“The business of skepticism is to be dangerous. Skepticism challenges established institutions. If we teach everybody, including, say, high school students, habits of skeptical thought, they will probably not restrict their skepticism to UFOs, aspirin commercials, and 35,000-year-old channelees. Maybe they’ll start asking awkward questions about economic, or social, or political, or religious institutions. Perhaps they’ll challenge the opinions of those in power. Then where would we be?”
— Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World
h/t to Andy Oz
FREE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfqRPfhxUdc
A generation of rebellious philosophers and scientists has passed.
Good point!
Sagan was wrong about Venus, so I doubt his opinions on scepticism.
Oh, wait …
Please note, Sagan left out science from his list of things to be skeptical about–that list is a science consensus defender’s list. He was a self-serving fool, raised on high by fawning fools. He was an academic, raised on the consensus and blindly loyal to it, and it was his voice that got climate science into the current mess.
Jeez, you must have read the wrong books, or listened to the wrong broadcaster! Check out some of Sagan’s lectures on Skepticism!
If he were alive, he would have changed to a skeptic once he
saw the shoddy science going on. Feinman would have been
a skeptic the whole time. I miss them both.
Proof once again that even the most brilliant minds can be completely and utterly clueless in one or more aspects of their thinking. If Sagan were right, there’d be no need for elections, because voting for someone else would be like being skeptical of the incumbent.
Sincerely, I hope he was being satirical
Sums it up:
Ok.. that did’t work.. try this:
http://www.evilmilk.com/pictures/Modern_Education.jpg
If we challenged economic institutions (the fed, IMF, BIS) we might not have had the GFC, global poverty and war or the Great Depression to come.
If we challenged social institutions we might not have had the problems with the Boy Scouts, Police killings, CIA drug trafficking and gun running, or scientific fraud.
If we challenged religious institutions, the Catholic Church might still have some respect instead of being a protector of peadophiles.
Political institutions??? Enuf said!
Reblogged this on Climatism.
Reblogged this on The Firewall.
Mark Twain said it better, “Don’t believe anything that you hear and only half of what you read.”