Critical thinking, and the skeptical mindset, is great. What is really sad though, is when skepticism becomes the new popular perspective (maybe within a specific niche), and people accept any skeptical perspective someone presents, possibly just because the presenter “sounds smart”, and the sucker also wants to feel smart.
That is, of course, not being skeptical, that’s just a case of a sheep following a new herder. True skepticism, true critical thinking, naturally requires you to be skeptical of the skeptics as well. Test what they say, find the flaws… their claims are often full of flaws, as they do have their axe to grind. After all, they hopefully want you thinking for yourself, they are not interested in spoon feeding you.
“Skeptic” is apparently American, and “sceptic” British. The Canadians have opted for “skeptic” though, and it sounds like “skeptic” predates “sceptic”? I don’t know what the “South African English” spelling should be, but I like “skeptic” more, I prefer its profile and “feel”, gives the word some height, y’know?
Oh, and I hate categorising things. Bleh. I feel I must some day come up with a sound categorisation policy, and recategorise all my posts.
5 responses so far ↓
1 Wendy // Jul 23, 2007 at 8:21 pm
Haha. My vote is for “skeptic” as well
My room mate at the moment loves being skeptical. Sometimes I’ll say something, and I know deep inside she agrees with me, but she’ll intentionally go against what I say or take an opposite approach just because. She’s even admitted that she tends to root for the opposite of what people are saying/talking about. I have no idea why. It’s annoying sometimes actually. It’s fine to be skeptical of someone or to take the other side for argument’s sake, but to do it “just because” seems rather silly to me.
2 Hugo // Jul 23, 2007 at 8:51 pm
Yes, skepticism can be fun, critical thinking can be healthy, but it can indeed be an absolute pain. This post was inspired by a “skeptic” that challenged a whole bunch of things. And I sit and wonder how many people listen to what he says and then decides to agree, wanting to also “sound smart”. Whereas, being a little skeptical of his skepticism allows you to easily see a bunch of holes in his arguments.
The things he mentioned were things like seatbelt safety, income gaps, water shortages, global warming, aid to poor countries, and some other things. He raised some interesting points, but his lack of thoroughness and inclusion of a number of absurdities gave me more of a “conspiracy theorist” impression, than a “careful thinker / questioner”. From there then this post.
Let me rather not rip the guy, who I’m leaving anonymous, any further. (Cheap gimmicks to make people pick his side… claiming discrimination and shunning by other people and the like… uh… oops, I said I’d stop. Hehe.)
3 monster // Aug 3, 2007 at 1:52 pm
I have lots of fun playing devil’s advocate… But I usually make it clear somewhere along the line that I’m just poking around to make things more interesting. If someone is being the skeptic in the conversation just to sound like a deep thinker, I tend to ignore the blimp and talk to someone else. Arguing with a drunk person is just as difficult.
A very cool book to read is “The Alphabet” by… O gats nou kan ek nie onthou nie! Anyway, it’s about each letter of the alphabet and traces it’s source and meanings from the beginning of written language. Very cool and very interesting - especially clears up a lot of things like “k vs c”; also cool to know that Julius Ceaser was spoken “yulius keiser”.
Woohoo demi-tyd!
4 Hugo // Aug 3, 2007 at 2:19 pm
Hehe, evil. You point me at a book, rather than just giving me the easy answer (w.r.t. skeptic vs sceptic). I will add it to my list of books I may want to read some day. Thanks!
5 monster // Aug 3, 2007 at 4:42 pm
Die 3e jaars wat ek demi kyk baie skepties na my… They smell fear.
Leave a Comment