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Science is still a messy and flawed process, but it is a process.
We are scientific skeptics because we start with doubt, but we then carefully try to separate what we can and do know from fantasy, wishful thinking, bias, and tradition.
It’s not enough to just teach people science, you have to teach them how science works and how to think in a valid way.
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. “Don’t bother doing anything until we cure childhood cancer,” for example.
on a planet with over seven billion people, that makes no sense. People should feel free to take on whatever issues are important to them, or where they feel their talents and inclinations lie.
A 2015 study by Julia Shaw and Stephen Porter found that many adults can be convinced that they committed a nonexistent crime after just three hours of interrogation by police.
we all need to be humble when it comes to the accuracy of our own memories.
Recovered memory syndrome is mostly, if not entirely, a fiction. People generally do not repress memories of extreme trauma
Constructed perception is not optimized for accuracy but rather for functionality. First, only a minute fraction of information from the outside world even makes it to the portions of your brain that construct your perception.
the more general phenomenon of seeing patterns where they do not exist is apophenia,
Some disagree with the very premise that a sentient intelligence can be created artificially, digitally… nonbiologically. I call this squishy bio-chauvinism.
We don’t necessarily need robots and appliances that have fully formed minds. It’s not ethical to create minds anywhere near human level or higher to essentially just be our slaves.
the human mind is the most complex object we know of in the entire universe.
