Promoting Science and Critical Thinking
Cognitive Dissonance is of course the term used to describe the mental stress that will arise when an existing belief is confronted with information that conflicts with the belief. It is perhaps logical and rational to assume that things should play out like this … For example somebody declares … “The world will end tomorrow“ When tomorrow … Read more
Yea hey … its #TAM2014 time (hint the twitter hash tag is #TAM2014 … ah but that is how you found this perhaps). OK first point, this is not an official guide, just a few (hopefully brief) notes that will hopefully help you to not just survive, but thrive. What is happening where and when? Surf on … Read more
There are some individuals who, when confronted with facts that clearly conflict with a belief, will become even more entrenched within the belief, not less. The observation that this happens is known as the backfire effect. The “backfire effect” is a name that was first coined by Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler, for the finding that, given evidence against … Read more
Does being religious justify being labelled “stupid?”. The short simple answer is – No, there are plenty of very smart highly intelligent humans who are also religious, in fact some of the most famous thinkers, philosophers, and scientists in history have been religious. Ah, so that might imply some truth then? Actually no, not at … Read more
If you have been watching Cosmos as I have and enjoying it, then you will be delighted to know that the topic next Sunday will be Climate Change. This is perhaps to be anticipated because it has already tackled some of the really big topics such as evolution and industry-funded science denial. Is Climate Change factually scientific and appropriate for Cosmos? … Read more
Beliefs that are rather obviously not true at all thrive, and so we should perhaps ponder over the question – why it is like this? The geneticist Steve Jones (pictured above) makes a rather interesting observation regarding beliefs and identifies one good reason. While speaking about this at the Hay Literary Festival, a reporter thought, “Hey … Read more