skeptic in the public
A few days ago I was at a party chatting up some women and networking. A friend of mine there told everyone that I had been to Vegas recently. When asked why, I explained that I had attended a meeting on science, critical thinking and skepticism.
The girls were interested to know exactly what we were skeptical about, and so I told them that we were skeptical of things like religious claims, paranormal claims, alternative medicine and cryptozoology, though I mainly focus on religious claims and alternative medicine.
Almost immediately, a woman there told me that cryptozoology was awesome. The conversation dissolved into anecdotal stories of seeing strange creatures, ghost and psychic experiences - all while I sat by, nodding numbly.
What am I supposed to do in a situation like this? Obviously, I would not deny that people experienced strange things, and they all sounded so convinced - one woman told a story of dreaming of a ghost boy, and then finding the ghost boy's clothing in a closet, and having alphabet letters fall off her sister's wall in such a way as to spell his name. They were so sure of their memories and experiences.
The girls were interested to know exactly what we were skeptical about, and so I told them that we were skeptical of things like religious claims, paranormal claims, alternative medicine and cryptozoology, though I mainly focus on religious claims and alternative medicine.
Almost immediately, a woman there told me that cryptozoology was awesome. The conversation dissolved into anecdotal stories of seeing strange creatures, ghost and psychic experiences - all while I sat by, nodding numbly.
What am I supposed to do in a situation like this? Obviously, I would not deny that people experienced strange things, and they all sounded so convinced - one woman told a story of dreaming of a ghost boy, and then finding the ghost boy's clothing in a closet, and having alphabet letters fall off her sister's wall in such a way as to spell his name. They were so sure of their memories and experiences.
Labels: skepticism
posted by Ziztur
at
8:00 AM
4 Comments:
In that situation I would probably gently introduce the faultiness of human memory as well as the concept selection bias. Would she have remembered the letters had they spelled a non-sense word? Lately I will just pick one thing from the baloney detection kit and try to hammer that home.
Most of those stories probably have been told over and over by those women. Studies of memory conclude that the more we recall and re-tell our experiences, the less and less accurate the story becomes. Memories that are called up for the first time in a decade are closer to the truth than interesting anecdotes told over and over and embellished.
But you know all that.
Everyone has instances like this. You know well some of my own experiences and how seriously I believe them to be true. These women have had some experiences and are sharing them with you in order to, probably, convince you that "something else" is out there that science cannot explain. Which you know already. However, I recommend that you probably say something along the lines of "well I'm not sure if your experience is coincidence or something else out there, but until I find proof of something else, coincidence is most likely the reason".
I know how this is; various roommates of mine have wondered if the house I used to stay at was haunted.
Then a good friend/roommate of mine took an idle weekend and looked into all of the various claims of paranormal occurances and *surprise!* all of them had perfectly natural explanations.
I suppose the main thing to keep in mind is that these innocent folks aren't actually hurting anyone, so our goal isn't to "defeat" them to protect ourselves or others, it's merely to educate them. I suppose everyone here likely knows this already, though.
They're not hurting anyone, certainly, but neither does education, and personally I'd be totally up for the latter. I agree with Unbeguiled, and you could even take it further than that and share some of your own anecdotes- stories of when you thought something was happening or were convinced of something, and then you later found out it wasn't true; especially if the first part of it parallels their own beliefs and anecdotes, and segue that into a conversation about how remarkably easy self-deception is and all the biases and errors that human memory is so prone to make.
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