A skeptic is someone who doesn't accept extraordinary or significant claims without enough proper valid evidence and verification. In other words, a skeptic is someone with high standards of (proper) evidence. In general, a skeptic either rejects or considers a claim undecided (and perhaps even undecidable) if it hasn't been supported and corroborated properly and satisfactorily, using proper methodology.
Proper skepticism is usually applied to scientific claims about the universe and physical phenomena, but it can also be applied to other things, such as socio-politics and human affairs. For example, in proper journalism this takes the form of research and fact-checking: Instead of rushing to publish something just because someone somewhere made a claim (which has become oh so common nowadays), the journalist does some research to check that there's enough corroborating evidence to warrant the claim. Did the event happen as claimed? Is there some bias in the reporting of the event? Is there some context or circumstances that we aren't seeing?
In the modern world a phenomenon has raised that we could perhaps call "YouTube skepticism", as a counter-reaction to modern far-leftist politics. This is people using the largest video sharing online service that exists, ie. YouTube, to make political commentary that's critical of politics and political activism. (Of course there are tons of more "traditional" skeptics who debunk pseudoscience, religion and so on.)
However, there are good skeptics and bad skeptics. And there's a rather effective "litmus test" to distinguish between the two:
A good skeptic should be unbiased, and apply the same standards of evidence to all claims, regardless of whether they align with his own socio-political views or not. A bad skeptic applies different standards of evidence depending on whether the claim is against or aligns with his own views. Sometimes he may literally apply no scrutiny and skepticism at all when it comes to claims (such as eg. news articles) that align with his personal views.
It's so easy and tempting to just take favorable claims as believable with no scrutiny and fact-checking. This even when the source of the claim is notoriously biased and unreliable (in either direction).
This is a form of confirmation bias. Evidence that confirms one own's conclusions and beliefs is accepted much more readily than evidence that goes against them. Different degrees of skepticism, ie. bias, is applied depending on that.
It's actually a bit funny, and ironic, to see famous YouTube skeptics cite eg. articles published by media corporations that the skeptic himself has berated for years for being highly biased and unreliable, and accept the claims made in these articles with zero secondary evidence and fact-checking, just because this time the claims happen to align with his own views.
We shouldn't succumb to this, no matter how tempting it is. Even when a claim is something we like, we should still apply the same standards of evidence to it as with everything else.
Proper skepticism is usually applied to scientific claims about the universe and physical phenomena, but it can also be applied to other things, such as socio-politics and human affairs. For example, in proper journalism this takes the form of research and fact-checking: Instead of rushing to publish something just because someone somewhere made a claim (which has become oh so common nowadays), the journalist does some research to check that there's enough corroborating evidence to warrant the claim. Did the event happen as claimed? Is there some bias in the reporting of the event? Is there some context or circumstances that we aren't seeing?
In the modern world a phenomenon has raised that we could perhaps call "YouTube skepticism", as a counter-reaction to modern far-leftist politics. This is people using the largest video sharing online service that exists, ie. YouTube, to make political commentary that's critical of politics and political activism. (Of course there are tons of more "traditional" skeptics who debunk pseudoscience, religion and so on.)
However, there are good skeptics and bad skeptics. And there's a rather effective "litmus test" to distinguish between the two:
A good skeptic should be unbiased, and apply the same standards of evidence to all claims, regardless of whether they align with his own socio-political views or not. A bad skeptic applies different standards of evidence depending on whether the claim is against or aligns with his own views. Sometimes he may literally apply no scrutiny and skepticism at all when it comes to claims (such as eg. news articles) that align with his personal views.
It's so easy and tempting to just take favorable claims as believable with no scrutiny and fact-checking. This even when the source of the claim is notoriously biased and unreliable (in either direction).
This is a form of confirmation bias. Evidence that confirms one own's conclusions and beliefs is accepted much more readily than evidence that goes against them. Different degrees of skepticism, ie. bias, is applied depending on that.
It's actually a bit funny, and ironic, to see famous YouTube skeptics cite eg. articles published by media corporations that the skeptic himself has berated for years for being highly biased and unreliable, and accept the claims made in these articles with zero secondary evidence and fact-checking, just because this time the claims happen to align with his own views.
We shouldn't succumb to this, no matter how tempting it is. Even when a claim is something we like, we should still apply the same standards of evidence to it as with everything else.
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