Karla McLaren

[ciphergoth]

Rarely have I hung on every word of an essay like I did with these two. A former prominent New Age speaker and author, Karla McLaren became a skeptic in 2004, and she has some very harsh words for the culture and communication of skeptics:

Bridging the Chasm between Two Cultures, the article she wrote for Skeptical Enquirer in 2004.

I have a selfish reason for asking these questions, because one of my first ideas was to make my own Web site a culturally sensitive portal to the skeptical sites - yet I cannot find a way to do so. I've got a Web page mock-up brewing in my files - a page that I've rewritten maybe fifty times or more-that tries to introduce the concept of skepticism in an open and nonthreatening way. I'd like to include links to the brilliant urban legends site (snopes.com), to Bob Carroll's online Skeptic's Dictionary (skepdic.com), to CSICOP and the Skeptical Inquirer (csicop.org), and to The Skeptic (skeptic.com). I also really wanted to include Quackwatch (quackwatch.org) and James Randi's site (randi.org) - but I just can't find the words. Sure, I can use my site to prepare people for the journey, but I know from experience that they would be in for quite a shock once they clicked on the links. I mean, it's one thing to find out that much of my culture and belief system was based on gossamer and hearsay, but it's another thing altogether to see people like myself being denigrated and pitied.

Her 2007 update

I wish she had a blog!

Comments

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

Interesting - could you give an example?

[altamira16.livejournal.com]

I think in one of his books Shermer discusses how he was an extreme cyclist. Extreme cycling and extreme marathons are basically see who can cycle/run the furthest without dying in 24 hours. These are absolutely nutty things to do. He has taken on his skepticism of everything with the same zeal.

For example, he goes and does something like this (http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/07-01-17.html). I mean it is okay to be skeptical, but you would think that skeptics would look at the sources of their information before swallowing stupid stuff whole.

I think Karla McLaren achieves a better balance than Shermer does.

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

Sadly, lots of people fall for hoaxes - how many people on your friends list fell for the story that there was a Happy Endings Foundation that planned to burn childrens books with unhappy endings?

Falling for a hoax can be very illustrative of your state of mind. It's interesting that people fell for the Sokal hoax, or a recent similar hoax on global warming denialists, because they shouldn't have found it plausible on the face of it and it's telling that they did.

Shermer should have checked his facts before forwarding this, yes. I wish I could say that Shermer should have seen it wasn't plausible on the face of it, but with the Republican war on science being what it is I'm not sure I can.

It sounds like you're saying that you expect a higher standard of care towards fact-checking from skeptics than from the general population, and that it's an indictment of skepticism as a philosophical position that individual skeptics don't meet this higher standard. I'm not sure that makes sense.

In any case, it's a long way from showing that skepticism needs less extremism. If anything, the problem you're showing here was that Shermer wasn't extremist enough.

[altamira16.livejournal.com]

Shermer isn't just falling for a hoax. He is propagating the hoax by publishing it in his magazine.

I am more concerned about doubt without any particular method behind it. For example, the global warming deniers doubt global warming not because there is evidence that supports them but because it doesn't fit with their political position. The evolution doubters are not doubting for any reason other than it doesn't fit in with their religious theory.

I want people who are going to go about doubting things to do it a little more scientifically.

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

Shermer isn't just falling for a hoax. He is propagating the hoax by publishing it in his magazine.

Sure, and that makes it worse, but how does that make it an illustration of extremism?

I want people who are going to go about doubting things to do it a little more scientifically.

Now you seem to be saying he doubts too much, but your example illustrates him not doubting enough.

[altamira16.livejournal.com]

I think that we are disconnecting on the language. Shermer didn't doubt enough if you are measuring depth of doubt and researching the source of the information he is trusting. My concern is more of breadth of doubt going from someone who believes whatever people tell them to instantly not believing anything anyone tells them.

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

Nevertheless the connection to extremist skepticism seems tenuous at best; being overprepared to believe the worst of the Bush government isn't necessarily anything to do with skepticism. Do you have a more direct example of how Shermer's skepticism is too extreme that might better illustrate the problem you're trying to highlight?

[altamira16.livejournal.com]

I don't know if it is extreme skepticism or his willingness to latch onto dumb ideas in the first place that bothers me. I feel he is wishy washy. For example, he was a global warming skeptic after reading one book until he listened to Al Gore (http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&colID=13&articleID=000B557A-71ED-146C-ADB783414B7F0000). He was a fundamentalist Christian until he was an athiest. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Shermer)