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Great post, Rupert! I'm a physicist by education and a software engineer by trade, and there's so much I don't know about both areas that it can be embarrassing. But as the Internet's favorite physicist said, "Religion is a culture of faith; science is a culture of doubt". Or maybe Feynman didn't actually say, I was not able to properly source the quote; what he did write is "It is imperative in science to doubt; it is absolutely necessary, for progress in science, to have uncertainty as a fundamental part of your inner nature." https://www.themarginalian.org/2015/05/11/richard-feynman-science-religion/ But I see that laypeople too often misuse skepticism against vaccines or evolution; I would encourage you to write a post specifically about how to use skepticism properly, even though you have already touched upon it in passing.

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Thanks, Alex!

Did you see this post? https://sharpenyouraxe.substack.com/p/suspend-judgement I also wrote a book about how skepticism can help us in the modern world: https://www.amazon.com/Sharpen-Your-Axe-debates-social-ebook/dp/B0BJ9LVFQ4/ref=sr_1_1?crid=31OJWIUEUHBA6&keywords=rupert+cocke&qid=1684606835&sprefix=ruper%2Caps%2C1487&sr=8-1

You're right, though. I should probably do another post on what skepticism actually means and how it can be misused.

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I don't think I had read your post, thanks! It's quite interesting. I will also read the book. I think there's still room for properly handling the wonderful tool that is skepticism. For instance, I've seen (as you no doubt) people say they were "exercising critical thinking", "doing their own research" and "being skeptic" during the COVID-19 crisis, which led them to believe that vaccines were useless if not downright harmful -- obviously they were just cargo-culting skepticism. And it seems to be a double-edged axe.

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Absolutely! If you're skeptical about just one thing (in this case, vaccines), then you're a denialist or a pseudo-skeptic. If you want to be a true skeptic, then you have to also be skeptical about anti-vax narratives. The hardest thing of all is being skeptical about the emotions that make people distrustful of the medical establishment in the first place. Cheers!

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