One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back. – Carl Sagan
The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark is a 1995 book by the astrophysicist Carl Sagan and co-authored by Ann Druyan, in which the authors aim to explain the scientific method to laypeople – that’s us – and to encourage people – that’s everybody – to learn critical and skeptical thinking.
They share methods to help distinguish between ideas that are considered valid science and those that can be considered pseudoscience. [Think many conspiracy theories.]
Sagan states, when new ideas are offered for consideration, they should be tested by means of skeptical thinking and should stand up to rigorous questioning.
He’s crazy like that.
How can we make intelligent decisions about our increasingly technology-driven lives if we don’t understand the difference between the myths of pseudoscience and the testable hypotheses of science? Pulitzer Prize-winning author and distinguished astronomer Carl Sagan argues that scientific thinking is critical not only to the pursuit of truth but to the very well-being of our democratic institutions.
Casting a wide net through history and culture, Sagan examines and authoritatively debunks such celebrated fallacies of the past as witchcraft, faith healing, demons, and UFOs. And yet, disturbingly, in today’s so-called information age, pseudoscience is burgeoning with stories of alien abduction, channeling past lives, and communal hallucinations commanding growing attention and respect.
As Sagan demonstrates with lucid eloquence, the siren song of unreason is not just a cultural wrong turn but a dangerous plunge into darkness that threatens our most basic freedoms.
Publisher marketing spiel. I would not know if he actually ‘authoritatively debunked’ anything.
with lucid eloquence, the siren song of unreason
Nineteen-Fuckin’-Ninety-Five, people!!! 1995. 1995. 1. 9. 9. 5.
Checking my watch, I see the time right now is 2022.
Twenty-seven years ago. 27 years, James Dean, Steve Prefontaine, Janis Joplin, that’s an entire lifetime.
A Wednesday actually, hump day of a sometimes interminable week, right? But that’s not important.
What’s important is the ever metastasizing atavistic mob of pitchfork people, the White Christian Nationalists, the Nazis and SCOTUS and the Proud Boys, Kevin McCarthy and Marjorie Trailer Queen and Ginni Thomas, Tucker Carlson and the rest of the anti-science, anti-democracy, anti-truth cult, they need to be stopped.
Attention: All Old Not-Rich White Voters – You would not let these people hold your wallet nor babysit your grandchildren, don’t give them control of Medicare and Social Security.
Robbers go after the easiest money to steal.
I’m just sayin.’
Of course, 27 years from now, Don Jr.’s third term, your prodigy will all be wondering what the hell happened and wishing somebody has warned their grandparents. Wishing maybe their grandparents had listened just this fucking once.
Thinking maybe I should come back and haunt your ass for not speaking up before America fell.
Yeah. Me, too.