Promoting Science and Critical Thinking
We live in a world cluttered with quackery, pseudoscience, and outright fraud. Some of it is slick and sophisticated. Some of it is laughably silly. Today’s example falls into the latter category: homeopathy. This would be funny enough if it were merely a private market in magical sugar pills. The problem is that Senator Mike … Read more
If, like me, you are now a regular AI chatbot user, then you may have experienced what can best be described as prompt fade. This is where you start a conversation. At first you get some results that look to be on track, but then as the conversation progresses at some point you find that it … Read more
A couple of months back representatives of the International Association of Exorcists (AIE) asked Pope Leo XIV to ensure that every Catholic diocese worldwide has “one or more” trained exorcists. There is one small issue here, demons are not real, so why would they propose this? Let’s briefly turn to the media article reporting this … Read more
In 1895 the Lumière brothers shot a 50-second silent documentary. It famously captured a steam locomotive pulling into a station. Titled “L’Arrivée d’un train en gare de La Ciotat“, it was first shown to the public in January 1896 in Lyon. A rather popular story is that when the film was first shown, the audience was … Read more
How do you decide what is real? Sitting between your ears is one of the most powerful pattern-seeking engines evolution ever produced. It is astonishingly useful. It is also sometimes hilariously wrong. One example of this is encapsulated by just one word – Pareidolia. This is where you see something that you know is not … Read more
AI may indeed be a fantastic new tool, but with it comes new personal risks. One that you really do need to be aware of is termed “Cognitive Surrender”. What is that? I’ll come to that shortly. Like many of you, I am finding real value in AI. Not in some abstract futuristic sense. I … Read more
