Phil Plait at Bad Astronomy asked readers to tweet their own journeys to skepticism - and got 500 replies! But take a look. They're very brief (of course), and I doubt you'll want to read all 500 of them - I certainly didn't - but I thought they made fascinating browsing.
I was surprised at how many skeptics believed in woo before finding the tools to separate reality from fantasy. But I guess I'm the same way. I remember reading The Search for Bridey Murphy when I was a kid. Could they really publish a book like that if it wasn't true?
Yes, unfortunately, they can. In fact, there's a real economic incentive to push things like that. And it's always very easy to believe what you really want to believe.
Hmm,... I don't know when I became a skeptic. Well, I've always been a skeptic when it comes to religion, so maybe it's just my nature to doubt. But there were always a lot of neat things I wanted to be true. As I learned more about them, I realized that the evidence just wasn't there. Too bad, really.
But my own journey to skepticism was a gradual thing, I think. And not at all recent. So I can't pick out anything in particular that changed my mind. I'm more of a life-long skeptic.
But for other people, it wasn't like that. I thought that was quite interesting. And it's good to know that some minds, at least, can be changed by rational arguments and evidence (or the lack thereof).
Balanced perspectives for our time - JUST in time?
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Just before the consequential US election (I am optimistic we can prevail
over Putinism), my previous posting offered a compiled packet of jpegs and
quic...
10 hours ago
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