Michael Shermer
Michael Shermer
Michael Brant Shermeris an American science writer, historian of science, founder of The Skeptics Society, and Editor in Chief of its magazine Skeptic, which is largely devoted to investigating pseudoscientific and supernatural claims. The Skeptics Society currently has over 55,000 members. Shermer also engages in debates on topics pertaining to pseudoscience and religion in which he emphasizes scientific skepticism...
ProfessionScientist
Date of Birth8 September 1954
effectiveness skeptical supplements
One, I am skeptical of the effectiveness of nutritional supplements.
science thinking training
Anecdotal thinking comes naturally; science requires training.
eye thinking games
We think of our eyes as video cameras and our brains as blank tapes to be filled with sensory inputs.
plato historical facts
Plato wove historical fact into literary myth.
groups moral habit
Providentially, learned habits can be unlearned, especially in the context of moral groups.
community moral authority
We do not just blindly concede control to authorities; instead we follow the cues provided by our moral communities on how best to behave.
real ethos stories
When alien abductees recount to me their stories, I do not deny that they had a real experience.
numbers google algorithms
In comparison, Google is brilliant because it uses an algorithm that ranks Web pages by the number of links to them, with those links themselves valued by the number of links to their page of origin.
doe moral ethics
Accepting evolution does not force us to jettison our morals and ethics, and rejecting evolution does not ensure their constancy.
religious knowing tolerance
Myths, whether in written or visual form, serve a vital role of asking unanswerable questions and providing unquestionable answers. Most of us, most of the time, have a low tolerance for ambiguity and uncertainty. We want to reduce the cognitive dissonance of not knowing by filling the gaps with answers. Traditionally, religious myths have served that role, but today — the age of science — science fiction is our mythology.
hard-times intelligent simple
People have a hard time accepting free-market economics for the same reason they have a hard time accepting evolution: it is counterintuitive. Life looks intelligently designed, so our natural inclination is to infer that there must be an intelligent designer--a God. Similarly, the economy looks designed, so our natural inclination is to infer that we need a designer--a government. In fact, emergence and complexity theory explains how the principles of self-organization and emergence cause complex systems to arise from simple systems without a top-down designer.
ideas design brain
The concept of God is generated by a brain designed by evolution to find design in nature (a very recursive idea).
environmental flip global-warming
Because of the complexity of the problem, environmental skepticism was once tenable. No longer. It is time to flip from skepticism to activism.
glasses light space
A Hubble Space Telescope photograph of the universe evokes far more awe for creation than light streaming through a stained glass window in a cathedral.