Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Reed Esau
21-Mar-2008
Modern Skepticism
Mental shortcuts
that can enable
faster* decisions
or reduce distraction
*but not necessarily the best
An Experiment
Four empty
wine bottles
Visible stickers
ranging $5-90
Taste A Hear B
See C Touch D
This has been done
Caltech & Stanford Teams
Expectations &
effectiveness of medication
Tendency to
consider vague
descriptions of
personality to
be accurate.
Confirmation Bias
When interpreting new information...
Emphasizing that which confirms
ones preconceptions
Ignoring that which contradicts
Ignorance more frequently
begets confidence than does
knowledge
Charles Darwin
Dunning-Kruger
Effect
those who have little
knowledge tend to think
that they know more
than they do
others who have much
more knowledge tend to
think that they know less
It gets worse!
Incompetent individuals...
The tendency
not to
compensate for
ones own
biases
World of Pain
How to avoid these biases?
Relativity
Common Descent
Strong IC
Man landed on the
moon
Man contributing to
climate change
Natural selection
Smoking increases risk
of heart disease
Age of earth is 4.54By
Other ICs
Red wine is healthy
Government reports
Accident investigations
ETs havent visited Earth
Lance Armstrong won the Tour de
France seven consecutive times
Failures of
Informed Consensus
Pre-Copernican
Astronomy
Copernican Heliocentrism
Plate tectonics
Disputes of the IC
Apollo moon landings were a hoax
Vaccines cause autism
Solar variation accounts for climate
change
Most cancers are viral-based
WTC7 was a controlled demolition
How to evaluate?
Crafting cohesive
alternative theories
Crafting cohesive Nitpicking - scoring
alternative theories rhetorical points
Crafting cohesive Nitpicking - scoring
alternative theories rhetorical points
Considering Totality of
evidence
Crafting cohesive Nitpicking - scoring
alternative theories rhetorical points
Engaging critics
Crafting cohesive Nitpicking - scoring
alternative theories rhetorical points
Adapting to course of
debate
Crafting cohesive Nitpicking - scoring
alternative theories rhetorical points
Theres a conspiracy!
As a skeptic, when talking
about weird things
Dont use a paternalistic or mocking tone
Steer towards empirical and testable claims
Explore mundane explanations