Status Updates From The Skeptics' Guide to the ...

This is a very detailed but fascinating read.

Base your beliefs on evidence that supports them.

Seems like a good overview of the quirks that our brains do.

Don’t panic. This whole notion of thinking for yourself and questioning everything is actually quite fun and empowering. We can do this together.

Skurnik first exposed subjects to factual claims and told them that some of the claims were myths. An example might be “it is a myth that vaccines cause autism”

This is making me question things

geek love

It turns out science is good?

I don’t believe this book. .... 😎

“We’re using the internet to address the problems of the internet.”

“We certainly won’t be getting into our cars and scooting to the moon in twenty years.”

Probably not, but watch history prove this wrong and that is exactly what ends up happening. XD

“[Herbicide-tolerant crops] reduce the use of soil tillage, which is bad for the soil and releases carbon dioxide (CO2) into the environment.”

“Plants that are produced through hybridization, which can chaotically mix in hundreds of genes [...] do not require the same safety testing currently required of GMOs.”

“Genes can move between unrelated organisms. For example [...] cultivated sweet potatoes contain a transgene from a soil bacterium Agrobacterium), a completely natural transgene.”

You can cite this when some anti-GMO person claims unrelated species cannot take on genes from one another.

“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.”

“The mind is not the brain, it is what the brain does—it is the brain in action.”

Great overview of skeptical thinking!

Great so far. Lots of insights on how to improve your critical thinking skills

“I find arrogance to be common in pseudoscience in general. If you think you’re the one genius who has broken the laws of physics, [...] then you should be really certain.”

“[B]enign and reasonable interventions, even if they have no specific effect, may be a sensible way to make people feel like you are paying attention, that you care, that their voice is being heard, and may therefore improve the culture of the workplace.”

“The bottom line of all this is that any intervention in almost any context will subjectively seem to work. [...] This often leads to the false conclusion that the specific intervention (a treatment, a diet, a self-help strategy, whatever) has a specific efficacy and therefore the underlying philosophy must be valid.”

“The name ‘Hawthorne effect,’ [...] derives from experiments conducted between 1924 and 1933 in Western Electric’s factory at Hawthorne [...] The experimenters made various changes to the working environment, like adjusting light levels, and noticed that regardless of the change, performance improved.”

Taking my time to really absorb this, tough to read but so important and helpful!

As a long time listener of the SGU, I really enjoyed the book for the information related to skepticism and critical thinking. With the difficulty in really knowing what is real or not, critical thinking is very important to know what is true or not.

This book should be required reading in school ♥️

Section 1 finished. Now I have all the tools needed to be a good skeptic :)

This book is breathing life into me 😂

Loving this SO MUCH!!!

No such thing as free energy

Starting section 2.

Brilliant!! :-)