Would anyone be willing to critque my blog post?

[Laurens]

I recently made a blog post introducing scepticism and some of its concepts, and basically arguing for scepticism.

Would anyone like to critique what I've written?

Also I was going to write my next post on the importance of scientific thinking in scepticism, and was wondering if anyone had any useful links or input for that.

Cheers

Laurens

 

[Inferno]

A generally good post, but lacking in links and more complete explanations. On the whole, I had the sort of wikipedia feeling:

Citation, why, when, where... all that. For example:

People have a tendency towards believing extraordinary things.

Why? A very short explanation would suffice. "Why we believe in Gods" or other articles/videos could be linked here.

A wonderful axiom of scepticism was provided by the great astronomer Carl Sagan:

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence

This quote is often misunderstood. I already pointed this out here:

No, it means that you don't know what you're talking about. Carl Sagan was talking about the weight of the evidence, not a different standard. Consider the following claims:
1) I ate chili for lunch today.
This is a trivial claim with no implications on anything really. (Except if I'm saying it to my wife/girlfriend, in which case she'd let me sleep on the couch due to digestion.) As such, my testament to this claim is enough evidence to satisfy your need for evidence. You might dig further and find that I did not have chili at all, but rather sugo bolognese. Since it's a trivial claim, you probably won't though.

2) Neutrinos move faster than the speed of light.
This isn't a trivial claim at all but rather an extraordinary one. If true, it might completely turn around our views of physics. That's why we must take the utmost care in examining every piece of evidence we can muster and take our time to scrutinize it in order to be absolutely sure about our decision.

In the same vain, Carl Sagan was talking about the weight of evidence.

Cornell astronomer Carl Sagan was credited with originating this high standard of proof by William Schopf at the news conference at which NASA announced the discovery of microfossils, of apparently primitive organic forms, in a meteorite that had come to Earth from Mars (New York Times, August 8th 1996). Schopf, a paleobiologist at the University of California at Los Angeles, had doubts about the analysis of the meteorite, as indicated by his appeal to Sagan's Standard. Before accepting the claim of life on Mars, he wanted to see more evidence, including the presence of a population of organisms with traces of cell walls and cell divisions showing their life cycle.
Sagan's Standard is a distillation in effect of Scottish philosopher David Hume's rule for judging miracles: "No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle unless the testimony be of such kind that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it endeavors to establish" (An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding 'Of Miracles' 1748).

Or another of David Hume's quotes: "A wise man, therefore, proportions his belief to the evidence".

The claim that ghosts exist falls into the category of a rather extraordinary claim.

Why? What makes this an extraordinary claim and the claim that I made out with my super-hot professor not so extraordinary? I know the answer, I just want to make you aware that certain readers might not.

Another misrepresentation of scepticism, which I alluded to earlier, is the idea that it is closed minded

Who?

Of course there is no way anyone could ever align their beliefs perfectly with the truth.

Why?

You might also want to add this video:


Otherwise, great job.

 

[devilsadvocate]

Laurens,

Dude, you can write. Well done.

The only gripe I had was with the Carl Sagan quote Inferno already talked about. It's questionable we can call it Carl Sagan's. The general idea was presented by Hume, and Marcello Truzzi used almost the same wording Sagan did. I'm willing to bet if you could ask Sagan about the quote, he wouldn't claim it as his, but rather say he was quoting Truzzi.

------------------

I tried, but I just couldn't let this slide without little expanding,

"A wise man, therefore, proportions his belief to the evidence." This somewhat poor choice of quote from Hume in this context. Hume is here writing about degree of belief based on observed probabilities of events. A better quote, in my opinion, would be the Hume's maxim from the same chapter:

"No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous, than the fact, which it endeavours to establish: And even in that case there is a mutual destruction of arguments, and the superior only gives us an assurance suitable to that degree of force, which remains, after deducting the inferior.""

 

[Laurens]

People have a tendency towards believing extraordinary things.

Why? A very short explanation would suffice. "Why we believe in Gods" or other articles/videos could be linked here.

Good idea, I was thinking of expanding upon this in another post, which is why I didn't expand upon it. I shall look for some relevant articles.

A wonderful axiom of scepticism was provided by the great astronomer Carl Sagan:

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence

This quote is often misunderstood. I already pointed this out here:

[/quote]

I wasn't aware of that, thanks for pointing it out. I'll edit the post as soon as I can.

The claim that ghosts exist falls into the category of a rather extraordinary claim.

Why? What makes this an extraordinary claim and the claim that I made out with my super-hot professor not so extraordinary? I know the answer, I just want to make you aware that certain readers might not

I feel like I elaborated on that with the next sentence:

It requires that there is some aspect of a person that survives death, and that this aspect of that person can continue to interact with the world in different ways.

Do you feel that is not an adequate explanation?

Another misrepresentation of scepticism, which I alluded to earlier, is the idea that it is closed minded

Who?

I guess I was being a bit non-specific, however I was speaking in general terms and not referring to any specific instance. I used it as the kind of thing someone would say to a sceptic.

Of course there is no way anyone could ever align their beliefs perfectly with the truth.

Why?

Because we don't know everything about everything?

You might also want to add this video:


Otherwise, great job.

Thanks

 

[The Felonius Pope]

You write well, Laurens. The only suggestion I can make is that you remove the following from the blog, "Believers and bullshit peddlers" Some people might take your sentence to mean that believers are 'bullshit peddlers', and besides that, more conservative readers might take offense simply because of the curse word. I'm not bothered by such a word but there are people in your target audience who might base your whole argument on that one little sentence.

 

[tuxbox]

Imagine I created a little race of concious robots, and I built them a little world to live in, and I programmed them to have free will, but I was extremely displeased with those who did not worship and glorify me, in fact I tortured those who did not love me, and rewarded those who did. Would you not think such behaviour was at least a little bit psychotic?

Killing the KCA, Response Section

lmfao... Indeed!!!

 

[Inferno]

I feel like I elaborated on that with the next sentence:

It requires that there is some aspect of a person that survives death, and that this aspect of that person can continue to interact with the world in different ways.

Do you feel that is not an adequate explanation?

I'd add this to the sentence: "This makes it an extraordinary claim because not once in all of human history have we found even a single piece of evidence to even suggest that this could be true."
That's what, at least to me, distinguishes an extraordinary claim from an ordinary one: Something that goes against all previous observation and to current logic. By that "definition", relativity, heliocentrism and evolution were all once extraordinary claims.

Because we don't know everything about everything?

Agreed, but you also suggest that we can't possibly know everything. I'd also agree with that, I just think it would need a few words of clarification.

Glad I could be of assistance.

 

[Frenger]

You write well, Laurens. The only suggestion I can make is that you remove the following from the blog, "Believers and bullshit peddlers" Some people might take your sentence to mean that believers are 'bullshit peddlers', and besides that, more conservative readers might take offense simply because of the curse word. I'm not bothered by such a word but there are people in your target audience who might base your whole argument on that one little sentence.

You should never be worried about offending anyone, the moment you do you begin to second guess everything you say. Of course I am only talking in context, being racist or homophobic is offensive because it is unjustified and rediculous, "bullshit peddlers" seems fair enough to me.

I do agree that putting believers next to bullshit peddlers implies they are linked in someway but the article doesn't imply that at all. If people take their information only from the title then that's their problem.

I'd say good show Laurens, well written and enjoyable, keep it up.

 

[GeologyJack]

Laurens, I enjoyed the blog post. we will start with that.

My question is simple: I understand the purpose of the post and the future installments to it, promoting skepticism is a very noble goal indeed and it is something all of us should aspire to; still, who is the intended audience for this material and how are you going to reach that audience. Do you feel as though you have put forth your voice in this in a way to approach non-skeptics or is this the equivalent of reading aloud the goals of an organization at the beginning of a private meeting...

I agree with Inferno that this post could have been boosted with the addition of a few articles that go towards promoting your point, though admittedly, I wouldn't add the Storm video unless the article was a bit shorter.

Work a bit on the format, the background image is stunning, the light brown font on dark brown seems to prevent certain key points from standing out like the Sagan and Goldacre. If the color is not an arguing point, then at least try to put quotes and such in bold.

Good work, I look forward to more.