SkeptiCamp Toronto

On Oct. 23, 2010, I attended SkeptiCamp in Toronto, hosted by CFI Ontario. It was a great opportunity to meet like-minded people, and hear some enriching talks.

I gave a talk (not to suggest that MY talk was enriching). Well, you can judge for yourself. The projector bulb blew, so I didn't have my slides for my talk. So, I've taken the liberty of recording it and putting it on YouTube.

It's entitled "Being Right is Not Enough", and it's about why we can't trust our experiences, emotions, or the popularity of a belief in our pursuit of truth.

Looking under the hood of intelligent design

Here is my next post on Skeptic North.

Pampers gets a bum rap

Check out my latest article in Skeptic North.

59 Seconds: A book review

I just finished listening to an adiobook version of the book 59 Seconds: Think a Little, Change a Lot by Richard Wiseman. Here is the review I submitted to audible.com.

THE book for self-help seekers

My rating: 5 out of 5

I first heard of Richard Wiseman through the skeptical podcasts and blogs I frequent. And true to the skeptical point of view, this book is based on EVIDENCE. Indeed, evidence is front-and-centre right from the start. Every behavioural suggestion and piece of advice is backed by an experiment (a refreshing change from The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle). That's what separates this book from all the other self-help woo that's out there. Lots of books make claims that sound intuitive, but reality can often be very counter-intuitive. And this book has lots of examples. Here's one: praising children for their achievements can actually inhibit their progress by making them anxious about failure, while praising children for their effort encourages them to work hard and challenge themselves. Hmmm!

This audiobook is SO good, I went and bought the hardcover too.

[From intelligent-falling.blogspot.com]

Flimflam inoculation:

Many of the podcasts I listen to spend time going over some of the common errors in logic that confuse people into believing something silly. I'd love to put together a talk some day on how to detect these logical fallacies, and go on tour spreading the skeptical gospel.

Here is one installment.

Correlation is not Causation

This has a fancy name: "post hoc ergo propter hoc", meaning literally "after this, therefore because of this". OK, I've had my Latin fix for the day.

Consider this common example. Evidence suggests that children with larger feet are better readers. Shocking, isn't it?! Well, not really, when you consider that kids in grade 1 tend to have smaller feet than kids in grade 5. But it's human nature to interpret the statement as meaning either

1. shoe size somehow affects how well kids read, or
2. reading ability affects how quickly feet grow.

The fact is that neither is true. The two things just happen to be influenced by a common factor, age! The only thing the data tells us is that reading and shoe size are correlated... it doesn't tell us which caused which. In this case, neither.

Another infuriating example: When someone says, "I went to the chiropractor, and my back felt better within a week", it does not prove that the chiropractor caused their back to get better.

[From intelligent-falling.blogspot.com]

Infection of the Mind

I just listened to a really good TED talk. In case you haven't heard of TED, it stands for "Technology, Entertainment and Design". Every year (and increasingly more frequent, it seems), they hold a conference in California, inviting an eclectic ensemble of top-notch field leaders to give a brief talk. You can view all the talks online at ted.com.

In this talk by Diane Benscoter, she describes the mental state of being in a cult (she was a Moonie for 5 years). I love the virus analogy. She says that some people are more susceptible to the cult virus than others; it depends on how strong their immune system is. That "immune system" is skepticism.

This blog post is from

intelligent-falling.blogspot.com

The belief trap, and how to get out of it

I was at a conference recently, and one of the keynote speakers was Thomas Ray, a zooligist who made his mark in the 90's with a surprising computer model of evolution called Tierra. However, his talk had nothing to do with that project, but rather introduced us to his new line of research: studying the subjective experiences reported when different neuro-receptor systems in the brain are stimulated.

He described the results for 30 receptors. One really suprised me. He said something to the effect of, "67% of the experimental subjects reported that the experiment was among the most significant religious experiences in their lives", and "30% reported the experiment as the MOST significant religious experience in their lives". Shocking, since the experiment really had nothing to do with religion at all.

It is remarkable how a particular molecule can cause a person to believe that there is an omnipotent being out there looking over us. Kinda makes you question your own beliefs. If a molecule can do that, then any of my dearly-held "certainties" might actually be the effect of some chemicals in my brain.

As a skeptic, this is indeed the conclusion that I must draw.

However, that's not to say that we can never gain traction on reality. Ever since birth, you've been building your own internal model of the world, and it's probably served you very well so far. For example, you avoid throwing yourself head-first down flights of stairs because you can predict that the outcome be unpleasant. Maintaining such a mental model is in your best interest for survival (all those who failed that test are no longer with us). But what can be said about those questions for which common experience offers less visceral feedback? Things like, "Does my lucky hat help to guide my team to victory?", and "Does sticking needles in my body align my chakras?"

Here's where science parts company with everyone else. What is the one thing that we all have in common?

Reality.

That is to say, we all live in the same universe (well, except for this guy). And we can all agree on observations of things that occur in this physical universe. For example, when we look at a thermometer, we can agree on the temperature. This suggests that there should be a corpus of phenomena that we all agree on, and that body of knowledge must be based on objective observation.

There is such a body of knowledge, and it's called science. And I would argue that science is the ONLY such collection. In other words, if there is a claim that cannot be observed or repeated, then it's outside of science, and outside the body of agreed-upon knowledge. Conversely, if something can be demonstrated repeatedly, then it's welcomed into the annals of science with open arms. This global consensus is the reason that science holds such a prominent position in society. Let's face it; anybody can come up with whacked-out claims of flying spaghetti monsters or people being raised from the dead. Demonstrating those claims to everyone else, however, is the challenge, and the wall that separates superstition from reality.

This blog entry is from

http://intelligent-falling.blogspot.com