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Archives for July 2017
Conspiracy! – John Byrne MD
Contents 1 Conspiracy 2 Conspiracy Theory 3 Characteristics of Conspiracy Theories 4 Prevalence 5 Psychology 6 Evaluating the Logic of Conspiracy Theories 7 Medical Conspiracy Theories 8 Conclusion 9 References and Links Conspiracy Dictionary.com lists a definition as: “an agreement by two or more persons to commit a crime, fraud, or other wrongful act.” Conspiracies happen. The assassination of President Lincoln was a conspiracy. Most internet scams are conspiracies. The Madoff Investment Scandal was a conspiracy. The Watergate scandal was a conspiracy. Price fixing is a conspiracy. Real conspiracies […]
Cognitive Dissonance – John Byrne MD
Contents 1 What is Cognitive Dissonance? 2 Supporting the Theory 3 Cognitive Dissonance and the Self 4 Cognitive ‘Consonance’ 5 Dissonance Management, Science and Pseudoscience 6 Motivated Reasoning 7 “The Backfire Effect” 8 Cognitive Dissonance and Baby Steps 9 Examples 10 Conclusion 11 References and Links What is Cognitive Dissonance? How can a person hold two mutually contradictory beliefs at the same time? Psychologist Leon Festinger speculated in 1956 […]
Quotations – “Something to think about” archive
[1, 2, 3] Note: The following quotes got chosen for the message and not for historical purposes. Unlike other areas in the Freethinkers site, no one here has thoroughly checked the sources. If you wish to use these quotes as reliable sources, please research them for accuracy, especially the quotes without citations. Just to keep you on […]
Believe In or Believe That? – John Byrne MD
Of Belief-Ins and Belief-Thats Contents 1 Of Belief-Ins and Belief-Thats 2 Belief-in 3 Belief-that 4 ‘In’ and ‘That’, Is and Ought, Faith and Claims 5 Science is a Belief-in and a Belief-that 6 Conclusion 7 References and Links 8 Appendix – Definitions of Belief The word belief comes with a lot of baggage. The word […]
What is a Skeptic? – John Byrne MD*
Contents 1 What Do We Mean By Skeptic? 2 Skepticism and Science 3 Skeptical Tools 3.1 ** Hume’s Fork and Falsification: 3.2 **Occam’s Razor : 3.3 **Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence”: 3.4 **Correlation is Not Necessarily Causation: 4 Limits and Ethics 5 Conclusion 6 References and Links What Do We Mean By Skeptic? The words ‘skeptic’ and ‘skepticism‘ create a lot of confusion. To the […]
Waking Up – Sam Harris – Video and Link to YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjcw7Ln136E
Waking Up – Sam Harris (not easy to read due to large print) pdf
The Folly of Pretence – Daniel Dennett
We must not preserve the myth of God – it was a useful crutch, but we’ve outgrown it The question: Should we believe in belief? As I explain in the chapter by that title in Breaking the Spell, “belief in belief” is a common phenomenon not restricted to religions. Economists realise that a sound currency depends on […]
Belief in Belief – Eliezer Yudkowsky
Carl Sagan once told a parable of a man who comes to us and claims: “There is a dragon in my garage.” Fascinating! We reply that we wish to see this dragon—let us set out at once for the garage! “But wait,” the claimant says to us, “it is an invisible dragon.” Now as Sagan points out, this […]