Facts change, people don’t. Alan Kay, a pioneering computer scientist, defined technology as “anything that was invented after you were born.” For many of us, this definition of technology captures the whiz-bang innovations of the Web browser and the iPad: anything that appeared recently and is different from what we are used to. In this way, we fail to notice all the older but equally important technologies around us, which can include everything from the pencil to window glass. But factual inertia in general, even within a single life span, is all around us. Ever speak with a longtime New Yorker and ask for subway directions? You’ll be saddled with information about taking the IND, BMT and IRT, when you were hoping for something that would mention a numbered or lettered train. Adhering to something we know (or at least knew), even in the face of change, is often the rule rather than the exception.
Luckily, the Times was willing to print a correction. Why do we believe in wrong, outdated facts? Science Meets Religion. Anaïs Nin on Why Understanding the Individual is the Key to Understanding Mass Movements. Are You Being Honest With Yourself? : Starts With A Bang. “Be careful. People like to be told what they already know. Remember that.
They get uncomfortable when you tell them new things. New things…well, new things aren’t what they expect. They like to know that, say, a dog will bite a man. We all like to think that our opinions are the result of years of hard-earned accumulation of knowledge. But, of course, that isn’t the way we work at all. Image credit: Scott Adams, 2011. Known as confirmation bias, it’s the very human tendency to, once we’ve formed an opinion, place our faith in the new evidence that appears to support that position, but to look for holes in the evidence that undermines or disagrees with that opinion. In other words, changing our minds — especially once we’ve made our minds up — is extraordinarily difficult. Wish I knew the true origin of this, retrieved from signsfunny.com.
You may not see it very frequently in your own life, in politics, or most places that you look, but it happens all the time in science. The Power of Admitting "I'm Wrong" : Starts With A Bang. “Truth is mighty and will prevail. There is nothing wrong with this, except that it ain’t so.” -Mark Twain “It doesn’t matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn’t matter how smart you are. If it doesn’t agree with experiment, it’s wrong.” Every day that you set forth in the world is a new opportunity to learn something about it. How so? Image credit: Alan Chen. You have a conception of how things work in this world. No matter who you are, no matter how smart you are, no matter how brilliantly you’ve drawn the conclusions you’ve drawn from the evidence you’ve gathered, there will come an instance where the evidence you encounter will be irreconciliable with the picture of reality you presently hold.
Image credit: Glennbeck.com. Because there is the possibility that your view of reality — the way you make sense of things — is flawed in some way. Image credit: Dave Koerner at Northern Arizona University. Image credit: NASA, retrieved from Universe Today. Anything. At least, it should be. How to Dispel Your Illusions by Freeman Dyson. Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 499 pp., $30.00 In 1955, when Daniel Kahneman was twenty-one years old, he was a lieutenant in the Israeli Defense Forces. He was given the job of setting up a new interview system for the entire army. The purpose was to evaluate each freshly drafted recruit and put him or her into the appropriate slot in the war machine. The interviewers were supposed to predict who would do well in the infantry or the artillery or the tank corps or the various other branches of the army.
Kahneman had a bachelor’s degree in psychology and had read a book, Clinical vs. A famous example confirming Meehl’s conclusion is the “Apgar score,” invented by the anesthesiologist Virginia Apgar in 1953 to guide the treatment of newborn babies. Having read the Meehl book, Kahneman knew how to improve the Israeli army interviewing system. Cognitive illusions are the main theme of his book. In these quotes, emotions are running high. Unified theory of the crank : denialism blog. A crank is defined as a man who cannot be turned. - Nature, 8 Nov 1906 Here at denialism blog, we’re very interested in what makes people cranks. Not only how one defines crankish behavior, but literally how people develop unreasonable attitudes about the world in the face of evidence to the contrary. Our definition of a crank, loosely, is a person who has unreasonable ideas about established science or facts that will not relent in defending their own, often laughable, version of the truth.
Central to the crank is the “overvalued idea”. That is some idea they’ve incorporated into their world view that they will not relinquish for any reason. 5. colloq. The OED etymology suggests it’s been in use for about 180 years, but I don’t think it was defined well until that Nature quote in 1906 (which very poetically describes the problem) that the definition seems to take shape. Wikipedia has an excellent wiki on cranks; I find their criteria are more modern : Now, doesn’t this explain a lot? Activists Fight Green Projects, Seeing U.N. Plot. Jared Soares for The New York Times At a Roanoke County, Va., meeting, dozens opposed the county's paying $1,200 to a nonprofit. They are showing up at planning meetings to denounce bike lanes on public streets and smart meters on home appliances — efforts they equate to a big-government blueprint against individual rights.
“Down the road, this data will be used against you,” warned one speaker at a recent Roanoke County, Va., Board of Supervisors meeting who turned out with dozens of people opposed to the county’s paying $1,200 in dues to a nonprofit that consults on sustainability issues. Local officials say they would dismiss such notions except that the growing and often heated protests are having an effect. In Maine, the Tea Party-backed Republican governor canceled a project to ease congestion along the Route 1 corridor after protesters complained it was part of the United Nations plot. Similar opposition helped doom a line in Florida. Membership is rising, Mr. List of conspiracy theories. Illuminati. History The Owl of Minerva perched on a book was an emblem used by the Bavarian Illuminati in their "Minerval" degree.
The Illuminati movement was founded on May 1, 1776 in Ingolstadt, Upper Bavaria as the Order of the Illuminati, and had an initial membership of five.[2] The founder was the Jesuit-taught Adam Weishaupt (d. 1830),[3] who was the first lay professor of canon law at the University of Ingolstadt.[1] The Order was made up of freethinkers as an offshoot of the Enlightenment and seems to have been modelled on the Freemasons.[4] Illuminati members took a vow of secrecy and pledged obedience to their superiors. Members were divided into three main classes, each with several degrees, and many Illuminati chapters drew membership from existing Masonic lodges. Fundamental changes occurred in the wake of the acceptance of Adolph Freiherr Knigge into the order. Knigge was a young author and Freemason who was steeped in the Western mystery traditions from an early age. Modern Illuminati. The sanctimonious bombast of George Gilder : Pharyngula. Yesterday, I was reading a good article in the October 2004 issue of Wired: “The crusade against evolution”, by Evan Ratliff.
It gives far more column space to the voices of the Discovery Institute than they deserve, but the article consistently comes to the right conclusions, that the Discovery Institute is “using scientific rhetoric to bypass scientific scrutiny.” Along the way, the author catches Stephen Meyer red-handed in misrepresenting Carl Woese (by the clever journalistic strategem of calling Carl Woese), and shows how the DI’s favorite slogans (“Teach the controversy” and “academic freedom”) are rhetorical abuses of the spirit of the ideas behind them. It’s darned good stuff. I should probably say more about the good article, but I’m still picking magma out of my ears after reading a one page insert in the article — a ghastly, ignorant broadside by George Gilder that prompted a personal eruption. Here’s the start of our problem. Wow. What is the alternative?
Ouch. Gilder: still wailing over his spanking : Pharyngula. Oh, come on, Boston Globe. They tip-toed around, avoiding naming me or the weblog, but I think everyone here can figure out what they’re talking about. Yet even Gilder, seemingly a lightning rod for the socioeconomic controversy of the moment, was blistered by the comments posted on a University of Minnesota biologist’s weblog last fall, language so heated Gilder’s daughter felt obliged to rush to his defense. Awww. Poor baby. They could have at least mentioned the site url! Here’s the article that made George Gilder cry: The Sanctimonious Bombast of George Gilder.
“I’m sorry my daughter got dragged into this,” he continues, picking up a conversation that begins in his rustic Berkshires home, overlooking the bucolic dairy farm where he grew up, and resumes over lunch at a nearby Stockbridge restaurant. His daughter was not “dragged” into anything—she showed up in the comments of her own free will. Hmmm. The rest is stuff I’ve dealt with before. He’s also fond of straw men. Jason Lisle is a dipstick, therefore I can use him to check my oil levels. | Young Australian Skeptics. Aw, poopy…there I go again, getting my words all mixed up. Where did this (extremely understandable) error come from? Let’s check the dictionary: dipstick Noun 1. A stick or rod used to measure the depth of a liquid. 2. It’s an easy mistake to make, and you can see how it happened…but regardless of cause I have now accidentally committed the logical fallacy of equivocation. Let’s take a look at what Jason has to say, shall we?
“Evolutionists often commit the fallacy of equivocation on the word evolution. Balzack! To make matters even MORE delicious, the Creationists are notorious for committing this fallacy themselves. “You might hear them say something like, “Creationists are wrong because we can see evolution happening all the time. No, but the fact that there are multiple, convergent lines of evidence that demonstrate common descent is a bit of a giveaway. “I cannot overstate how common this fallacy is in evolutionary arguments. Actually, you do this because you’re an obfuscating dick. Alain de Botton: Atheism 2.0. How To Be Emotionally Stable: A Cosmic Melody.
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Etymology[edit] Pratityasamutpada (Sanskrit: प्रतीत्यसमुत्पाद) consists of two terms: pratitya: "having depended"samutpada: "arising", "rise, production, origin"[web 1] The term has been translated into English variously as dependent origination, dependent arising,[citation needed] interdependent co-arising,[citation needed] conditioned arising,[citation needed] and conditioned genesis.
The Dalai Lama explains: In Sanskrit the word for dependent-arising is pratityasamutpada. Are Liberals really more likely to accept science than conservatives Part II? : denialism blog. About a month ago I asked if denialism is truly more frequent on the right or is it that the issues of the day are ones that are more likely to be targets of right wing denialism? After all, one can think of slightly more left wing sources of denialism like GMO paranoia, 9/11 conspiracies, altie-meds, and toxin fear-mongering. The mental heuristics that cause people to believe, and then entrench themselves, in nonsense seem generalizable to humanity rather than just those attracted to conservative politics.
Why should those who identify as liberal be any different? Wouldn’t they just believe in nonsense with a liberal bias? Lately, Chris Mooney has been taking a different tact on explaining the apparent discrepancy between liberal vs conservative rejection of science with the suggestion the conservative brain is fundamentally different. First of all, it’s not a matter of education. It looks like my hypothesis of possible equivalence might have to be rejected … Mooney writes: Killing babies no different from abortion, experts say. About Us A Skeptical Manifesto. A Skeptical Manifesto The following is excerpted from Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time by Michael Shermer, 1997, W.
H. Freeman. On the opening page of the splendid little book, To Know a Fly, biologist Vincent Dethier makes this humorous observation of how children grow up to become scientists: Although small children have taboos against stepping on ants because such actions are said to bring on rain, there has never seemed to be a taboo against pulling off the legs or wings of flies. Most children eventually outgrow this behavior. Those who do not either come to a bad end or become biologists (1962, p. 2). The same could be said of skepticism. But what does it mean to be skeptical? The History, Meaning & Limits of Skepticism The modern skeptical movement is a fairly recent phenomenon dating back to Martin Gardner’s 1952 classic, Fads and Fallacies In the Name of Science. The charge is true. Nor does skepticism produce progress. Skepfeeds-The Best Skeptical blogs of the day. Robert Green Ingersoll Official Website. What is Philosophy? An Omnibus of Definitions from Prominent Philosophers.
By Maria Popova “Philosophy is 99 per cent about critical reflection on anything you care to be interested in.” Last week, we explored how some of history’s greatest minds, including Richard Feynman, Carl Sagan, Albert Einstein, Marie Curie, and Isaac Asimov, defined science. Kant famously considered philosophy the “queen of the sciences” — whether or not that is true, philosophy seems even more elusive than science to define. From Philosophy Bites, the book based on the wonderful podcast of the same name, comes an omnibus of definitions, bound by a most fascinating disclaimer — for, as Nigel Warburton keenly observes in the book’s introduction, “philosophy is an unusual subject in that its practitioners don’t agree what it’s about.” The following definitions are excerpted from the first chapter of the book, which asks a number of prominent contemporary philosophers the seemingly simple yet, as we’ll see, awfully messy question, “What is philosophy?” Another running theme — sensemaking:
Omniism. The Zeitgeist Movement. Religious pluralism. What is Pluralism? Buddhism. The Clergy Project - Home Page.