Promoting Science and Critical Thinking
Each and every year an end-of-the-world prediction will inevitably pop up. Perhaps the most recently well-known example of this was Harold Camping’s 21st May prediction back in 2011. That one is perhaps famous due to the $100 million that his group, Family Radio, spent promoting it via an advertising campaign that included billboards such as … Read more
Religious moral claims often boil down to “because the Bible says so”. No attempt at any reason or justification beyond that is offered. Sometimes there are attempts to articulate a religiously-inspired but reason-based moral stance. Generally what you will find is that it is most probably an example of the infamous is-ought fallacy. The what? … Read more
The TL;DR; answer is no 9/11 was not the result of a controlled demolition. For a slightly longer explanation read on. There are numerous YouTube clips and various websites that promote the idea that the collapse of the twin towers was not in any way related to the fully fueled commercial airliners being flown into … Read more
The enabler of Fake News is that humans respond to information at an emotional level. We might indeed criticise “them” for living inside an information bubble, but the truth is that we are all as individuals crafting echo chambers to one degree or another by selecting information that agrees with our preconceived views and resisting … Read more
I’m building up to a point here about the “appeal to an authority” fallacy. What comes next is there to be used to illustrate this, so stick with me for a bit. Venkatraman Ramakrishnan is the Nobel prize winning Biologist who won the Nobel prize in 2009 jointly with Thomas A. Steitz and Ada Yonath, “for studies … Read more
Getting into somebody’s face and telling them that they are being a F***ing idiot and that they are doing/believing something very stupid is highly effective. This consistently works every time, they always step back and comment, “Yep, you are right“, and then immediately change their position. You have seen that happen all the time … right? … Read more