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skepticism-article
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skepticism-article on Fri Jun 30, 2006 10:21 pm

wushu_psion

Joined: 06 Mar 2006
Posts: 104

Skepticism is a complicated subject. Most people in the magical and psionic community consider skepticism a negative thing, associating it with jerks that attack the person instead of trying to provide alternate explinations for whatever has been claimed to be supernatural. Although skepticism to that extent is a negative thing, so is too little. If healthy skepticism is not maintained, than anything anybody claims is immediately accepted as true. Both of these extremes of skepticism are unhealthy and counterproductive. A middleground must be maintained, keeping skeptics minds open, and belivers minds realistic.
Skepticism is run by three main sources; life expierence(/common sense), cross-referencing, and flaws in the opponents argument. This gives a solid sense of reality.

O.K, now lets suppose you were browsing the forum, and you came across somebody saying that pigs could fly. They have hidden wings that meld perfectly with their skin, and the government has been covering it up from the general public ect... Would you belive them? I certianly hope not, because all of that is made up. But what would possibly compell you not to belive me? Because your life expierence(/common sense) told you otherwise. Your brain gathered everything it knew about pigs, flying, anatomy, the government ect... and put it all together into one conclusion-- pigs dont fly.

Alternatively, with given information more realistic and believable, like being told that the Priory of Sion(for those of you that have read The Da Vinci Code, this is a false organization, it was all one mans power trip, a made up sosciety that was revealed as false in the early 1990's, Dan Brown needs to do his research...) is an ancient organization and keeper of mystical secrets, one would need to check other reputable sources (such as the Discovery channel for the Priory of Sion...) This is the kea to cross-referencing. Cross-referencing also includes asking somebody for a source when they are making very ambitious claims, and then checking that source. The most difficult aspect of cross-referencing is finding reputable sources. Reputable sources do not include blogs, personal websites, or Love Spells for the Teenage Witch. Reputabe sources do include encyclopedias, professional websites, researchers, and acknowledged credible authors.

The third skill of being a good skeptic is finding flaws in the opponents argument. Common flaws include self-contradiction, vagueness, over-generalizations, and misdirection. Self-contradiction, although at times is very obvious, can sometimes be very subtle. Inconsistancy falls inder self-contradiction.

Lets say a user, xangryskepticx, on the forums posts:
"OMG, I was at a friends house, and we were in his room, when we herd this CREEKY noise in the hallways. I went to look and I saw a GHOST! It was just standing there in the middle of the hallway. He stood there for about five seconds and then went away. It was clearly a boy. I dont know wether it was friendly or not, but id like to find out!"
THANKS"
What is the general idea of the post-- that they saw a ghost. Then you get to questioning. You ask:
"What did the ghost look like?"
And the awnser is:
"iono, it was kinda dark, I didnt get that great of a look."
First of all, in the first post xangryskepticx claims they got a clear look at "him", but when questioned further, xangryskepticx claims they didn't get a good look at "it". Other than the very clear inconsistancy of getting a good look at the ghost, the gender if the ghost is also inconsistant. The ghost went from a "him" to an "it. Although normally this wouldn't be something to worry about, the additional evidence against xangryskepticx makes the legitamicy of this story very questionable. Another thing that folows very nicly with inconsistancy is vagueness. When questioned again xangryskepticx says:
"The ghost was about 3 or 4 feet high, seemed to be kind of young, and was wearing old clothing."
Now tell me, what did you actually gather from that? "It's" short, under 20 years old, and was wearing... what? The term "old clothing" means absolutly nothing. xangryskepticx could mean 70's old, or 1600's old. This vagueness causes guesswork on the part of the reader. When too much vagueness is involved, the credibility takes a considerable drop. Vagueness has a lot in common with over-generalizations, in that both leave guesswork for the reader.

Another person on the forum, BBfan, comments on xangryskepticx's topic:
"All ghosts are evil, and it will want to kill you, so GET RID OF IT AS FAST AS YOU CAN!!!"
This over-generalization creats a problem seperating fact from fiction. While its true that many encounters with the dead are hostile, some are friendly(about 3 out of 10). Overgeneralizations also give the impression of a lack of knowledge, causing turmoil and distracting from the point of the thread.
Misdirection is when somebody deliberately pulls attention away from the discussion and onto something irrelevant. The most common form of this is a personal attack. Now a third person enters xangryskepticx?s thread, their screen name is IDK. IDK attacks xangryskepticx
?You?re a dumbass,, this is what tv does to children these days, Go read a book!?
While I would agree with the third section of that, it is all irrelevant. When a person resorts to personal attacks it is a good indicator that they don?t have anything intelligent to say about the matter, in which case it would be smart to count out what they say.
In conclusion, keep your mind open, but smart!


this is an article i wrote, you can find it on pathlayer.co.nr
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Posted on Fri Jun 30, 2006 11:12 pm

WhiteRaven

Joined: 13 Jan 2006
Posts: 343

wait, are you saying that pigs can't fly?! Rolling Eyes

okay, seriously... uh yeah, not bad, although only the noobs didn't already know that, and noobs are too noobish to read it, anyway.
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Posted on Sat Jul 01, 2006 12:03 am

wushu_psion

Joined: 06 Mar 2006
Posts: 104

thats who it was directed towards...
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Posted on Sat Jul 01, 2006 4:59 pm

Rorigon

Joined: 19 Jun 2006
Posts: 38

Nice post!


Completely sums up my feelings towards skepticism.
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Posted on Sun Jul 02, 2006 12:06 pm

wushu_psion

Joined: 06 Mar 2006
Posts: 104

yeah, its from my site, it was the first article to get up, and since the site is new, i didnt get a whole lot of feedback, so i wanted to see what people on other forums said

THANKS
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Posted on Mon Jul 24, 2006 9:30 am

wushu_psion

Joined: 06 Mar 2006
Posts: 104

LIVE
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