Very interesting. If you find time, could you elaborate on these. I am particularly interested in hearing more on the criticism of the skeptics movement.
I think it was mentioned here before.
Skeptics do a decent job of raising the sanity waterline and thats all nice and important.
I watched all of Randis U-tube videos, Penn&Teller Bullshit, Dawkins, Derren Brown and what ever else looked interesting.
But as some keep pointing out. Randi is not a scientist! He talks about stuff that should be obvious to elementary school kids.
P&T get stuff wrong on their show. (I identified 2 topics so far). And they use a style of edutainment that might make you think a bit, or move in-groups. But you dont learn more about reasoning from it.
I am not sure, but you might be able to compare it to any standard theist shoutout show. (To be fair, they generally do a decent job of representing oposing views. But might have learned some Tricks from a certain Michael Moore.)
All those skeptics push saner beliefs into the public and make it cool to have those in their respective subculture. As a fellow Rationalist i feel sometimes smug listening to them.
But telling me stuff i already know is not too effective, while i dont have any indicators if they reach a target audience where an opinion shift is really mandated.
And: skeptics are not particularly rational. (I don’t think they are even into the concept of learning more about thought processes or how science works.)
Wenn you spend your time battling idiots you might not remark, when you are wrong yourself.
Find a skeptic that will listen to your criticism of the traditional scientific method, and/or about how awesome baysianism is :-)
On a personal note: there is a distinct line of highly accidental circumstances that lead me to become involved in this particular group here. Each step involved people i learned from, and that knew more than my general surrounding. But each of those people got stuck in their personal level of thought (and field of interest respectively), and didn’t follow me any further.
Becoming an Atheist, and reading sceptics stuff was one of the steps. But i am very glad i didn’t get stuck there.
I gave a few lectures on scepticism and atheism in one of my peer groups, was highly surprised how difficult it is to bring the most basic points across, and now basically gave up on that, and concentrate on my own education.
Very interesting. If you find time, could you elaborate on these. I am particularly interested in hearing more on the criticism of the skeptics movement.
I think it was mentioned here before. Skeptics do a decent job of raising the sanity waterline and thats all nice and important.
I watched all of Randis U-tube videos, Penn&Teller Bullshit, Dawkins, Derren Brown and what ever else looked interesting. But as some keep pointing out. Randi is not a scientist! He talks about stuff that should be obvious to elementary school kids. P&T get stuff wrong on their show. (I identified 2 topics so far). And they use a style of edutainment that might make you think a bit, or move in-groups. But you dont learn more about reasoning from it. I am not sure, but you might be able to compare it to any standard theist shoutout show. (To be fair, they generally do a decent job of representing oposing views. But might have learned some Tricks from a certain Michael Moore.)
All those skeptics push saner beliefs into the public and make it cool to have those in their respective subculture. As a fellow Rationalist i feel sometimes smug listening to them. But telling me stuff i already know is not too effective, while i dont have any indicators if they reach a target audience where an opinion shift is really mandated.
And: skeptics are not particularly rational. (I don’t think they are even into the concept of learning more about thought processes or how science works.)
Wenn you spend your time battling idiots you might not remark, when you are wrong yourself.
Find a skeptic that will listen to your criticism of the traditional scientific method, and/or about how awesome baysianism is :-)
On a personal note: there is a distinct line of highly accidental circumstances that lead me to become involved in this particular group here. Each step involved people i learned from, and that knew more than my general surrounding. But each of those people got stuck in their personal level of thought (and field of interest respectively), and didn’t follow me any further. Becoming an Atheist, and reading sceptics stuff was one of the steps. But i am very glad i didn’t get stuck there. I gave a few lectures on scepticism and atheism in one of my peer groups, was highly surprised how difficult it is to bring the most basic points across, and now basically gave up on that, and concentrate on my own education.