Critical Skepticism and the Media

The current and often lamentable realities of the Internet and social media have helped to call into question the veracity of much of what is published in the news media. Sadly, for all critical skeptics, this makes the effort of sorting out what’s true from what is being reported with spin and bias all the more difficult.

Sorting through inchoate and contradictory claims from various news sources is next to impossible. Very often what was reported at the point the news was breaking changes as more and more information becomes available to reporters. What we thought in the beginning can be incredibly different as time proceeds.

With this reality, a critical skeptic must be willing to be open-minded while still obeying the tenets of the ideology of doubt.

Following are a few techniques that we can apply in this brave new world of instant (and often misleading or downright incorrect) news.

According to a 2016 poll by Pew Research, 64% of
Americans find that Fake News "has caused a great
deal of confusion."
https://goo.gl/GFxS0G

• Glean your news from various and trusted sources, with the understanding that you will be able to see a larger thread of truth in the heterogeneity of this particular practice. For instance, a friend that reads four or five different newspapers a day, may have a better grasp on a current event than the friend that gets all their news from only one source.
• Always pay attention to the attributed spin of the various news sources you use. Some newspapers and online or televised news sources are well known to be “strongly left-leaning” or “very conservative”. While this reality is not inherently bad (based on your own political biases) it can be the cause for intentional misrepresentation from the particular perspective represented. To deal with this, the critical skeptic does not shy away from reading news written at any point of the political spectrum. Just because you don’t agree with the position, doesn’t mean that important information cannot be learned. This is very important to remember.
• Keep your mental waste basket handy with news bloggers and headlines. Always click through to the article and read it thoroughly. A critical skeptic must not be too easily swayed by shocking headlines or posts on social media. Much of what is posted there is meant to get your attention and distract you with emotional content such as ‘the outrage factor’. Feel free to toss any of these kinds of posts away. There’s no need to value all news in the same way, understanding that much of it is fluff meant to sell advertising.
• Finally, avoid the temptation to only or mostly follow one news source above all others. Often, we tend to gravitate to the source that agrees most with our own world view and even if we are trying to remain unbiased, our personal beliefs can cause us to be too dependent on information that helps rather than hinders the backfire effect.

By adhering to these basic techniques the critical skeptic can continue to revere the ideology of doubt and uncertainty in a world where the prevalence for fake news is becoming more and more a very real problem.

Doubt and morality: Weighing Moral Codes

Most humans have a sense of right and wrong and would, we hope, try to do the right thing, whatever the situation dictates that particular right thing to be. Immanuel Kant, in his book 'Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals' outlines the socially normative underpinning of ethical behavior and shares with the reader his categorical imperative, which states that we should act in such a way that that action could be made into a universal maxim.

Immanuel Kant 1724-1804, was a German idealist philosopher
who wrote about ethics, metaphysics and perception,
among much else. He is often considered a central thinker
influencing much modern philosophical thought.

In other words, act in a way so that your behavior can be emulated by any other person with no harm to them or others.
And, by the very lights of his own theory, we could apply Kant's categorical imperative as the only moral code the human race ever needs. But we know that various cultures and ideologies have varying moral codes and the critical skeptic has got to wade through these in order to measure their efficacy. We cannot afford to take certain moral codes at face value, any more than we can any other idea we may be faced with. The ideology of doubt demands that we carry our tools of the critical faculty with us into the many different versions of what is actually right and wrong.
The reason that we must be willing to do this, is because, once again, human credulity often leads people into unethical behavior, which, unbeknownst to them, can be harmful for everyone. The critical skeptic must carry with them a sense of what is truly ethical and moral in order to weigh the other proffered moral codes against. The categorical imperative is an excellent standard by which to make this judgement.
There are a few general rules that one can ask that help to discern whether or not a moral code is really what it claims to be.
First, we can ask who benefits. If it is not the person or their immediate family group, then it is probably not a good code.
We also need to ask what the source of the code is. Is it applicable to our day and age? Does it take into consideration current scientific understanding? If not, once again, this is not the code for you.
Finally we need to think about whether the moral code in question would indeed do well as a universal maxim. If this became the morality of every single human on earth, would the world become a better, or worse place?
Dealing with the myriad moral codes in these ways give us the ability to decide which are actually beneficial to humanity as a whole.
The critical skeptic has a moral obligation to point out immoral and unethical codes and laws even more than we have the responsibility to point out bad ideas.

Reductio ad Absurdum: The ideology of doubt and the absurd

It is a difficult thing to become comfortable with doubt as a tool and way of life as a critical skeptic. The word has a negative connotation that is hard to shake.
And to be doubted, especially when we are sincere, is even more unpleasant. Voltaire said, "Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd." What he means is that it is easier to be certain, no matter how silly our certainty is, than it is to doubt and mistrust our own beliefs and those of others.
Yet, it remains incredibly important to continue to work through our experiences using doubt as the over arching system through which we sift those experiences, so that we may never be rendered and reduced to absurdity.

Reductio ad absurdum is the disproof of a
proposition by showing an absurdity
to which it leads when carried to
its logical conclusion.

'Absurdity' is a wonderful word, and it is one of the main tenets of the ideology of doubt. The process of the logical tool known as reductio ad absurdum or, 'reduction to absurdity' is the means by which we can come to doubt and disbelieve certain claims based on how silly or absurd they are. 
An example of this can be found in the previous blog post about mythology. It would have been impossible for Noah to have pairs of each species of beetle on his ark, because of how many species there are. Pointing this out, renders the rest of the literalist's claims completely moot. It's just not possible and it is absurd and ridiculous to even take it seriously.
Using the reduction to absurdity as a tool and remembering its place as a tenet in the ideology of doubt, we can often find the flaws in otherwise reasonable arguments as well. Often times it is not the literalist we deal with, because those arguments are easily reduced to absurdity. More likely, the claims that are more reasonable can sometimes get through. This is why, we lead with doubt, until evidence is provided that can bear up under the weight of the claim.
In a sense, Voltaire's point could be a very good mantra to use when we aren't sure or when we're tempted to believe a claim with no evidence. It is uncomfortable to disbelieve, but it is a willing abandonment of the critical faculties to believe something with complete certainty, which is just absurd.

Skepticism and the myth

Humans generate mythology at nearly all levels of experience. We have myths for deep time describing our cultural or societal memories and we also have more subjective family myths.
This tendency toward creating myths is one of the most amazing aspects of human thought and experience. It provides a cognitive literature of sorts and enhances our feeling of participation with past events.
The lovely thing about these myths is that they are never true. They tell tales that bend the laws of physics, that change the way we know the world works. And why not? They are reflections of the human imagination. Myths show us that time and again, we are brilliant story tellers and that tendency runs through the core of our collective experiences.
Mythology is helpful because it helps (as it is intended to do) to participate in our history, without needing to read that history in a dry old text.
However, myths stop being helpful or good when people take them literally. Any myth that you can think of, from any corner of our planet, even if it has its ancient roots in real but unrecorded deeds, is only literature. It cannot and should not be considered real, true or an actual representation of what actually happened.
It can be fun to think about whether or not the myth is true, because that is the joy of literature, but when those who wish to take the myth literally begin to push the myth onto others, the problems begin.
It is not only that most myths deny or ignore real natural laws but that those who take the myth literally try to squash up the real world to fit in the limited and nonsensical world of the myth.
When this happens by an individual, there is no harm. But when this happens and the myths are forced on the young or on the credulous, terrible damage occurs.

The Coleoptera, (beetles) with about 400,000 species, is
 the largest of all orders, constituting
almost 40% of described insects and 25%
of all known animal life-forms;
new species are discovered frequently.
Noah would have had his hands full.

It may seem innocuous to tell children about the Genesis Flood or that Poseidon or Thor are real, but the consequences are terrible.
First, by instilling a literal view or interpretation on the young, we are actively suppressing their natural curiosity We force them to accept fiction as fact, which makes it much more difficult for them to discern other forms of literature from fact, as well.
But most disturbingly, it forces people to give over their critical faculties and renders them unable to think critically, challenge false claims or even realize the wondrous realities of this world that are true.
Mythology is wonderful, necessary and even entertaining, but it is never the unarguable truth and the critical skeptic must remember this in the fight against credulity, literalistic and zealous fanaticism and totalitarianism.

The ideology of doubt and the cynic

The ideology of doubt is the only ideology that a critical skeptic adheres to. It is the belief that nothing is certain, no one opinion or belief is absolute and there is no source for truth that is infallible and omnipotent. It is the ideology of Socrates who said that all he knows for certain is that he knows nothing at all.

To some, this may not leave much room for childlike awe and wonder when presented with new discoveries or when one witnesses a breathtaking sunset. There is not much wiggle room for the critical skeptic when presented with new information. We doubt it until there is enough evidence to back up the claims. So does this mean that we don't believe anything? Does this mean that we doubt the love and loyalty of family and friends?

The answer is no.

One of the critical skeptic's most valuable tools is simple hope. A cynic does not have hope that his friends truly love him. He doubts even that. The cynic has become jaded by the lack of evidence for the things he once wanted to be true. The cynic allows no light of discovery into their heart.

While it can be a valuable tool, the
critical skeptic is aware of the dangers of
cynicism.

While cynicism is without doubt a valuable tool, too much can poison the mind. Critical skepticism wants to know the truth and wants to find hope for the greater good of mankind in science and medicine.
As an example, imagine that a news broadcast has a focus piece on a new and apparently successful treatment for an especially vicious cancer. The critical skeptic goes onto the web or asks their physician to learn more about the new treatment. The cynic simply dismisses the broadcast out of hand. Why? It's just a news program, which gives it no veracity in and of itself and where is the evidence?

So we see that the difference is pronounced when we realize that the skeptic's reaction is to hope for the treatment to be real and seeks to prove that hope, whereas the cynic believes there's no evidence and therefore the search is irrelevant and useless to them.

A great way of keeping the cynicism at bay is to continue to read and research and observe the world of science and philosophy and medicine with a keen eye. There are a host of excellent resources for the critical skeptic which help to form a foundation to claims made. This way, if we continue to search and research, we can more fully appreciate the greater mechanisms of this world and of those ideas worthy of knowing.
The cynic simply doesn't care.

Intellectual autopilot

It can be frustrating when we are faced with someone who has not done the real work of forming opinions or evidence for those opinions and beliefs. Very often, it seems, one might just believe something because they feel that they are expected to, or because that's always how they've thought. Far more frustrating is someone who offers an opinion and cannot give any reason why they believe it.

The irony is that this person often can't to see the importance of having well founded thoughts and opinions. However this is very often not a malicious or evil intent that leads them to this point. It might be that they have never been taught to be skeptical or to think critically or that they simply didn't know that they weren't thinking critically already.

Switch your intellectual autopilot to
disengage.

Whatever the cause of intellectual autopilot, the ramifications of living this way can be incredibly dangerous the person and to others.

The duty of the critical skeptic is not only to work to guard oneself from the dangers of intellectual autopilot (we are all susceptible) but to help eliminate it in others.
Learning how to catch oneself in intellectual autopilot can also help to detect it in others. The real trick is helping people to see that there is nothing wrong with learning how to reevaluate their convictions when presented with evidence to the contrary of their firmly held beliefs. It is important to anticipate the backfire effect, to make no judgments about their beliefs (no matter how misinformed they are) and to be compassionate. It can be both a little embarrassing and cause guilt to be shown the error on one's thinking.
The reality is, that if successful, it can be exhilarating to be freed from bad ideas and misconceptions. 

The Critical Skeptic and the Scientific Claim

Imagine that you've spent the last few years working to prove a theory. You worked long into the night on countless occasions, sacrificed time with family and friends and had not a few moments where you thought you were going to tear up your research and give up.
Then, finally, you finish your work and submit your results to your peers at the university and wait for their approval to publish, which they finally give, only to have someone come along with evidence that directly refutes what your work claimed. 
What would you do?
This scenario is a common one. Young graduate or PhD students have labored for countless hours only to find that their hypothesis has been neatly disproved by another scientist. One can imagine the internal turmoil and the trashing of offices or labs that might be a symptom of having been proved wrong.
And yet, scientists don't really mind this. Most of the scientific community wants to be proved wrong, because what that means is that they've helped to put in another rung on the ladder to greater discovery. 
This might seem unbelievable, but if you pay close enough attention to any of the scientific educators now prevalent on TV and social media, they almost seem to be excited for someone to come along with a new theory that disproves long-held scientific theories.
From time-to-time, after long hours and huge sacrifices, a discovery comes along that doesn't refute but proves a theory.
For instance, Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity postulated that there are ripples in spacetime. The math was good, but humans had no way to prove this hypothesis until nearly one hundred years later. Scientists at the Laser Interferometer-Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO) operated by Cal-Tech and MIT discovered and proved Einstein's prediction by recording these waves from a cataclysmic event in deepest space. When two black holes collided, they sent monstrous ripples through the fabric of spacetime. LIGO has the first-ever recorded evidence of this amazing prediction. Albert Einstein, perhaps the greatest thinker of the last century and certainly the brightest, had his math proved correct by scientists hoping to do just that.

An artistic simulation of the two black holes in question
colliding.

However, the vindication of long-unproved mathematical hypothesis is rather rare. Many more such hypotheses are discarded after having been proved incorrect, however excellent they were in their scientific efficacy.
This is why skepticism is such an important part of the scientific method. We make scientific claims based on evidence collected until those claims are refuted by stronger evidence. It is only by rigorous testing, fact-checking and hours of research that these claims are ever even considered to be viable. 
What if, you may well ask, LIGO had proven Einstein's theory wrong? It would have equally revolutionized the thinking about general relativity.
It must be said that few of the rest of us are scientists in this sense. We don't work at observatories and we don't spend huge portions of our lives sorting out the math to prove or disprove scientific claims.
Still, even in our everyday lives, such claims come to us from a thousand places. There are a million theories a day and many of them seem viable at first glance.
Credulous humans may want to fall into the trap of believing everything they've been told, but the critical skeptic knows better.
Even an extraordinary discovery like the one proving Einstein correct, needs to be scrutinized.
This is why the critical skeptic employs words like, 'apparently' and 'allegedly' and 'supposedly' at all times in these cases.
"Apparently, LIGO has proved Einstein's general relativity theory about spacetime waves correct."
This way, when the next discovery comes along that may disprove further hypotheses made by Einstein, we're ready.
Skepticism is the main motivating factor of scientific discovery. And it also helps us to keep an open mind while continuing the search for truth in all fields of thought and science.

Dealing with the literal mind: the third enemy of skepticism

People are, generally, good. The human mind is a pretty amazing example of evolution's power, if not its forethought. We are sentient and we have the ability to ponder our motivations. That's a very important thing.
As I wrote in the last post, however, there are tendencies within the human mind that are not perfect and that can hamper the critical faculties. One of the worst is credulity, especially when it is blind and willful. The other is the backfire effect. The third, is literal mindedness.
True, psychologists will tell you that there is nothing inherently wrong with being literal. It gives us the ability to be matter-of-fact when problem solving. But when it comes to being able to discern which sorts of ideologies are good or bad, or perhaps natural or dangerous, the literal minded person cannot be bothered to do more than to take the (often) proffered ideology at face value.

Children's literature character Amelia Bedelia
struggled with idiomatic speech and was very literal.

Literal mindedness may be, like credulity and the backfire effect, necessary aspects of human development, but when it is paired with credulity and bad ideology, it can be lethal to the critical faculties.
Let's take for example the person who thinks that the world is only five thousand years old. They've read the Genesis accounts and they've accepted them as is, with not a jot of questioning.
I'm not poking the hornet's nest for a religious shake down, but there are people out there who actually believe this as a literal fact.
The problem with this mindset isn't necessarily that people are unimaginative when it comes to issues like this but that they are unwilling to break away from them, when there is evidence presented contrary to their strongly held beliefs. That's when the backfire effect kicks in.
So how do you challenge literal thinking? By encouraging skepticism.
A practiced skeptic will feel that it is necessary to ask where the proof beyond the Scriptures is for the age of the earth. With one swoop, skepticism can lead us to the true claim that the earth is far older.
Credulity (the willingness to believe without question), the backfire effect (which causes us to hold our strongly-held beliefs even more tightly when challenged) and the tendency toward literal-mindedness (a willingness to take information at face value) are all dangerous to free-thinking humans.
This is why the critical skeptic must work to challenge these and other psychological tendencies in their fellow humans. By working to support and defend free speech, free inquiry and science education, the critical skeptic can help to advance ways of thinking that limit the power of these three dangerous realities.
Think of skepticism as a shield. Learn to think of new information as false, or at least untrustworthy until you can find verifiable sources to back it up. Remember that just because you believe something strongly doesn't make it true and always work to reevaluate your convictions when shown evidence to the contrary of what you have believed. There is no shame in having been wrong and there is no shame in adjusting your stance when presented with evidence.
A critical skeptic isn't going to get it right every time, but she is going to be much more likely to avoid being coerced, falling victim to the hucksterish and tawdry pseudo facts and those who proffer them, and will certainly be much more likely to have a strong, sleek critical faculty.

Skepticism and the backfire effect

Credulity takes all forms. It might be just a simple kind of wish thinking or it could be the kind of dangerous belief that keeps a person in an unhealthy situation. In either case, most credulity is essentially harmless. No one really cares if you believe in the Loch Ness Monster, or that Elvis is alive.
However, scientists have uncovered a tendency within humans to grab more firmly onto nonsense beliefs when shown evidence to the contrary. Apparently, we cannot help it. 

Nessy, or The Loch Ness Monster has never been successfully proven to exist
by scientist and yet, still people choose to believe.

The tendency is called the 'backfire effect'. And it takes the form of stubborn doubling down on those beliefs we see as being challenged by evidence, either presented to us by a friend, or via TV or radio or Internet.
For an illustration of this, we can think of the dark Scottish loch. Suppose we have a friend who believes in Nessy. However, suppose that there has been a scientific discovery that has allowed researches to come the depths of the loch and prove beyond doubt that there are no hold-over plesiosaurs in any of the lochs at all.
Our friend will say that, no matter what the scientists have proved, there's still probably something in there like Nessy. Reading this, we see how ridiculous it is to try to continue believing in Nessy after there has been evidence which proves that she's not there.
So the backfire effect shows that when our deepest convictions are challenged, regardless of the veracity of the evidence, but usually in the face of strong evidence, we cannot help but double down and strengthen our beliefs.
Scientists believe that it may have to do with embarrassment of being wrong, or perhaps from the fear that  a group that we do not want criticizing our beliefs. Whatever causes us to become defensive, it is one of the main reasons that skeptics try very hard to discourage credulity.
There is also a movement, usually in scientific circles that discourages people from taking their ideas too personally. It's fine to take the theory of relativity seriously, but taking it personally can cause a real problem.
If Dr. Smith says that he believes in the basis for relativity, and Dr. White proves some aspect of relativity wrong with math, Dr. Smith likely will not believe Dr. White's claim because of the backfire effect.
However most scientists don't behave this way. They understand that every day, new evidence is being discovered that can dynamically change the way they understood things previously. Can you imagine what it would be like if you had prominent scientists not talking to each other or coming to blows because one refused to believe a new discovery? It wouldn't make a very good advertisement for science.
This is why skepticism is such an important mental tool. When a scientist makes a discovery about the world, other scientists may disagree with the evidence presented, but they always reevaluate their convictions, in order to move on and progress.
There's no place for doubling down on theories that have been proved wrong in science and there is no room for it in the every day world.

Credulity and the end of the world

Natural credulity is often an innocent enough thing. And in most cases, it can be harmless. But what about when the natural credulity in certain people coerces them to act or think in a way that is directly harmful to them? How do we prove to these people that they are believing in dangerous ideas?
To more fully explore this issue, I'm going to set up a hypothetical situation, but one that has mirrored events in real life.
Let's imagine that a regular, blue collar man, about 40, comes into the public eye with the claim that the angel Gabriel visited him and commanded him to take dictation. This man has a book, which is the direct message from God and that he has been told that the world will end on October 27th, of this year. He rapidly manages to get his face on the TV and radio and the public get a lot of exposure to him. He further claims that people who do not believe in his message, will not be part of the elect on the final day and will be left behind to suffer in the mighty tribulations to follow.
Now, this isn't a very far fetched hypothesis. Men and women have made claims like these before. A mammal called Harold Camping predicted that the Rapture and devastating earthquakes would occur on May 21, 2011 with God taking approximately 3% of the world's population into Heaven, and that the end of the world would occur five months later on October 21. 

Wrong on all three counts and yet he still has followers! 

And here's the thing about my hypothesis: people would believe it. I remember the Camping affair and I noted how many otherwise rational and reasonable people nervously checked their calendars and watches leading up to this prophesied end of the world. Of course his followers believed wholeheartedly, despite no evidence to back up the ludicrous claim at all. Especially noticeable is the fact that Camping's previous prophecies had both been wrong.
So, how do we deal with this mentality? How do we challenge lunatic claims of this kind? As we now know, Camping and the hundreds of other such claimants throughout human civilization have all been wrong. Yet, I'm sure that in the next few years, another such mammal will make another such claim and despite the fact that no one has ever been right, people will believe it.
Natural credulity is born out of several different realities in humans. First, we are naturally fearful of the cataclysmic. The smoking towers in Manhattan at 9/11 was about the most apocalyptic thing I had ever seen, until Katrina and the tidal wave of 2004. Having been raised in a fundamental evangelical household, I was taught that the end times would be foretold by wars and rumors of war and of earthquakes and mighty weather. Imagine what people who were listening to Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson were thinking when they, too, witnessed these terrible events. 
So it is that we fear our own immolation and I think people generally hope that if they believe end times claims, that is will somehow save them from the fear and pain of a terrible death.
But I also think that natural credulity has its basis in a desire to belong. When a larger group believes something, even something as ludicrous as a end of the world prediction, people jump on the bandwagon in order to feel as though they are part of something larger than themselves.
Human behavior is a difficult thing to understand, in that—in almost every case—it seems to work in antipathy to the common good. Think about trampling people to escape a fire or the inability to move out of the way of a onrushing car.
So it is that
we need skepticism to help us when claims like the ones above are made. When the sky rolls back like a scroll and the face of the deity himself announces the end of the world to the entire planet, I might be a little more willing to believe it. However, until that time, we need to arm ourselves against the tendency toward natural credulity. The world isn't going to end and when it does it will likely be by the hands of some radical fanatic than by the predictions of a TV minister or cult leader.
Skepticism as a shield against these and other outlandish claims is the best way to proceed.

What in the devil is skepticism?

People often shy away from words like skepticism because, more often than not, they're really not sure what it means. In some cases they're pretty sure they know what it is, but have been advised or taught to abandon this natural inclination.
Skepticism, put quite simply, is the tendency to doubt a claim that hasn't got any visible or tangible evidence to back it up. My friend tells a funny story about a kid he went to school with who claimed that Ringo Starr was his father. When pestered for proof, there was none forthcoming. Why? Because it wasn't true, obviously. This is a pretty harmless realty among children, and sometimes adults. People who claim that they went to see Led Zeppelin's last concert but have no tickets to prove it, are likely to be believed if they're old enough and you know that they went to a lot of concerts in their early years.
What's the difference?
Is there a chance that Ringo maybe got a fan pregnant? Certainly. Is there a chance that you could prove the paternity? Sure. But when a kid says that Ringo is his real father, there's just something about the claim that makes it hard to believe. Something not quite jiving with the way we know the world works. It's not reasonable, perhaps, but we doubt it.
That is skepticism.

"Hic Rhodus. Hic salta"
Here is Rhodes. Jump here.

In one of Aesop's Fables is the tale of an athlete who boasted of an amazing long jump that he performed on the Island of Rhodes. He pestered many people with this tale, telling all who would listen and likely annoying many of them. Finally, one of his listeners, weary of the tale and the tellers famously tells the athlete "Here is Rhodes. Jump here."
Skepticism is a natural tendency. It most likely developed as a way to protect us during the infancy of our species. We could surmise that it became necessary to doubt the claims of other humans to keep from being robbed or clubbed and eaten. However, the tendency toward skepticism, in humans doesn't mean that it is universal and it certainly doesn't mean that natural skepticism cannot be overruled. We all know someone who believes in or supports conspiracy theories. Taken at face value, some of these theories seem to have some veracity. But they rarely hold together under rigorous scrutiny. As such, it becomes necessary for people who want to continue to believe these theories to dampen down their own natural skepticism.
These credulous humans then become a dumping ground for any ludicrous claim from any charlatan. I know a man who otherwise was a sterling example of a human that spread about an email that had a video that showed it was not a plane that hit the Pentagon on 9/11 but a heavy duty missile. This friend is a scientist, and so I was a little aghast that he would even consider sending this about to do anything more than ridicule the preposterous claim, but his only comment was that it was 'interesting to consider'.
I liken this kind of credulity and abandonment of the critical faculties as well as the squashing of skepticism to the prank that is sometimes played in schools where one friend says to the other "Look, the word gullible is written on the ceiling" to see if his friend will look. Harmless fun, but what about when you have fully functioning and otherwise typically developed human adults absorbing nonsense and holding it to be golden law?
Well, the point of this blog is to open a discussion about what skepticism is, how it has been largely abandoned by people and how you can exercise it like an atrophied muscle and get it back.
It should be clear that skepticism is one of the main portions of our critical faculties that we will need moving forward in a world rife with "alternative facts" (whatever the heck those are, other than lies) and 'fake news'.
The next time you hear something on the radio or read something on the Internet or watch something on TV, be sure to doubt it until you can verify the claim with hard—or as I like to call it, empirical evidence—before you take it as perfect and true.
As the late, great Christopher Hitchens once famously wrote, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof."