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How To Teach a Healthy Dose of Skepticism?
c0d3h4x0r writes "It's no accident that 'whatcouldpossiblygowrong' is one of the most common tags applied by this community to stories about proposed ideas or laws. The ability to spot and predict faults is a big part of what makes a great engineer. It starts with having a healthy skepticism about the world, which leads to actual critical thinking. Many books and courses teach critical thinking skills, but what is the best way to encourage and teach someone to maintain a healthy dose of skepticism? Is it even a teachable skill, or is it just an innate part of the geek personality?"
Look buddy, I don't really care how many people believe in your fantasy creations of vague-to-the-point-of-meaningless abstractions like "God" is often portrayed (I doubt you can even coherently define what "God" is).
The ones earning a Nobel probably won't, party because there's a lot of things you can't do if you want a Nobel -- you won't have time for your family, and if you were the kind of person who puts family (or God) ahead of a career then you weren't going to do what it takes to get that Nobel Prize.
What is this nonsense? Trying to equate loving your family with loving a nebulously defined "thing"? And then trying to use it to bash people that got a Nobel prize...? Jealous much?
There's some very confused, vocal people that have made the issue rather annoying. My religion says nothing about the physical world, and my science says nothing about the supernatural.
We're not talking about the Phelps crew. We're actually talking about you and others like you.
There is no evidence or observation of a supernatural world. There is no reason to conclude such a "world" exists, and if it does, it is outside of our knowledge and we could not even begin to speculate on what it consists of; and here, you have not and almost certainly will not define exactly what the differences between the "supernatural" and "physical" world are. A meaningless, arbitrary distinction made by you in order to justify an idea you can't get out of your head--religion, or "God", or whatever.
Some people have no need for religion or spirituality. Some do. Some people have no need to understand the science behind the things around them. Some do. They're orthogonal issues.
If you need fantasy, magic, ghosts & goblins, and other unsubstantiated nonsense to get you through your life, I pity you, because you must have a really bad life to need to escape from reality and invent things that probably aren't there.
"Reality" as we know it is what we observe. If we did not observe it in some measure, whether it be directly or indirectly, then it's just another idea on the heap with no backing. You can wax on about gremlins and unicorns and disembodied cosmic intelligences with strangely anthropomorphic, human qualities, but unless you can show that they are a reality then belief, let alone action, in such things is completely unwarrented.
Actually, as a pro-God post/argument, it fails because it requires one to accept as premise that there is some reason to believe there is a god.
No it doesn't. It requires you to accept as a premis that 1) Crazy Taco believes in God 2) Crazy Taco has dual degrees in computer engineering and computer science and 3) Earning these degrees requires strong critical thinking and logical skills. Jeez, a poster a little up was right: some of you "OMG religion is teh stupiz!" types exemplify the exact lack of rationality and thinking that you accuse godists of.