Daily Shoot assignment: “Make a photograph dominated by the color blue”
This is on a local field, not exactly sure what it is!
Day: 12 July 2011
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Skeptical of skepticism
Something I seem to be seeing more of recently is Skepticism: these days it seems fashionable to call oneself a ‘skeptic’. (I’m using a ‘k’ rather than a ‘c’ just because I can. I don’t think either one is more correct than the other, although I’m open to corrections…) Recently, the StackExchange network launched a Q&A website especially for skeptics. This is a quote about what the site is all about, from their FAQ:
It’s really easy to fool people, and it’s really easy to fool yourself, and if you use these skeptical ideas, you find out what the truth is. The whole idea of skepticism and science is to find out what’s most likely to be true, and what’s most likely not to be true.
That’s the goal: to not fool ourselves, and that’s where the real power of skepticism is. That’s why it bugs me when people think it’s a negative thing — it’s not! It’s the most positive thing we have. It is the search for the real, objective truth.
Now that all seems fair enough, doesn’t it? I get fed up of newspapers like the Daily Mail regularly printing stories which take scientific reports out of context and use them to ‘prove’ things they really shouldn’t. I also applaud the efforts of the site (and others such as Snopes) to debunk various commonly-held (or even less commonly-held) myths or popular beliefs.
