirium ultimately allowed the doctors to more closely diagnose his condition, discover the infection, and put the pieces of the puzzle together in a manner that wound up saving his life.
Now my friend is not a card-carrying skeptic, certainly not the sort like me with the wonderfully stereotypical arched eyebrows, the pointed Spock ears nor the black goatee, but he was able to keep from going nuts during the worst of it by using a handy bit of skeptical thinking (read: smart thinking, not just thinking for us smartypants elitist skeptics).
For instance…
Under unusual thinking/perceiving conditions, like an infection with a fever or extreme sleep deprivation, states where hallucinations and delusions are extraordinarily common in even the sanest of us, it’s essential to be open to the notion that your experiences (see, hear, smell, taste, feel, etc.) could be misleading you, and to cross-check them using multiple senses to see if they agree or not, and to likewise cross-check sudden ‘insights’ ‘intuitions,’ and ‘revelations’ of an extraordinary or frightening and threatening nature (like those of possible paranoid states) against other sources of knowledge, senses, and prior knowledge experience and see if they match…
…and if not…
…one should ask, for example, “Why can I see X in front of me, but not touch it,” or “Why do I hear X, but I’m the only one who can and I can’t see where it’s coming from,” or for delusions-in-the-making, “How do I suddenly ‘know’ X when I didn’t know it just a few seconds ago, and from no apparent source of input or no apparent reason?”
If what you perceive or odd notions you that mysteriously ‘know’ don’t pass this cross-checking test, it should instantly raise a radioactive day-glow red flag of suspicion that your brain is not being up-front with you.
At the very least, it’s important to relate these suspicions to someone with you, to allow for public confirmation and asking them if they see, hear, etc, what you do, or to possibly corroborate sudden seeming and threatening or frightening ‘items of knowledge’ with no apparent prior source.
The important thing to remember is to not believe everything you perceive, nor everything you think, in naively ‘trusting your feelings’ under conditions that could seriously compromise the reliability of your reasoning and senses that could well be hazardous, even endangering your life.
This is a major difference between healthy skeptical thinking and credulity, the latter being all too common in people who uncritically trust their impulses and wind up paying a heavy price for their ‘openness’ — with minds so far open that their metaphorical brains fall out.
Skepticism may not be particularly warm and fuzzy, nor very conducive to a facade of (false) hope, (fleeting) comfort or (phony) respect, but worst coming to worst, it can and does save lives. It was my friend’s own skeptical thinking that saved his life, to hear him tell it, and that’s good enough for me.
Related articles
- Your Skeptic Stories (randi.org)
- Halloween: The Perfect Opportunity to Promote Skepticism! (skepticalteacher.wordpress.com)
- Finding Skeptic News Online (randi.org)
Michael Shermer: Out of Body Experiment [Repost]
Michael Shermer undergoes a personal test of the famed ‘God Helmet.’
Like this:
Skepticism is a Good Thing [Repost]
(Here’s something from my archives, my first actual critique of a post on a blog I used to frequent. I still pop in there once in a while, but less frequently than I have. Still, it was and still is a good source of insight into at least one believer’s mind and how he argues. The LOL of old Mistykins dates from the original posting of this critique. Rest easy, Mistykins.)
Hey, guys. I recently came upon this post on a psychic’s blog I sometimes frequent, the post in question being entitled There Are No Good Skeptics, and since I feel obligated to act the stereotype of the Evil Pseudoskeptic™, I thought I would have a little fun with it, deconstructing a few of the points it makes in order, and showing just how and where it is simply far off the mark.
Believers tend to have a very parochial view of skeptics, and often promote a number of common logical fallacies and misconceptions about them that they do not bother to challenge.
I’ll attempt to point out in this post precisely how they are excellent examples of highly flawed thinking and how in many instances, believers are merely launching defensive tirades.
There are too many misconceptions and logical errors in the article of discourse for all to be handled in the space of this post, so I’ll deal mostly with the four, in order, that stand out the most, those that the author himself has chosen to highlight.
Where possible for considerations of space, the points addressed will be complete and verbatim:
Skepticism does not allow curiosity. One of the hallmarks of almost every skeptic I have come across is that as soon as they find information that agrees with their views they stop looking. Why? If you’re convinced that something isn’t true or doesn’t exist, you stop looking into it or looking for it. You simply assume that everything you hear that might be positive simply can’t be true.
Wow! My logical fallacy meter just overloaded. This is a straw man as well as a cheap ad hominem. It completely misrepresents how skeptical thinking works, nor are skeptics convinced that something isn’t true or doesn’t exist without doing the research to actually find out. Fact-checking is skeptical. Also…
There also seems to be a bit of a false dichotomy here to round out this troika of fallacies, implying that one has to either be curious or skeptical and not allowing for the possibility of both.
Skepticism does not challenge its assumptions. When you doubt something, you doubt it for a reason. For example, many people doubt the existence of psychic ability because they think all the people who believe it are gullible; Or that the rest of science would rush to embrace it if it were true or that psychic people would rush to the casinos and win millions of dollars. Skeptics do not seem to understand that these are mere opinions about something they know little about.
The three claims trotted out as assumptions are simply a set of straw people. I do not hold these as ‘assumptions’ as part of my skepticism. And they certainly aren’t representative of the views of most skeptics even if ‘many people’ hold them. There is a difference between being skeptical about something, and being a skeptic.
Speaking for myself, the only assumptions I use are that (1) science and reason are valid ways of knowing the world, and (2) the world is real, whether or not it is what it appears to be.
The last statement is just an ad hominem, in this case a cheap way to dismiss skeptics by calling them ‘ignorant.’ It would have been much more informative if he had simply done the research to find out what the ‘assumptions’ of skepticism really are, and then address them instead of just dismissing his critics.
Skepticism slows the advance of ideas. One of the amazing features of skeptics everywhere is that they make very few contributions to the area they are criticizing. In parapsychology this is extreme. Out of thousands of studies you can count all of the vetted professional studies performed by dedicated skeptics on one hand. (Part of the reason for this is that once people are doing careful experiments they are allowing themselves to be convinced by the evidence. At which point the other skeptics consider them to be deluded believers.)
What to say about this one…what to say…This claim is so blatantly false that it comes seriously close to being an outright lie, but as I normally read this guy’s blog with the assumption that he’s being sincere in what he writes, out of respect I’ll refrain from making such an accusation.
All of modern science employs skepticism, as the complement, not the contradiction, to the curiosity to ask new questions and the imagination to conceive new ideas.
Skepticism is essential as the means to separate the good ideas from the bad ones; what works from what doesn’t.
Thomas Edison once said that science is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration, the hard work of winnowing the intellectual gold from the intellectual rubbish, since most ideas ever conceived turn out to be wrong.
All scientists who have contributed to major advances in their field are skeptics by definition. It’s blind belief that impedes the advance of ideas.
Believers tend to express views of skeptics almost exclusively in terms of their relationship to the paranormal, and little else. They don’t consider the use of skepticism in the broader context of all of modern science.
It is very hard to learn new things about the subject you are skeptical about. Being skeptical means that you hold strong views on a subject. That means that contrary information only gets through via cognitive dissonance. That is to say, the evidence contrary to the opinion that is held has to be so overwhelming that the skeptic’s thinking process finally seizes up. All evidence up to that point is either ignored or dismissed. This is a very inefficient way to learn.
This claim is also simply false.
First, cognitive dissonance mostly applies to those beliefs that are very important, such as to our self-image and how we view the world, not what we only casually accept.
Second, different people deal with cognitive dissonance in different ways, and I deal with it by changing my beliefs without a hitch if the evidence warranting it is sufficient.
Third, as a skeptic I do not hold strong views on the paranormal, and many skeptics I’ve read consider belief in it it more interesting and important than the paranormal itself. To me, the idea of psi ability is just an intellectual curiosity, not something I’ve invested years and a lot of money in.
Conclusion: The author of the post critiqued here has said in at least one entry on his own blog that he has never understood the skeptical mindset, and his article is a prime example of that shortcoming.
In his article, he has attributed motives, thinking, beliefs and biases to skeptics that are simply not borne out as fact, and that despite claiming to be psychic he has no way of knowing short of doing the legwork to find out.
I have attempted to avoid committing such attributions in this critique, and out of respect for the author suggest that before he tries to present his personal views as objective fact, that he make the effort to inform those views. Otherwise, he’s just rehearsing his own prejudices.
Related articles
- Should skepticism be divorced from values? (randi.org)
- Unwelcome or excluded (cubiksrube.wordpress.com)
Trouble Ahead for Skepticism & Secularism
There is something I’ve only touched on briefly on this site, but something important which needs to be underscored here:
Some of us, secularists and skeptics alike, are jerks.
None of the peeps I know in person or online are guilty of this of course, but at least one of them, my buddy and brother from another mother, formerly going by the handle ‘Skeptic Cat,’ quit skeptical blogging and left the skeptical community in disgust at his absolutely deplorable treatment on blogs I won’t name, by other freethinkers, not just random cranks on a pseudo-science website.
And this is not just an isolated incident…
In a show of strength that should make any thinking man proud of our species’ other half, Rebecca Watson at the start of her recent video (Here), and elsewhere, has spoken out on the divisiveness, the naked partisanship, and yes, the outright misogyny showed by many of us more estrogen-challenged types in skepticism as well.
It’s a testament to her immense mental fortitude that she hasn’t just quit altogether.
I commend her from the bottom of my eldritch heart. We need many more women like her, and it is embarrassing to me that the skeptical and secular communities don’t have more women as members than they do.
I just don’t think I have that kind of strength. Dealing with the sort of things she does would have driven me out of this altogether.
Granted, my experiences with other skeptics and atheists have been mostly positive, then again, I’m relatively new to skepticism’s darker side — the real one, not the ravings of antiscience fringers — as experienced by those who quickly get disgusted and become ex-skeptics, even anti-skeptics, after being driven out of the community by overenthusiastic freethinking otaku.
Given these, and my own experience, a few things have become evident:
- Critical thinking skills do not qualify you for sainthood. This should be self-evident, but is a point often missed by inexperienced skeptics. We must be careful of not falling into cultish behavior through excessive admiration of prominent skeptics and atheists, regarding them not as teachers and experts, but as de facto objects of debased veneration and hero worship.
It’s the same sort of uncritical reverence for authority that has corrupted the message of many a good teacher throughout history, and has led to the foundation of every cult, and from those every religion, that ever was. This unthinking attitude is poisonous in whatever form it appears, and is the very antithesis of skepticism.
- We skeptics do not, nor can we have, all the answers. This was succinctly pointed out in the final post of Skeptic Cat’s blog before he deleted the whole shebang earlier this year. A commitment to the truth of factual claims, however genuine, does not automatically convey exclusive access to Truth and rationality, and we would do well to remember that.
Sure, scientific skepticism, like the science it derives from, is contentious, with a tradition of vigorous debate and criticism, but there is no reason, and I underscore that because we so highly value rationality, to be so Ceiling-Cat unfair to each other.
By all means, we SHOULD be debating and critical, even to each other, but in a constructive way.
- We are not special people, some sort of chosen intellectual elite. This too should be self-evident as well, but often is all too easy to lose sight of, and can lead to falling into the same sort of traps that true-believers fall into. Naively supposing that we are somehow special is also highly conducive to the sort of exclusive mindset that can rhetorically isolate us from the general public, keeping us from effective outreach, which, and correct me if I’m in error, I understand to be one of the skeptical movement’s major objectives.
Let’s leave out the fan-boy fervency, the ideological litmus-tests, the misogyny, the uncritical reverence of leading skeptics and prominent atheists, and all the other tendencies that lead us to, in paraphrasing Carl Sagan, ‘condemn ourselves to permanent minority status.’
Phil Plait made a few good points in his ‘DBAD’ talk a while back, and I for the record do not suppose at all that he was implying that we should coddle religion or the fringers.
Yes, I know…It’s the oldest debate in skepticism…
But Phil just doesn’t strike me as an Accomodationist™, or whatever epithet has been used, not even in more recent posts of his on both Skeptic Blog and Bad Astronomy.
Why don’t I just throw in the Douglas Adams reference to clothware and give up? First, I think it’s too late now to call it quits and forever turn my back on this blog or skepticism.
For one thing, I’ve learned too much, and I don’t mean that in an arrogant way.
Over the last several years, I’ve learned a lot about my own mind, how I sometimes fool myself, some very useful things about how human minds in general seem to operate when we fool ourselves and each other, and maybe just a tiny bit about science, math, and from these, a little on how the world itself really works.
None of the things I’ve learned or insights I’ve had lend any support to the claims of religion, the paranormal, or the scientific fringe.
Nothing I’ve learned supports the conclusion that anything ‘out of this world’ exists, besides, of course, those things we haven’t explained yet about the entire very real and likely vast-beyond-imagining universe, which has more than is dreamt of in anyones philosophies…
…including those of believers who like to misquote Shakespeare.
I would likely have to have entire swaths of my long-term memory just…disappear…for me to go back believing what I did before identifying as a skeptic…
…And perhaps it’s also because I’m an incurable romantic, science geek, and hopeful of our future as a species, preferably leaning more toward realism in that hope, but we’ll see.
I see advocating science, reason, and a secular society as the best way of cultivating what is best in myself, in others, and perhaps contributing a little to my species as well.
Skepticism has come far, but it can go much farther than it has, and it is too late to trash the whole thing and start over. I see rough times ahead for the freethinking communities, but I’m also confident we can weather out the storm and pull through.
It’s certainly worth a try. Can we do it without alienating our own and crippling ourselves along the way?
[Book Review] “The Believing Brain” by Michael Shermer
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I just finished my first reading of Mike’s new book, “The Believing Brain” and this, like Shermer’s other works, such as “Why People Believe Weird Things,” and “How We Believe,” this shows his characteristic highly readable writing style and careful choice of words.
It’s the culmination of some 30 years of his work as a research scientist in attempting to understand, as the title blurb says, “how we construct beliefs and reinforce them as truths.”
In it, he lays out and describes the concept of Belief-Dependent Realism, how our concepts of reality hinge on preexisting beliefs both true and false…
The basic thesis of the book is simple: Belief comes first, reasons for belief come after. Each chapter elaborates on this with study after study confirming that we are not the strictly rational logic machines envisioned during the Enlightenment, but emotional beings who all too often rationalize what we already believe, with the smartest of us supporting our belief in weird things with rational explanations for what we believe.
In Part I: Journeys of Belief, the first three chapters highlight the paths taken by two believers, Emilio D’Arpino, and biologist Francis Collins, and Shermer‘s own path as a skeptic. All three are good illustrations of how people often come to believe what they do, weird, and not-so-weird things, alike.
We often wind up believing weird things because we need to believe the not-weird as well…
Part II: The Biology of Belief, Shermer describes the concept of Patternicity, the tendency to seek and find patterns in both meaningful data and meaningless noise, but which is absolutely essential to our ability to learn, as well as the idea of Agenticity, the tendency we have as storytelling and pattern seeking animals to attribute meaning and causal or intentional agency, both where it exists and where it does not, and a good description of the neural mechanisms of belief which dispenses with dualistic terminology in favor of the monistic model of ‘mind’ being simply and succinctly something the brain happens to do.
Some may disagree with the neurological model strongly, but it is well-supported by the data and scientific literature.
Part III: Belief in Things Unseen, using the science described in part II, Shermer goes into detail on various beliefs in an afterlife, in God or gods, in aliens, and in conspiracies, and presents the claims, and where applicable, the arguments and evidence for and against these things.
Mike does a good job, I think, in presenting the claims with his usual scientist’s care, and nowhere does he seem to sneer at believers, but he also doesn’t dance around the issues in pointing out the lack of compelling data for aliens and an afterlife, good reasons for the ultimate insolubility of the ‘God’ question, and in noting that while real conspiracies do happen, pointing out the distinctions between probably real and likely imaginary conspiracies.
In Part IV: Belief in Things Seen, deals first with political beliefs, the cognitive biases that can skew our perceptions and thinking, making our beliefs impervious to disproof, and the power of theory and paradigm in shaping our understanding of data, to make us see, not always what is actually there, but what we expect to see.
Finally, the epilogue, The Truth Is Out There, describes the Null Hypothesis and Burden of Proof as they relate to science, as well as two alternatives to the Experimental method in science, the Convergence and Comparative methods, both widely used in the historical sciences, and just as useful as laboratory experimentation.
He elaborates on the need for positive evidence for scientific claims, and why properly meeting the burden of proof hinges on this.
He wraps up by concluding that the book only begins the journey toward a fuller understanding of how and why we believe the things we do, and why it is a Good Thing™ that we are not and should not be strictly, completely rational, and why science is the best means we have for finding out what’s true, and revealing what’s not.
Personally, I found the book informative, interesting, and eye-opening with a lot of good science packaged just right for a popular audience. Shermer’s outdone himself here as a scientist and popularizer of science.
It’s definitely on my “must read again list” along with Carl Sagan’s “Demon Haunted World,” and James Randi’s “Mask of Nostradamus.
WPS | Web Picks Sceptique for May 27, 2011
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on Bug Girl’s blog… Insects Totally Caused Ultimate Frisbee…
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on Big Think… What Alien Solar Systems Are Like…
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by Steven Salzberg… Pseudoscience stories you might have missed…
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on Cosmic Variance… Are Many Worlds & the Multiverse the Same?..
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on YouTube… A time lapse video of the Very Large Telescope…
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on twitpic… Fractal wallpaper artwork by yours truly: I’m releasing it into the public domain, free for use…
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on krissthesexyatheist… Bro Crush: Richard (Papa Bear) Dawkins…
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on Lousy Canuck… The Politics of the Null Hypothesis…
WPS 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 and discriminating readers. WPS is published once or twice a week from Wednesday to Saturday on the Call.
WPS | Web Picks Sceptique for May 21, 2011
Image via Wikipedia
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by Chris Mooney… The Science of Self-Delusion…
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on Doubtful… Ghost hunters as “really good researchers, I guess”…
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on The Litter Box Revisted… We Need a Rapture in Louisiana…
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by Martin Pribble on Soundcloud… Failure [a little atheist electronica]
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on Opposing Views… NJ Gov. Chris Christie: Schools Can Teach Creationism…
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on TPM… The Skeptic…
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on Mad Art Lab… Eye of The Beholder: A collection of pareidolia images…
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on The Meming of Life… Screwing with Darwin…
WPS 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 and discriminating readers. WPS is published once or twice a week from Wednesday to Saturday on the Call.
Skepchick Presents: A Conversation with Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson
Sam Ogden, awesome skepd00d and contributing writer for Skepchick, chats with Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson on such varied subjects as the Universe, scientific literacy, and a host of other topics.
Courtesy of rkwatson‘s YouTube channel. Enjoy, peeps.
Web Picks Sceptique for April 29, 2011
Image via Wikipedia
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A little science humor on YouTube, Geeking Out on Falling in Love…
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on Stu Barton’s blog…God, Karma, Punishment, & You…
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two entries on Martin S. Pribble: May 21st is the Rapture… & It’s the end of the world as we know it (and I feel fine)…
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on Cosmic Log… Is creationism headed to Texas classes?..
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on The Science Bit… Towards a quantum theory of everything (including dirty dishes)…
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on Mad Art Lab… On The Frivolous Use Of Advanced Technology…
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on Dexterity Unlimited… Help! Help! I’m being repressed!..
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on Bad Astronomy… Calling Dr. Oz: defend alt-med on the Skeptic’s Guide…
A Lecture by James “The Amazing” Randi (91 mins, 03 secs)
Search for the Chimera, A Lecture by James “The Amazing” Randi.
