Skepticism – Shawn's Hobbies

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Brain Fails: <insert description here>

Media literacy: how to lie with facts, and how to turn watching comercials in to a fun and exciting! learning game. (Hint: think of how may ways you can mislead people with what was said. In other words, how many ways what was said could be true. Eg. “Canada’s largest LTE Network.” Say Apricot Wireless has 60% LTE coverage. Meanwhile Bee Mobility has 40% LTE coverage. Which would you prefer? what if AW only has 60% total cell phone coverage? Meanwhile BM has 90% coverage? Probably depends on how much travel you do.)

Lying with statistics. (Average (mean) is meaningless if you don’t know the mode, median and distribution.) Eg. the average man is taller than the average woman. But most men and women are the same height.

Brain Fails

Page Under Construction This page has not been edited or fact checked yet. Our brains are not perfect. They cannot handle the complexity of human life. Our brains of certain heuristics or short cuts to help them get along in the world. These work sometimes, but fail other times. One day I found something Buster...

Lies-to-children

Lies-to-children are when something is simplified to explain a concept. It's wrong, but it leads the learner to a more correct understanding than they head. Examples: Electrons go around the nucleus of an atom like planets is a lie told to elementary school children. In high school science the lie is that each orbit has...

Anti-Intellectualism

Anti-intellectualism is hostility towards and mistrust of intellect, intellectuals, and intellectual pursuits, usually expressed as the derision of education, philosophy, literature, art, and science, as impractical and contemptible. Alternatively, self-described intellectuals who are alleged to fail to adhere to rigorous standards of scholarship may be described as anti-intellectuals although pseudo-intellectualism is a more commonly, and...

Conspiracy Theories

A conspiracy is a secret plan to achieve some goal. Its members are known as conspirators. A conspiracy theory originally meant the theory pre-formed conclusion that an event or phenomenon was the result of conspiracy; however, from the mid-1960s onward, it is often used to denote ridiculous, misconceived, paranoid, unfounded, outlandish or irrational theories. (From...