skepticism

Back in August '06, Scientific American published an article by Philip Ross entitled "The Expert Mind" which presented evidence that geniuses -- from Amadeus Mozart to Garry Kasparov to Tiger Woods -- shared a few traits in common. Among these were: 1. Intense training in their specialty...

Hey, everyone! I have made adjustments to my "Critical Thinking 101" post. This is to help people learn the basics of critical thinking and skepticism. I would like any and all feedback on the adjustments I made and if anyone has suggestions to add something I missed or anything at all, I...

Tell me what you think of this article: "A study of the relationships of nearly 5,000 people tracked for decades in the Framingham Heart Study shows that good cheer spreads through social networks of nearby family, friends and neighbors. By Karen Kaplan December 05, 2008 They say...

Hey everyone! I have put together a blog post entitled, "Critical Thinking 101". My goal with this post was to provide people with the basics for critical thinking and skeptisicm. I would really appreciate any and all feedback on this post. Here is the link to the post...

I wonder if there are any psychologists who would care to read this and comment on it. Of course any comments from anyone are welcome as well. :) SPR Study Day - The Psychology of the Sceptic [This is the text of the talk I gave at the SPR's Study Day on sceptics last week. I'll post a link...

Is there a certain kind of skeptically-minded folk who are skeptical of skepticism? Is it possible to be skeptical of skepticism?

In the June JREF Newsletter, Jeff Wagg recaps a tenet widely accepted among skeptics: "Disbelief is fine, even advisable, but one must hold out the possibility that new evidence will be presented". In other words, we stop short of saying that any unproven claim is definitively false. We say...

This is my first attempt at starting a thread. Awhile back, someone brought up the point that even once someone like Sylvia Browne is shown to be a fraud, believers will continue to believe that there are other psychics and mediums who are real. I'm curious what it is that finally convinced...

There's something interesting that happens in audio systems, in particular, many people have found, some of them under analytical conditions, that they prefer signals with some moderate-level, low-order distortions to a signal that is analytically accurate. Arguments rage endlessly on...

The following post was made to the Canberra community of Livejournal. Note that the poster's location was given as "USA". This is spam. But what impressed me was the comments, which as I noted in the thread, renewed my faith in the inhabitants of my home town...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/21/AR2006082101139.html Everything we know, everything we can detect, is only 5% of the entire Universe! - Extraordinary claim! 20% of the Universe is something we can't see or detect, that doesn't obey the laws of physics, except it...

I am an atheist, and I have always had big problems with the supposed plausibility of ghosts, or anything paranormal for that matter. However, ghost hunting was something I've always wanted to do ever since I was a kid. Blame it on Ghostbusters I suppose. Being an astronaut was another one...

Francis Bacon, sometimes called the father of rationalism, said that a little science can lead men away from God but more science will lead him back. Some great science was shown this Tuesday on Great Britain’s BBC. If you go the BBCs web site you can still watch the whole programme, just...

Howdy all, At Claus's suggestion, I decided to start this thread to pose a few questions concerning a proposed "unofficial" workshop at TAM6. There seem to be a decent number of teachers on these boards who want to some kind of explicit teacher-oriented workshop at TAM6; however, due to time...

Philosophy, the Maligned If there is any field of study more maligned than philosophy, I do not know of it. Often derided as navel-gazing or nihilistic, it is dismissed as irrelevant before anything akin to a fair hearing. In fact, the open derision has become so prevalent, that is goes almost...

You know the story, as we grow we are immerse in a world of Cinderella's, full of colorful characters with fancy personalities. Then we grow more and those stories are seen as nothing but fairy tale's, the real world is different and now we know better. But... In a fairytale there are this...

So, I'm headed back to college, and I opened up my Psychology 101 text(Psychology-Carole Wade and Carol Tavris) to see this on the inside of the front cover: OVERVIEW OF CRITICAL THINKING The first page of the book, facing the cover, is headed PSYCHOLOGICAL PROCESSES THAT AFFECT CRITICAL...

There was a time, long time ago, in which I believed in woo. I wanted to adhere to things like reincarnation, immortal souls, unknown mental "forces" and that kind of things. Later, I learned that the world was more important than my beliefs, and so I spent a great amount of time reading books...

We get a lot of threads here about whether skepticism and belief in God are compatible. This is not one of those threads, although it's obviously inspired by them. The question I'm interested in is more about behavior than belief. Can you simultaneously be a member of an organization like the...

The management group of my company had a Christmas Party yesterday. The 12 of us were having a good time with good food and drinks. A couple of hours in one of my colleagues said that one of our universities have started to teach water divining (dowsing) as part of one of their subjects...

Well, as far as I can see, the answer to my above question is obviously yes, but the interesting question is whether or not creationists are shooting themselves in the foot it more ways than one. To me, the obvious way creationists are trying to shoot themselves in the foot is that creationism...

According to -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Shermer -- Michael Shermer wrote this in his 2002 book Why People Believe Weird Things: "I became a skeptic on Saturday, August 6, 1983, on the long climbing road to Loveland Pass, Colorado after months of training under the guidance of a...

Greetings, I'm new here. I was perusing the structure of the forums, catching the layout of the land, and noticed the "Business Skepticism" forum, which I think is a fantastic idea. Beautiful little illustration of the market working. But where is the "Government Skepticism" forum? I've been a...

I've talked to my girlfriend and she has agreed to take some of her time to read a few articles about the basics of critical thinking, skepticism, logic, fallacies and such. After which she has also agreed to read some threads on this forum and then practice these skills with real discussions...

http://www.skeptix.ca/ Hey, can I get some feedback on the video we did up for our new site? And yeah, sure, it's a shameless plug too, but you know... Does anyone recognize the clip from a P&T Bull***t episode? Thank you, Eos

This thread is for the discussion by the students in the Skeptikids Club (who will be posting their OP shortly). They are posting here to get advice on paranormal subjects they are studying as a group of young skeptics. They will only be posting at JREF under supervision and in moderated...

My husband is Greek and I was describing some of the exchanges on here and he said "But its a skeptic forum" and I said "yes" and he said "Well in Greek Skeptic means thinker, it seems to me that people think Skeptic means doubter. I was so glad he pointed this out because its exactly the...

I've been grappling with a simple dilema -- How do you balance a love for the freedom of speech with a skeptical outlook toward cults and religions that infringe upon people's rights? I'm specifically thinking about scientology in that their response to criticism is intimidation and...

I see it being misapplied all over the place here. Granted, I did not introduce myself on the best of terms here by asking questions that made me sound like creationist. However, it seems that more and more the label "creationist" (like the label "religious apologist" in threads discussing the...

I try to go by the evidence. A lot of people who don't agree with my political views wrongly accuse me of not being skeptical in politics and I accuse a lot of them of the same. So just to change the subject to a lighter fare (;) not necessarily) and discuss changing long held views when the...