One book that was instrumental on my journey through critical thinking was The Demon-Haunted World by Carl Sagan. In it he also expresses passionately his love for books. I'm proud to say that I share this passion with him.
#tabularasa #blog #blogger #books #thedemonhauntedworld #carlsagan
Saturday is the 90th anniversary of the birth of Carl Sagan. 🎂
He's best known as an astronomer, author, and documentary presenter. But I consider him to be a philosopher of reason. His clear-mindedness and logic are needed more than ever these days.
I'm attatching an excerpt from his book The Demon-Haunted World. It's from a chapter called "The Fine Art of Baloney Detection". Save it, share it, and use it!
#CarlSagan #Astronomy #BaloneyDetection #Science #Logic #Reason #TheDemonHauntedWorld
In “The Demon-Haunted World” by Carl Sagan, the “Dragon in My Garage” allegory illustrates the importance of skepticism and empirical evidence. Sagan presents a scenario where someone claims to have a dragon in their garage but provides excuses to avoid any examination. This story emphasizes the necessity of critical thinking, the burden of proof, and the dangers of accepting claims without evidence.
#Atheism #atheist #CarlSagan #CriticalThinking #EmpiricalEvidence #Epistemology #Philosophy #science #ScientificMethod #Skepticism #TheDemonHauntedWorld #YouTube
@ai6yr 3/3
"Science arouses a soaring sense of wonder. But so does pseudoscience.
A kind of Gresham's Law prevails in popular culture by which bad science drives out good.
Whose interest does .this. ignorance serve?
The standards of argument, what passes for evidence, are much more relaxed with pseudoscience. In part for these same reasons, it is much easier to present pseudoscience to the general public than science."
#TheDemonHauntedWorld 看到现在都在讲破除迷信，总感觉书里的例子本身有些过时，比如 UFO 和麦田怪圈之类的…现在的人真的还信这种东西吗？现在都是电磁场和量子力学啦。也许中学的我看更合适，恍惚记得中学课本有讲麦田怪圈。中学的时候我还在接受果壳的科学启蒙，感觉现在接触到的很多科学方法（比如 false positive）都是那个时候学的…
不过这本书里讲到的概念今天依旧适用，比如迷信之所以是迷信是因为证据不足，而不是现象本身不引起科学家的兴趣，作者也很希望找到外星人。以及如果把所有不明白的现象都称为 Demon 的话，那整个世界都要 demon haunted 了。以及一种迷信倒下了，另一种又会崛起：
So urgent on the vulgar is the necessity of believing, that the fall of any system of mythology will most probably be succeeded by the introduction of some other mode of superstition...
不过也讲到了中世纪的猎巫，我稍微感兴趣一点。说当时教皇的训谕指出 both sexes 跟魔鬼性交，然而最后被猎的都是女巫…
It’s why statistics uses standard error as a basic principle, building in an assumption that there will always be things that don’t accord with expectations and predictions. [...]
People, on the other hand, can be less sanguine when things don’t go according to plan. You won’t find many commuters cheerfully quoting standard error when their train gets delayed or cancelled.
这和我前两天读到的 #TheDemonHauntedWorld 是一样的思路呀！https://rhabarberbarbara.bar/@unagi/107544607279401820
但我认为没有人 cheerfully quoting standard error when their train gets delayed or cancelled 是因为 no one likes seeing their train gets delayed or cancelled, but I strongly suggest that 德铁在列车时刻表的晚点时间旁边加上置信区间 to get people mentally prepared, otherwise 我打算自己统计一下我上班途中的晚点规律。
> Every time a scientific paper presents a bit of data, it’s accompanied by an error bar - a quiet but insistent reminder that no knowledge is complete or perfect. […] Imagine a society in which every speech in the *Congressional Record*, every television commercial, every sermon had an accompanying error bar or its equivalent. 好棒的 idea！
Perhaps the sharpest distinction between science and pseudo-science is that science has a far keener appreciation of human imperfections and fallibility than does pseudoscience (or ‘inerrant’ revelation). If we resolutely refuse to acknowledge where we are liable to fall into error, then we can confidently expect that error - even serious error, profound mistakes - will be our companion forever.
robsonrc
Steve Mitchell
Tim Zee
EclipseLion
KnowAttitude
我鳗鱼 
也是一只自由泳的小鸟