That one spooky thing January 14, 2014
Posted by Ubi Dubium in Brain Glitches, Responses.Tags: Cognitive Biases, critical thinking, evidence, ghosts, reason, sleep paralysis, supernatural, UFOs, witches
6 comments
This is in response to several comments by Wylekat on Ex-Christian.net on this thread: http://new.exchristian.net/2013/05/why-do-most-people-easily-trust.html
Ordinary claims require ordinary evidence, and extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. That’s a really straightforward guideline. It’s really useful for evaluating claims of things that supposedly happen or should happen predictably. Things like whether intercessory prayer can heal people, whether homeopathy works, and whether psychics can actually talk to the dead or read minds. It’s doable to set up a carefully controlled study to see if the effect that’s claimed is really there. (James Randi has $1,000,000 waiting for anybody that can reliably demonstrate a paranormal ability under conditions controlled to eliminate confirmation bias and cheating. Nobody’s won it yet!) (more…)
Question With Boldness 