Archive for the ‘Skeptical Mindsets’ Category
Wednesday Wild Card: Naked
Wednesdays? Anything goes, really.
If you have never added the “StumbleUpon” toolbar to your web browser (and as much as I don’t want to endorse something I’m not getting payback on!) it is a handy little tool for a kind of targeted randomized discovery on the web. Yesterday, for example, I set the toolbar to hit up parenting websites, and clicked through a dozen articles of various quality before I found one particular gem upon which it was worth commenting.[1] In particular, the article called “Potty-training in a Weekend” reminded me of a conversation I had back in February with some fellow parents who were still getting over the curious shock when they discovered their older siblings (in-law) were making use of the so-called “birthday suit method for toilet training:
“Some parents find that the fastest way to move past the diaper days is to set aside a few days devoted solely to potty-training. Some folks call it the birthday suit method, because it involves letting your little one run around with little or nothing on.”[1]
Leadership: Growth Minds Versus Static Minds
As election season abounds around me, I am thinking more about leadership than usual. Fast Company semi-recently published a book review (Mind-set: The New Psychology of Success by Carol Dweck) in an article about leadership.[1] Though, I cannot speak for the book, the article seemed to have more to say on the subjects of intelligence and critical thought than on the subject at hand — which was, incidentally, how to be a good leader. This is not exactly a criticism. In fact, wouldn’t the world be a better place were leadership and intelligence not so often perceived as opposites. Rather, it was that the article was attempting to imply a connection between the perception of intelligence by individuals to their actions in leadership roles that I picked up on the topic for my own analysis.
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Gaming and Critical Thought (Survey)
I’ve started writing a series of posts about gaming and critical thought in kids. When I think of gaming — as I’m sure do many others — I think of cracking open a cardboard box and extracting a board, dice, cards, tokens, bits, pieces, and often a crisp sheet of rules. But I don’t want to limit my definition to that. A handful of dice, a deck of cards, or a pencil and paper can be the basis for the simplest game. And it goes from there to anything increasingly more complex than that…
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What is Skepticism?
If you have stumbled upon this blog from some random web search looking for (as the otherwise-anonymous statistics suggest) information on playing music to your baby in the womb, optical illusions for kids, or even (on rare instance) banjo lessons, you may be wondering what exactly you have found in this site. I’ve tried to explain my own interpretation of capital-S Skepticism in my own little About Page by writing: Defined, skepticism is a method of rigorous thought where one suspends judgment, systematically doubts, and thinks critically about new ideas before accepting them as truths. But others, far more seasoned than I, have elaborated and pontificated much more deeply than I on the topic.
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Avoiding Logical Fallacies: Presuming Causation
The story so far: My pal, Victor Dillweed, has a time traveling baseball cap. He calls it his Chrono-Hat, and when he wears it he can travel backwards and forwards through time, visiting the far future and the ancient past. His visits are instantaneous, ephemeral, and he can only make a return journey if he comes back empty handed. Or so he claims. These rules, after all, leave him a little short on hard evidence. As usual, the skep/kids (Winston and Julia) and I attempt to debunk his claims — but this time around make the mistake of presuming causation.
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Avoiding Logical Fallacies:
Argument from Authority
The story so far: My pal, Victor Dillweed, has a time traveling baseball cap. He calls it his Chrono-Hat, and when he wears it he can travel backwards and forwards through time, visiting the far future and the ancient past. His visits are instantaneous, ephemeral, and he can only make a return journey if he comes back empty handed. Or so he claims. These rules, after all, leave him a little short on hard evidence. As usual, the skep/kids (Winston and Julia) and I attempt to debunk his claims — but this time around make the mistake of the Argument from Authority.
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Avoiding Logical Fallacies: ad hominem
The story so far: My pal, Victor Dillweed, has a time traveling baseball cap. He calls it his Chrono-Hat, and when he wears it he can travel backwards and forwards through time, visiting the far future and the ancient past. His visits are instantaneous, ephemeral, and he can only make a return journey if he comes back empty handed. Or so he claims. These rules, after all, leave him a little short on hard evidence. As usual, the skep/kids (Winston and Julia) and I attempt to debunk his claims — but this time around make the mistake of ad hominem.
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Home for the Holidays
With only a few days until Christmas my mind is aflutter with the nuances of balancing three things: (1) Appeasing an extended family who looks to their own deeply spiritual essence for the holidays, (2) keeping my daughter’s first “Visit from Santa” special, but still low-key and (3) my own skeptical need for some secular seasonal substitutes. For those veering away from superstition, the holidays can be a troubling time; For skeptics with family and kids, it is a heart-wrenching time of year altogether.
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The skep/dad blog is a place for rational, science-minded fathers to express their thoughts, opinions, and ideas about bringing up kids to be critical thinking adults in a world filled with superstition, mysticism, and pseudoscience.
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Brad adds: As of October 2007, I'm soliciting interest for skeptics in the Edmonton, Alberta, Canada area who are interested in forming a skeptical society to contact me. Please do so through this blog or via Facebook (through the Edmonton Skeptical Society Group).
Or visit our new website: www.edmontonskeptics.org - You’re basically killing each other to see who’s got the better imaginary friend.- Richard Jeni
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