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February 14 - February 17, 2024
This is the essence of skepticism: How do we know what to believe and what to doubt?
I took a major step in this direction when I watched the series Cosmos, cowritten and hosted by Carl Sagan. It was perhaps the first time I saw a science documentary that didn’t just state facts but explored how we know what we know.
The truth may be puzzling. It may take some work to grapple with. It may be counterintuitive. It may contradict deeply held prejudices. It may not be consonant with what we desperately want to be true. But our preferences do not determine what’s true. —Carl Sagan
The first set of skills comprise what I like to call “neuropsychological humility.” This category includes knowledge of all the ways in which your brain function is limited or flawed.
The second category of skeptical “gear” is called metacognition—thinking about thinking. Metacognition is an exploration of all the ways in which your thinking is biased.
The third type of skeptical equipment has to do with science—how it works, the nature of pseudoscience and denialism, and how science can go wrong.
The fourth category of core concepts takes you on some historical journeys, reviewing iconic examples of pseudoscience and deception as cautionary tales.
Often we’re criticized for tackling one type of belief over another, but that’s what we call the fallacy of relative privation, the notion that what you are doing is not valuable because there is a more important issue out there that needs attention.
A logical fallacy is an invalid connection between a premise and a conclusion, where the conclusion does not necessarily flow from the premise(s) but is argued as if it does.
Arguments using logic that is not valid are considered logical fallacies.
In essence there are always four possible interpretations of any apparent correlation. The first is that the correlation is not causal at all. The second is that A causes B. The third is that B causes A. The fourth is that A and B are both caused by another variable, C. It’s helpful to go through all such possibilities before concluding that any one causal pattern is true.
In formal logic, the reductio ad absurdum (literally, “reduction to the absurd”) is a legitimate argument. It follows the form that if the premises are assumed to be true, logic necessarily leads to an absurd (false) conclusion, and therefore one or more premises must be false.
A straw man argument is one in which you construct a weak version of someone else’s position so that it’s an easier target for you to knock down.
A tautology is an argument that utilizes circular reasoning, which means that the conclusion is also its own premise.
Skepticism is largely a systematic effort in metacognition, which means understanding how we think and avoiding common mental pitfalls.
Heuristics are mental shortcuts. They are rules of thumb that allow you to approximate a likely answer quickly, but they’re not strictly true and often result in error.
Confirmation bias is a tendency to notice, accept, and remember information that appears to support an existing belief and to ignore, distort, explain away, or forget information that seems to contradict an existing belief.
The fundamental attribution error is a cognitive bias in which we ascribe other people’s actions to internal factors such as personality while rationalizing our own actions as being the result of external factors beyond our control.
Data mining is the process of sifting through large sets of data looking for any possible correlation, many of which will occur by chance.
Methodological naturalism is the philosophical basis for scientific methodology that proceeds as if the universe follows natural laws in which all effects have a natural cause.
Postmodernism, as it applies to science, is the philosophical position that science is nothing more than a cultural narrative and therefore has no special or privileged relationship with the truth.
The principle of Occam’s razor, attributed to William of Ockham (1287–1347), states that when two or more hypotheses are consistent with the available data, then the hypothesis that introduces the fewest new assumptions should be preferred.
A conspiracy theory, or more precisely a grand conspiracy, is a belief system that involves at its core the claim that a vastly powerful group is carrying out a deception against the public for their own nefarious ends.
A witch hunt is a dedicated and unjust investigation or prosecution of a person or group in which the extreme and threatening nature of the alleged crimes is used to justify suspending or ignoring the usual rules of evidence.
Intelligent design (ID) is the notion that the complexity of the universe can only be explained as the result of an intelligent force, a designer.
A pyramid scheme is a type of business that lures in new recruits by promising them an income from those they recruit themselves.
We’re all the product of our opportunities, our mentors, and our peers, in addition to the neurological proclivities with which we were endowed.
Being skeptical can’t be all negative, it needs to be positive too. I think that’s why Carl Sagan is so universally respected among skeptics and science communicators. More than anyone else, he embodied that sweet spot of opposing pseudoscience while embracing the wonder and magic of a scientific view of the universe.
