The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe: How to Know What's Really Real in a World Increasingly Full of Fake

by Steven Novella

If you have your smartphone handy, search for “selective attention test” on YouTube before reading on if you want to avoid spoilers.

Nature has no special love for humanity. There is no scientific reason to think that nature is anything but indifferent to our happiness and fate. The universe simply does not care about us.

Good science uses observations about the world that are as objective, quantitative, precise, and unambiguous as possible. It uses these observations to test hypotheses and specifically to try to disprove those hypotheses. Those that survive repeated genuine attempts to disprove them are used to build theories that provide an explanatory framework for how the world works and to make predictions about future observations.

At best, anecdotes can be used as an indication of a possible (not even probable) phenomenon that is deserving of further research or exploration. It can be used to generate a hypothesis, but it shouldn’t be used as a basis to confirm one.

Science does not aim at establishing immutable truths and eternal dogmas; its aim is to approach the truth by successive approximations, without claiming that at any stage final and complete accuracy has been achieved. —Bertrand Russell

In fact, research shows there are many benefits of a negative or pessimistic outlook. Pessimism correlates with higher earnings, fewer marital problems, more effective communication, greater generosity, and less disappointment. It is apparently helpful to worry, at least to some extent. Excessive optimism can make us careless and set us up for failure.

Also note that seeds eventually come off patent. Roundup Ready soybeans came off patent in 2015. Farmers can plant generic seeds and save them for replanting if they want (they still can’t save hybrid seeds, however, as discussed above). So ironically, shifting from hybrid to GMO crops will lead to more seeds being replantable by farmers, even though the farmers themselves don’t seem to really care about that.

Is Gwyneth Paltrow Wrong About Everything?

The truth of the world is that it is actually chaotic. The truth is that it is not The Illuminati, or The Jewish Banking Conspiracy, or the Gray Alien Theory. The truth is far more frightening—Nobody is in control. The world is rudderless. —Alan Moore