Speaking as an skeptic that got later to the Straight Dope after reading first “The Skeptic Magazine” for years, I have to report that I support Nuclear power and GMO’s. This is because I’m also an skeptic of the ones that ignore science when ideology enters the picture.
I have to say that my views on GMOs were influenced by very leftist scientists like Paul Nurse. The only issue I have with Nuclear power is that in the USA there is little to no interest on making the people to get direct benefits from nuclear plants made in their midst or more standardized or funded heavily by government as they do in France. Unfortunately, the best way shown to get people to support nuclear power is dismissed in the USA because it smells like socialism or big government.
Blake has a point, but IMHO not as important as it looks to him.
[QUOTE=MaxTheVool;19602986…are you saying that some skeptics fail somewhat in their skepticism when discussing topics they are heavily emotionally or personally invested in?
Because if your’e saying the latter, I don’t think anyone would disagree or care.[/QUOTE]
It may sound No True Scotsmanish, but a genuine skeptic doesn’t turn it on and off depending on what the subject is.
I can’t think of prominent anti-GMOers who also label themselves as skeptics.
While I’m not someone who bothers to follow him online, it’s still certainly trivial to find comments by Dawkins where he suggests that the religious indoctrination of children is almost as bad as/is akin to/is an actual form of child abuse.
But “literally worse than”? That just seems over-egging your outrage against him. A modicum of scepticism seems in order. So … cite?
Going off at a tengent, YES, of course skeptics are sometimes too skeptical. Two well-known areas of failure are politics & anti-vaxers.
The Hillary camp says that Trump has lied, the Trumpers say that Clinton has lied. People know that they are being lied to by their politicians. There is agreement from both sides about that. What you see played out is not, as it is often portrayed, an unthinking trust of Hillary or Trump – it is an unthinking skepticism of Trump or Hillary.
Same for the anti-vaxers. It’s not that they’re too trusting and believe the anti-vax line. When you talk to them / survey them, you find that they are defensively skeptical. They aren’t believers - they’re skeptics. They are resistent to re-education because they are skeptics. You can tell them that they are being conned by people who have made a career out of anti-vaxing books, articles and products, and what you are saying to them is that people are out to rip them out, and that they should be skeptical about things they read and are told.
Not skepticism. You could say a Young Earther is resistant to re-education, doesn’t make them skeptical.
Skepticism* is the questioning and critical examination of beliefs (your own or anyone else’s) – buying into a dogma is simply not skepticism.
*I’ll say *Skepticism *with a capital S, because there’s a common or garden meaning of skepticism: doubting (of others) – of the lower-case skeptics, I’d hazard that just about all of them are “too skeptical”
It’s not the skeptical position to take a position on some issue, with no evidence whatsoever, just based on a distrust of authority figures and a feeling your gut knows better.
Only in the same sense that “hateful Christianity” and “privileged Communism” are oxymorons. Sure, according to the central tenets of the beliefs these things are technically impossible. But we all know plenty of Christians who use their religion to justify hatred and plenty of Communists who use their beliefs to justify their privilege. Ditto with skeptics.
You just seem to be saying that no True Skeptic is unthinking. But in the same way no True Christian is hateful.
Look, we are all subject to regular human imperfections and biases, but no-one can be said to be behaving skeptically when they ascribe to beliefs not founded on good evidence. So can we let this no true Scotsman stuff die a death? It’s not relevant.
Just as an aside, I always felt during the coldwar that the Americans were happy to call the USSR communist, and the USSR was happy to be called communist. I don’t know what to call the practise of the USSR of that period but it certainly wasn’t communism. The Soviets didn’t complain – being called communist gave them an intellectual venir od respectability; and as for the Americans – they were happy to see the good philosophical standing of communism as an ideal get crushed under soviet jackboots.
So no, communism does not admit to the types of privilege we see in certain so-called communist countries. There are no communists who believe in privilege, those people believe in something, but it isn’t communism.
As for Christianity, meh, taken as a whole I’m not sure it’s anywhere near the hippy love-in that it wants to claim to be.
My nephew is anti evolution, whenever When I argue with him about it he comes up with some fairly cogent arguments.
I start thinking to myself, “Well, he could be right.”
Only later do I realize that most of the things he says are just strawman arguments.:smack:
[QUOTE= Batman Beyond]
“But I bet you don’t believe in ghosts”
“Of course I do. Ghosts, magic, demons, aliens, I’ve seen too much not to believe”
[/QUOTE]
A skeptic values evidence over dogma.
BTW- I don’t know where these skeptic nuke and GMO haters are. I’ve never seen one. As a skeptic, I indeed embrace nuclear power and evaluate GMO’s based on the evidence.
Yeah, skeptics can be too skeptical. But it’s not in the way you describe. It’s in continuing to doubt when the evidence suggests it’s in. Or having more doubt than is warranted.
This does not mean supernatural things are real. But we are human, and we cannot be perfectly logical. If we could be, skepticism would not be necessary. We wouldn’t have to assume that something is bunk and need to have it proven. We could just say “we don’t know.”
As for examples: just pick any scientific advance, and there will be people who held on to the idea that it was bad well beyond the point where it was proven. They were too skeptical. Or, if we must go into the “woo” area, acupuncture or meditation. Acupuncture works, just the chi system is bunk. Meditation works, period.
And, no, that’s not the same thing as being cynical, which would mean to reject it out of hand. The overly skeptic person still maintains they need more evidence. The cynic rejects evidence and just believes everything is bad, period.
Acupuncture does not work, and it has been shown pretty definitively. The higher the quality the study, the less the effect, which is exactly what you expect when something isn’t real.
There was a very well designed, very conclusive study a few years back. They had real acupuncture done by a “qualified” acupuncturist, random acupuncture where someone just randomly poked needles in people, and simulated acupuncture where a device was used that actually pinched the skin to feel like a needle but never actually penetrated anything. All three had the exact same positive effect - which is exactly what you would expect with a placebo. If you were correct, that acupuncture works and chi-points are bullshit, then the real needle sticking would’ve had a greater effect than the faked sticking pinching technique. It did not.
The funniest part of that definitive result? Since all three results had the patients reporting positive effects, just as you would expect from placebo, the news media and acupuncture advocates said “see! acupuncture works! It works so much that even fake acupuncture works!” which is the biggest forehead slap there is.
The trick is in deciding when “the evidence suggests it’s in” equates to “proven”.
It is amusing when woo-sters on the one hand triumphantly cite published research purportedly showing that most research findings eventually are proven wrong :D, and simultaneously trumpet limited research as proof that their brand of woo has been vindicated.
Then there are popular memes about good science that was initially resisted by medical/science professionals. Usually what they’re blatting about are Semmelweis and handwashing in the 19th century (a timely example) or Barry Marshall’s work on the link between Helicobacter pylori and gastric ulcers (the latter has been falsely exaggerated to indicate that the Medical Establishment held up acceptance of the idea for many years, when the truth is quite different).
I ran across this interesting quote the other day:
“There is stodgy immobility on both sides of the borders of the scientific enterprise. Scientific aloofness and opposition to novelty are as much a problem as public gullibility.”
That quote is from none other than Carl Sagan* (writing in the Skeptical Inquirer). His example cited an unnamed scientist’s resistance to the AAAs hosting a symposium to discuss Velikovsky’s crackpot book about extraterrestrials and UFOs and alleged scientist pressure on the book’s publisher to drop it. Not the best of examples, and a conclusion that sinks deeply into the fallacy of false equivalency in my view.
*Sagan is known (among other things) for this quote:
“But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.”
Could you clarify what you mean? If you knew someone who had serious chronic pain, and acupuncture was what helped them the most, would you try to convince them that it was bad? Even if they knew that it was likely from the placebo effect?