About Me - Skeptic

In one of the first posts on this blog, The World As I See It, I established my skeptical leanings pretty clearly. Ten days later, I focused on Atheism in its own About Me post. This long delayed post is about my many other areas of skeptical inquiry.

Of all the terms in my About Me list, skeptic is probably the easiest to abuse. Even the most gullible people in the world think they are skeptics of one thing or another. But, most of the time, these people aren't using skepticism properly.

Some re-frame skepticism in terms of conspiracy theories, usually involving government cover-ups or mysterious shadow groups that secretly hold all of the world's money and/or power. These tin-foil hat wearing lunatics are my favourite type of phony skeptic, because they are at least usually fucking hilarious. Their campaigns of misinformation are generally harmless and thoroughly inane.

Some misapply skepticism to well established scientific theories that they can not even begin to understand. No one person can know everything, but when the scientific consensus among the specialists in a field is that one theory unifies all of their evidence, who the fuck are you to think you know better? That's not skepticism; that's stupidity. And these stupid motherfuckers are continually working at spreading their bullshit and compromising human knowledge, because if there is one thing that science is terrible at, it's public relations. How is it possible that in two-thousand and fucking ten, there are still numerous people out there that are skeptical about evolution, the approximate age of the Earth, and anthropogenic global warming? Leaving aside the unavoidable impact of religiously inspired ignorance, this stupidity is possible because in public debate, it is much, much harder to explain scientific evidence in terms that everyone will understand than it is to distort that scientific evidence with lie after lie after fucking lie. And, sadly, it is the nature of the beast that there will be gaps in the scientific evidence. (But a gap in the fossil record proves that the Christian God created us in his image 10,000 years ago how? To briefly continue this tangent, it is amusing to realize that every transitional fossil that is discovered actually creates two new gaps where previously there was one. Science can never defeat the fucking god of the gaps!) Scientists can only do their best to develop theories that fit the available evidence, with continual improvement as more evidence is discovered, or--and this is where science is awesome!--a complete rethinking if contradictory evidence is ever discovered. Now, please remember that this paragraph was about established scientific consensus. It is perfectly reasonable to be skeptical of new scientific ideas, at least until corroborating evidence is available.

Expanding upon both of those groups into not at all hilarious and extremely dangerous territory, some of these phony skeptics misapply skepticism to modern medicine, notably targeting the safety of vaccinations. This group both distrusts science and sees conspiracies everywhere. You will know you are dealing with one of these assholes if there are any mentions of conspiracies involving "Big Pharma," derogatory usage of terms like "Western Medicine" or "Allopathic Medicine" (as opposed to "Holistic Medicine"), inane "quantum" babbling, or an unwavering belief that a vaccine caused their child's autism, evidence to the contrary be damned. I'm not saying that no one should ever be skeptical of the medical industry or new medical treatments, because any time corporations and profit motive are involved, there is going to be some bullshit, but you can't ignore evidence when the medicine works.

Skepticism depends on reason, rationality, and, as already mentioned a hundred times, evidence. Skeptics are often accused of having a closed mind, but skepticism is the correct application of an open mind. Skeptics are also willing to be proven wrong. Many people claiming to have open minds are actually so unwilling to consider the possibility that they are wrong in their personal beliefs about the world, that they have the most closed mind of all. Maintaining a contrarian position on a generally accepted truth with mountains of available evidence is not skepticism.

This post is not about providing evidence that the three groups of phony skeptics that I have identified above are the lunatics and assholes and stupid motherfuckers that I have labeled them as. (The evidence that they are wrong is freely and widely available.) This post is about my personal skepticism. I just wanted to introduce the topic by establishing what skepticism is not. And maybe tweak some people for fun.

This is a little redundant with the last few items on the previously mentioned The World As I See It post, but I am primarily skeptical of the following: the efficacy of alternative medicine, which includes seemingly plausible but unproven ideas like herbal medicine, chiropractic medicine, and naturopathy, as well as blatant quack nonsense such as homeopathy, reflexology, acupuncture, and Chinese medicine; the existence of the supernatural, which includes "I would love to be proven wrong!" shit such as psychic powers telepathy, telekinesis, and clairvoyance, obviously fictional creatures such as vampires, werewolves, Bigfoot, and Nessie, as well as religious nonsense like ghosts and demons (and god, but I've covered that topic enough); and the presence of extraterrestrial life on Earth, which, again, I would love to be proven wrong about, and obviously includes alien abduction stories and anything relating to the general public's perception of Roswell and Area 51.

In the case of the first two of those topics, something interesting happens if any of these concepts are proven to be true: the alternative medicine becomes medicine, and the supernatural becomes natural. Science will always welcome new effective medicines with open arms, provided they meet the required standards of testing (oh, sorry, how dare science insist on that?!?), and scientists would be thrilled to test a genuine psychic, fundamentally altering our understanding of how the human brain works. Goddamn, who would not love to suddenly acquire fucking psychic powers? And I would be just as happy (but absurdly jealous) to meet someone that could move shit with his fucking force powers. Sadly, this awesome person does not exist. And, despite everything science fiction has taught me about advanced human evolution, it does not necessarily lead to advanced human brain power. Damn!

Along with the previously mentioned "closed mind" canard, one of my favourite silly misconceptions about skeptics is that we have no sense of wonder. How dare we reject a wonderful idea just because we haven't yet found evidence for that idea? Here's the thing: science is a wonderful thing; the universe is full of wonders that we do have evidence for. I reserve my sense of wonder for the true wonders of this amazing universe we live in.

And then there's always the classic tack of insisting that you can't prove a negative. Fair enough, I guess I can't prove that there is no one on Earth with psychic powers. But the burden of proof for your ridiculous idea is on you, not me. A famous Carl Sagan quote is appropriate here: "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." And the people claiming psychic powers repeatedly fail to offer that extraordinary proof. Damn my insistence on evidence!

Oh, what's that? You heard a psychic say some amazing things on TV one time? The psychic couldn't possibly have known those things? Actually, I really hope that no one reading this blog is that fucking naive, but in case you are: please educate yourself on hot and cold reading. Google is your friend. While you are at it, also look into confirmation bias and anecdotal evidence.

Now, I'm not actually going to go into any more details on the topics I am skeptical about (in this post, at least). We've already established that the burden of proof for a wacky idea is with the originator of the wacky idea. There are oodles of information already available on these topics at places like Quackwatch, The Skeptic's Dictionary, and the James Randi Educational Foundation, among hundreds of other excellent educational sites.

And, of course, you will just as easily find hundreds of sites claiming that I am wrong about all of these topics. Isn't the Internet a wonderful thing? Yes, yes, it is. What's the difference between the sites I have listed and the quack sites? Ignoring quality of web design, although an awful colour scheme and ridiculous text fonts are pretty good indications that you are on a quack site, the important difference is the lack of evidence. It always comes back to the evidence. The quack sites will usually try to fake it, relying either on scientific sounding words arranged nonsensically ("I do not think that word means what you think it means.") or completely untrustworthy anecdotal evidence. But if their claims are true, there should also be corroborating evidence elsewhere. And there won't be.

When I first started this blog, I was expecting to spend more time writing about skepticism. Being a skeptic is important to me, something that truly defines me, but it is also a subject that is well covered on many blogs elsewhere, so I haven't felt the need to contribute. I'm not saying that this is going to change, but this post is at least a good introduction to the topic if it does.