Discussion about this post

User's avatar
Jean Hill's avatar

Got me in one. Fascinating to learn about so many other cosmologies. Great tool for prompting conversation and hopefully understanding, tolerance, humility.

Expand full comment
Steve Roth's avatar

I’m pegged as Unconventional Skeptic:Open Skeptic. Fine as far as it goes, which ain’t far, and I balk at the focus on “skeptic.” Cause everybody’s skeptical of things they don’t believe.

For me it’s much more focused on being completely comfortable knowing that I don’t know and don’t think I’ll ever or can know a lot, especially the big stuff. (There’s this guy Socrates who said something like this, I think, right…?) Puts the focus on fascinated curiosity. And hence having a good dose of impatience with people claiming they can/do know that kinda stuff.

And of course especially when their stated beliefs are patent nonsense based on centuries of work by vastly-more-grounded, (experimentally-)researched knowers. (God bless 'em.) Science can't tell us *nearly* everything, and never will. But the scientific method is the best, maybe only, antidote we've got to our seemingly innate and ubiquitous desire to fool ourselves. I am in no way immune, but I do really hate it when I catch myself fooling myself. It's the antithesis of true curiosity, which I genuinely love. I dunno, maybe I was born that way.

Expand full comment
56 more comments...

No posts