 Thank you, Andy, for my gosh, for this event, not just the introduction. You know, I'm sort of a veteran of putting on these sorts of events, so I know they don't come easily, and they don't come by accident, and so please join me in thinking this team of volunteers putting on this fantastic event. Thank you. As Andy said, I am president of the James Randy Educational Foundation, founded, of course, by James Randy, some 16 years ago in the United States, and this is my third year as president of the foundation. I really enjoyed the last three years immensely. I loved meeting skeptics around the world. Of course, the past 15 years I've been involved in skepticism and atheist activism, and these are some of the best people you want to run with. I want to talk before I get into the real meat of my presentation. I want to give just a quick overview of some of the new exciting things we're doing at the JREF, because it occurred to me in conversation with folks this weekend how many of us actually aren't up on all the, I think, really cool exciting things happening at the JREF. So we've started publishing books on skepticism for the iPad, Kindle, and Nook. We're hoping to reach new audiences, not just talk to people who already believe just like us. In addition to old texts that are out of print, we're trying to revive them classic texts in the history of skepticism. These are some of our titles. We have a number of other titles stuffed in the pipes that should be out soon. We do other fun things like free regional workshops in the United States, trainings for grassroots groups. We have skeptic smartphone apps, audio and video podcasts. You may have heard my new show. It's called For Good Reason. Or before that, Point of Inquiry hosted 200-plus episodes of that founded with my partner, Thomas Donnelly, way back in 2005. We also support at the JREF the wonderful skeptics guide to the universe. And my jaw drops anywhere I go in the world. I ask sort of the icebreaker question, so how'd you get involved in this racket? And no matter where I'm, skeptics, pub gathering or cocktail party or something, invariably someone will say, I first heard of skepticism through skeptics guide to the universe. Friday night someone from Germany said, I got involved because of skeptics guide. So this is the power of new media, new digital media, and I'm optimistic about it. The JREF has the 14th most subscribed nonprofit channel in YouTube history, so we're trying to reach new folks with digital media that way as well. So if you don't subscribe to our podcasts or our YouTube channel, be sure to, I invite you to, and you can get to all of that at randy.org. Of course, we put on TAM the amazing meeting, which is the largest skeptical gathering of its kind in the world. We had nearly 1,700 registrants to the event last year in Vegas. It's really become a four-day celebration of science and reason. So it's a big event. We have a lot of fun. Though we're relatively a small nonprofit as far as nonprofits go into the United States, I'm happy to say that we were able to help just under 100 people come to TAM last year for free through grants and scholarships. We have some of the, just really the leading lights on our program every year in addition to trainings and workshops and panels and evening shows. TAM is not unlike QED. It's a couple days longer. But if you love QED, I think you will love TAM. There's Bill Nye, the science guy, having some fun. Other speakers we have. Last year, our keynote was Neil deGrasse Tyson. Just like at QED, a thing that sets apart TAM from non-skeptic conferences is that the speakers love to spend time with the attendees. There's a real fellow feeling among the people on the program and the people coming to see it. Let's see, what else? At the JREF, really following Randy's lead, and he's involved now going after charlatans and paranormal claimants. As an example, the celebrity psychics and the tradition of Randy's really foundational work in this, we were just featured in a national television program in the United States, where for the first time in TV history in the United States, on primetime TV, we actually tested a number of psychic claimants for the million dollars, the million dollar challenge. There was no preliminary test. The million dollars was on the table. It was on the line. And I'm happy to say, according to the Nielsen report, we got back the ratings report, some 4.5 million people tuned in to see some really spectacular cognitive dissonance happen on TV. So, at the end of one of these psychic claimants not passing the test, she looked in the camera and she was earnest and she said, well, my gosh, maybe I don't have this ability. And I think that's rather spectacular when that sort of stuff happens. We recently focused on celebrity psychic medium, James Von Prague, in the United States. Unlike even psychic Sally, I find what he does to be even more reprehensible because he's not glib and it's not kind of light. He's not saying light things. He's dealing with people when they're at their lowest and when they're bereaved. So, we challenged him with the million dollar challenge, rather than just taking applications, waiting for people to apply for the million dollar challenge. Sometimes we'll make it sort of a media event where we challenge them to take our tests. And of course, he wouldn't return our calls. He wouldn't return the calls of the media who asked him about it. So, we did a stunt where we brought some dead people to his event. Now, he says he talks to dead people. He wouldn't talk to us. He wouldn't talk to the media. So, we brought some dead people to his spirit circle where he charges big money to talk to people's dead relatives. We brought some dead people. I should say, undead people. We brought undead people to his spirit circle. Zombies. And this action against James von Prague, won media attention in the United States and the LA Times and Forbes, many other places. And the video that we did along with it, we're having to say it became sort of viral and it's online. You should see it on our YouTube channel. I think it's funny. I'm proud of it. And I invite you to see it. I was going to show it here, but I don't want this to be too much a commercial for the JRF. Speaking of it not being too much a commercial, let me continue. We started coming out with free curriculum modules for educators to teach critical thinking in the classroom using investigation of the paranormal to do so. One of our classroom kits is designed to allow students to figure out for themselves if ESP is real. They test, they go through ESP tests in the classroom, very hands-on. And through the examination of the evidence through these carefully designed experiments, they learn the scientific method attached to national science standards. So they learn how to be on guard against experiment or bias, against fraud. They learn a bit about statistical analysis. So students, the point is they're exploring science by investigating the paranormal as opposed to just being told this paranormal claim is nonsense. So we're trying to advance critical thinking rather than just debunk. We're happy to say that our modules, our curriculum modules are in the hands of hundreds of educators in the United States now, and they're getting implemented in the real world of high school and junior high educational settings. You can get these resources online for free. We have one on the Covington Ferries. It's on the screen. Now that module explores through experiment and analysis the power of celebrity endorsement in popular belief. So it's hands-on but also helps students investigate, really draw a parallel. If a celebrity says vaccines cause autism, how is that like when a celebrity said the Covington Ferries were real? And of course I'm talking about Arthur Conan Doyle in that instance. We have a new module coming out on dowsing and the idiomotor effect that should be out this next week. And this students explore in a hands-on way the self-deception that occurs when they use the idiomotor effect, whether that's with pendulums or dowsing. And then we attach their experiment to see if dowsing works with relevant real-life examples of how the government of the UK and the United States have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in recent years on fake dowsing rods as bomb detectors and now the government of Mexico is using similar fake dowsing rods at drug checkpoints and people are being arrested based on suspicions using these fake gizmo dowsing rods. So again, all these resources are available for free at randy.org. New ones are in development on astrology, homeopathy, probability again, all hands-on and we're really excited about this project. You can get it all at randy.org. So the million-dollar challenges are big. It's the jewel in our crown, as it were. We know that offering a million dollars for someone to prove their psychic or other paranormal abilities, that's not really how science is done, but a little educational nonprofit uses the process of challenging someone with a million dollars or accepting applications to be tested for the million dollars as a way to raise awareness about both the claims and the general public's responsibility not to be beguiled by them. So enough for the spiel, but I invite you to get involved with all of these new projects. We're excited about them and they succeed only to the extent that people with the grassroots can work with us to advance these initiatives at the local level. So the title of my talk in the program is how to be a bad skeptic and I have to, I'm a little chagrined, but maybe there's something lost in the Skype conversation. That's an error. The title of my talk is not how to be a bad skeptic. I'm going to draw on my vast experience as an expert skeptic to talk sort of inside baseball. This is a departure from some of the other programming this weekend. The title of my talk should be how to be a rad skeptic and for those of you unfamiliar with beautiful American English, rad means great, right? Or even excellent to the point of perfection. So if you want to really think about the point of my talk, you should think about it in these terms. I'm going to share with you how to be a perfect skeptic. There we are. So I was thinking about what could I give this audience unique? And I looked back at my 15 years of vast experience in the skeptics movement. My deep experience and knowledge regarding being a perfect, a perfect skeptic. And I came up with a number of directives that I'm going to offer to you today so that you can adopt then in your neophyte skepticism and aspire to become a perfect skeptic like I am and all do in modesty. So over the years I've traveled the U.S. and abroad giving all sorts of talks on skeptic topics. Today it's inside baseball. It's kind of the inside scoop on how to be as good a skeptic as I am. So here's the first little morsel, the gem. And if you're going to remember one directive I give you today, it's this first one. I'm just going to have to... I'm having a problem with my notes here. You need to realize that skepticism is really best when used as a weapon and not as a shield. So you're given skepticism by the leading skeptics in our movement like myself in order so that you can be soldiers in the fight against unreason. This means that you need to go out there and clean up other people's nonsense thinking and what better way to do it than with the weapon, the sword of skepticism. Now since you're already a skeptic, you've already sort of signed on the dotted line, you don't need to use skepticism to clean up your own thinking because after all since you're a skeptic you already think straight. So this brings me to my next point in these valuable lessons given my vast experience in skepticism. If you want to be a perfect skeptic you need to foster the Mensa Effect, what I've called for years the Mensa Effect. It goes like this. One skeptic in the pub says, well I'm a skeptic and therefore I'm really smart and therefore I'm right. And you're all skeptics so you're smart, therefore you should know that I'm right. That's the Mensa Effect. You must foster it. It's the way, in fact, we spread around the fact that we're right. And you should act like you're right. Proudly and loudly foster the Mensa Effect. It's the skeptic's best and most valuable friend. Connected to the Mensa Effect is the need for skeptics to work very hard to clean up skepticism. And this is for the good of us all, for the good of skepticism. This means you must constantly be vigilant and on guard against others not being pure skeptics or letting woo-woo creep into their skepticism. So do not shy away from using phrases like you're not a true skeptic. And by all means make sure that your fellow skeptic is pure and not polluted by any belief that doesn't flow necessarily out of your skepticism that you've adopted. So as I've worked to try to distill down my experience to help you in your path, I, you know, I'm trying to come up with principles to help you in your fledgling skepticism. I want to switch gears a bit and talk about what I've learned about dealing with, can I say, our cultural competitors, our enemies. And by enemy, I only mean the enemy of reason, right? I mean personally, in fact an enemy of reason to me is much worse than a personal enemy. So for the sake of the movement and for skepticism it's very important that we don't get swept up in the sort of Christian notion of loving the sinner and hating the sin. When it comes to unreason, to empathize with the unreasonable, to feel for the unreasonable, to try to figure out why they're there in that place, why they have that lot in life, lowers your defenses and weakens your arguments, empathy weakens your skepticism. So show little mercy when it comes to those spouting nonsense. This is especially important when dealing with claims that are central beliefs and very cherished and personally deeply felt. Beliefs like dead loved ones, the afterlife, personal health and medical decisions. So the point is the only way that you're going to get through to people is by calling a spade a spade and refusing at all costs to coddle the weak-minded, refusing at all costs to empathize. Sort of connected with how important it is to refuse at all costs to empathize is that you should refuse to evangelize when it comes to your skepticism. For those of you who are former Christians like I am, you know that evangelizing just means to spread the good news, but since we're skeptics, we realize we don't actually have any good news to spread. We can't exactly... I very encourage that all of you seem to agree and you're with me on this. We can't exactly go door-to-door to join our wrong, everything you believe is wrong and you're an idiot. That's not going to work. So because evangelizing doesn't work, refuse at all costs to do it. Let me step back just a bit. Evangelizing does work, but only for cults and sects, not for science and reason and skepticism. Sort of connected and flowing out of that point is how we should issue marketing. We should emphatically reject it at all costs. Skeptics should pay no attention to their audiences, but only pay attention to the facts because the facts are all that matter. True and perfect skeptics, they should realize that the facts are all that we care about and facts are really a one-size-fits-all solution because the truth at all costs no matter how painful. When I'm talking about marketing, by the way, I'm really getting at this silly, manby, pamby sort of communication strategy stuff that's coming from some of the social scientists. Let's just admit that soft science and not hard science and those social scientists who are talking communication strategies, we know what they're really talking about. They're talking about manipulating people and skepticism is above that tactic. We're really against that. The take-home message with this point is that adults shouldn't need a spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down. We should just speak the truth and if you do it loud enough and long enough, people will buy it. So as you probably know from any libertarian in this room or Marxist in this room or feminist or GLBT activist like myself or vegetarian last night, there were a few of us at dinner, if you've talked to them about their skepticism, you may have learned that these other positions necessarily flow out of their skepticism. It's obvious then that everyone else should adopt those other positions. So for me, this means that I know if you're going to be a perfect skeptic, you also need to become a left libertarian, vegetarian, gay activist like I am. You need to make it your life's goal to stamp out homophobia. You need to adopt well-being consequentialism like Peter Singer pushes because that necessarily flows out of my skepticism. It's a necessary result, I'm saying necessary because if you just take your skepticism to a logical conclusion, you will agree with me about these positions. And since you know that skepticism leads to the true take on these other social issues, even on things like, you know, some people still fight about global warming or environmentalism or economic theories is Hayek right or is it Keynes ethical and social issues. Well, we know that skepticism is the way to arrive at the one true answer on any of these questions. In fact, if you're going to be a perfect skeptic, you should tell skeptics, in fact, and this is, I know this is going to be a bit controversial, but if you want to be a perfect skeptic, this is the next logical step. You need to tell skeptics to stop focusing on trivial paranormal matters and instead deal with other more important matters like sexual and racial inequality, poverty, class, economics, all the other social issues that merit our attention much more than whether or not a ghost exists or a lake monster or even God. Connected to this, I noticed the mood of the room just kind of changed a bit. Connected to this, you should realize that the history of the last 30 years of the skeptics movement is irrelevant and you should really not let it become a distraction for you. When I say the history of skepticism, organized skepticism, I don't just mean who has done what with which paranormal claim. I mean the arguments in the last 35 years among people like Carl Sagan and Randy and others about say the scope of skepticism and what should we be focused on and what shouldn't we be focused on and should skepticism apply to every claim or should we in order they say to be more effective or whatever kind of put our blinders on and only deal with testable claims. I say hogwash to that. You don't need to know why historically it was that leading skeptics have tried to avoid politics and why as a mix between science educators and newer advocates, those men years ago, again, Sagan, Randy, Isaac Asimov, Paul Kurtz, others, why they thought it was best to steer clear of these social issues that skeptics might, they said, get distracted about or divided over, et cetera. Along these lines, if you want to be a perfect skeptic these days, you need to realize that there's no meaningful difference, there's a significant contrast between skepticism, atheism, and humanism. Indeed, they are all of a piece. They're one and the same, and anyone who tries to deceive you by saying there are differences between those three, even if they're continuous and related, well, they aren't true skeptics. Look at a previous point I made, you'll understand. So again, Sagan, Randy, others over the years who've said this sort of line, they were just fooling themselves, and I'm here to say it right now, none of them were true skeptics. In fact, it should be obvious right now that skepticism leads necessarily to atheism. And while I'm an equal opportunity skeptic, oh, that was so courageous. I am an equal opportunity skeptic, and speaking honestly right now, I wouldn't want you to think I was being dishonest earlier. But, you know, I think you should equally apply skepticism to ghosts and the Holy Ghost, to God and UFOs and any silly, strained claim. It is true that historically the JREF has focused only on testful claims of paranormal and pseudoscience, and I was formally of the opinion that nonprofits are best when they limit their scope and they don't try to do everything and if they try to be all things to all men, sometimes they dilute their effectiveness. But I've been persuaded on this point and I think all of us should be everything. And in fact, it stands to reason that if you're not an atheist, you can't be a proper skeptic. People like Martin Gardner and others in the history of skepticism were deists or believed in Spinoza's God or believed in panentheism or pantheism. Well, in a really obvious sense, they were an anomaly and shouldn't matter at all for contemporary skepticism right now. Next point, and I think this is a really important one, don't be alarmed, realize that our movement, our cause already has all the spokespeople it needs. We certainly don't need any more writers, magicians for God's sake, podcasters, bloggers, we don't need any paranormal investigators, we have enough. You fit best in skepticism when you're a consumer of our product rather than competing with us and trying to advance skepticism on your own. Now the flip side of the coin here is if you're rebellious enough and you aspire to actually sort of advance skepticism on your own, say you want to become skeptophamous, you should realize you don't actually need any real expertise or training to do so. What I mean by that is you just need a deep commitment to the truth and you need ambition, and that's all. No special training. It does not take any special expertise to advance skepticism, just a commitment to telling other people that they're wrong. You do not need to learn proper investigative methods if you're going to investigate a paranormal case. You don't need to learn about the methods of psychics if you're going to debunk them if the local media calls you and they ask you how that local medium did her or his feet. You merely need to say she was a fraud. You don't need to know anything about the psychological processes or the manipulative techniques that these hucksters may be using. I think you get the point there. Here's a good one that you need to comprehend as a perfect skeptic. You are a besieged minority as a skeptic. You are a cognitive minority or what Christopher Hitchens I appreciated when he called us a cognitive elite, and I honestly sort of agree with that. Racial and sexual minorities, they've had their day in the sun, right? They've all fought for their rights. Now it is our time as skeptics. Skeptics of the world unite. That is my clarion call. We need to start fighting for our rights. Since everybody else got their rights, it's our turn now. Very important if you're going to be a perfect skeptic. Don't be distracted in your skepticism by all of this talk, my God, this exhausting talk about diversity. Skepticism is for us. It's not for everyone. It's only really for us. Just for people like us. Smart, generally. Middle-class, generally. Generally male, generally white. Generally straight, Randy and me accepted. Consider that the last tan having 50% women on the program and 40% paid registrants, that was sort of just a fluke, right? It's an accident. We don't know how it happened. It certainly wasn't the result of hard work, outreach and strategic decisions. Now, the last and honestly the most important thing that you should get from me based on my vast experience as a leader in the skeptics movement gained over these many years, 15 years now, is please, if you want to be a good skeptic, do the exact opposite of every single thing I've said today. Thank you. It looks like we do have a couple of minutes if anyone wants to challenge my authority. I wouldn't advise it. But are there any questions? Maybe not. Maybe this is just so comprehensive. Please, if you could approach the microphone in the center aisle. They usually need a little encouragement, DJ. So could somebody go first, please? It's usually the problem. I do have a check. Incidentally, after the talk, out at the table, we have a limited number of the million dollar challenge checkbooks available for you, some other things, some stickers, some other things. So be sure to avail yourselves of that. So a couple of questions here. Yeah, just move it over. Yeah, that's fine. Tell us your name first and then I'll ask you a question. My name is Linda. Having been a bad skeptic and put a few people's backs up, is there anything I can do to be a better skeptic in the future? Because I've now got people who just say, oh, you're one of those people who disagrees with everything and blah, blah. I love that question. So put everything I said aside, obviously. I'm going to get out of that role. I love the question. And not only because I identify with it so personally, I came up through a fundamentalist church. I went away to Bible college. I became an atheist at Bible college. Ditaro has this great line, nothing like a good Jesuit education to make you an atheist. I got a liberal arts education, became a skeptic. And the first few years, there wasn't kind of, I don't want to disparage the process, but there wasn't honest engagement with people who disagreed. There was just headbutting. And it's almost like that's developmentally appropriate, where you just want to tell everybody how wrong they are. And I don't want to sound supercilious for real now by talking about stages of development, but I think a mature skeptic realizes, my gosh, people are going to believe unlike us, I think that science and reason are the root to arriving at the truth. But the advice to you in answer to your question is first, don't be hard on yourself, right? People say, oh, you only ever like to disagree. Sometimes that's just fun. You know, skeptic pub gatherings, we like to debate, and I think there's something beneficial to that. And the second suggestion I'd have is without soft peddling without backing up from the argument that you have about this or that claim, really do the hardest thing that it's for any of us to do and that's to put yourself in the other person's shoes to empathize. One person we're very best at empathizing with is ourselves, right? And so a good kind of thought experiment is how many of you have friends of a world view very different than yours? Or are we sort of ghetto-ized and only hang out with our tribe, our kind? And if you say that you don't know anyone who's a fundamentalist or into the new age, you might be for my taste maybe, you might be a little too sectarian in your skepticism. If you can't go out and hang out with someone who believes I'm like you, you might want to work on that empathy thing a bit. I'm Caroline, I'm going to do something which is probably bad skeptic, which is to ask you something that's probably slightly irrelevant to what you've been talking about, but was motivated by the fact that no one else got up at the time I did. And also as a statistician, I should probably know the answer to this, how has the possibility been looked at as to whether somebody could pass the psychic test by chance? Yes, in fact that's something that we wring our hands over a lot because we neither want to make, when I came aboard as President of the JREF, it was my sense that our bar was too high for the million dollar challenge. I think we deserved our lumps when psychic said you can't even win that thing, it's just a publicity stunt. Well it is a publicity stunt, but I don't want it to just be a publicity stunt. I think it would be fantastic for science and for the JREF if we uncovered real paranormal ability somehow right, through the process of challenging and accepting these applications to be tested. So our goal statistically is to find that sweet spot where we reduce the likelihood of a false positive we don't want someone without an ability to win our million dollars that's bad for a little non-profit with a limited endowment right. But neither do we want someone really with an ability to get a false negative. So in answer to the question we work on that and the protocol that we develop with claimants has both of those goals in mind not just the first, it is not only important that we don't lose our million dollars, it's important that if someone really has an ability that we can uncover it through the tests. I hope that answers the question. Here he is. The prof. I'm only here because he said I had to I didn't really have a question and I want to check. Thank you. I do, I do. On a less serious note obviously everyone here is skeptical but everybody is hidden on the street, how do you know who's skeptical and who's credulous? Can you suggest some type of uniform we can wear? In the United States So we've strategized that the James Rand educational foundation a lot about this and we've decided uniforms are out but we have developed a secret handshake and if you'd like to learn it you can you can meet me at. Another question. Elizabeth Donnelly One of the things you mentioned which I think is very relevant is that some people see our movement as you have to be clever to be a skeptic and a lot of us are clever and there's nothing wrong with that and I relish the fact that I'm in a room with a lot of clever people but how do we reach out to people who may not believe in God or who want to be critical thinkers but who think that we're erecting quite serious barriers if you can't join us you can't understand what we talk about unless you're clever too. That's an incredible important question. So I was jesting a bit earlier when I was just talking about trivial topics. Look I actually think skepticism and the topics we treat are not trivial in fact they touch on the most important aspects of our lives, life after death, the central beliefs that we all share. Some people do as you get from what I suggested in my jokie talk some people do suggest oh you skeptics that's trivial you should worry about these other issues instead there is a point I reject that in its final kind of argument but the initial point of sound which is skepticism has to be relevant and how can skepticism of the paranormal or pseudoscience be relevant if you're trying to reach people who aren't just the smarty pants now I don't want to sound elitist there but there are communities that are preyed upon that would benefit from skepticism and our argument is really that skepticism is for everyone you don't need to be some college educated white European male to get and benefit from skepticism so as examples the James Randi Educational Foundation this next, well this isn't the best example socioeconomically speaking but this next summer we're going to have a table at the Los Angeles Pride Festival this big gay rainbows I guess they're maybe even balloons or something this big event I've been to it many times I love this event celebration of gay pride and we're going to have a table on skepticism now how do you square that circle why would skeptics be at a gay pride event well just so happens there's a lot of pseudoscience in the GLBT world both pseudoscience about causes of AIDS say or recovery from homosexuality so we can really address from a skeptical perspective relevant issues that aren't really always on the list of traditional the great hits of skepticism other examples include socioeconomically disadvantaged folks preyed upon by people like Peter Popov and the infomercials to max out your credit cards send in a donation and he will give you a supernatural bankruptcy and God will pay your bills that's the sales pitch in these infomercials in the United States now we spend our energy going after the hupsters after the claimants but we also try to educate those who are harmed by the claims so I hope that answers the question it's not just about ghosts and UFOs I thought about when you make your points there's a danger of having too much group think we are skeptics and during this conference there's been many references where the speakers have served the audience you use reason and facts to come to your conclusions more than other people some variety of that and when I hear that I think well that's what my insurance salesman tells me the car salesman and I get nervous what he's trying to sell me when he says I'm clever and I think there's a danger so what is the question please how do we fight that group think that we are better than the others great question the last slide that I showed was do the opposite of everything else I said my first slide was skepticism is best as a weapon not as a shield so the opposite of that is skepticism is best when itself applied and the big bad news for all of us to kind of fess up to is that skeptics are often really bad skeptics and we go around congratulating ourselves about how smart and skeptical we are but if you just enjoy time at TAM or QED conversations we have with our friends or local pub gatherings you realize that skeptics are people and people have cognitive biases out in the wazoo so as long as we really kind of steep ourselves in that I think that's a good first step to guard against this haughty sort of prideful position that we're skeptics and therefore we must be right thank you yes I'm Joly Blackham from Greater Manchester skeptics and I'd really like some tips on how we engage ethnic minorities I'm looking around a room that is predominantly white and probably predominantly middle class as well how do we engage with poor ethnic minorities you maybe look at us and say oh well you've got all the educational advantages you know you have a predominant race in this country and certainly in the state as well how do we engage and make this movement something that appeals to them rather than these insulting right speaking honestly now in my experience the most effective sales pitch for skepticism is framing it there's bad word as intellectual self defense skepticism benefits you regardless of your socioeconomic status it keeps you from being beguiled it keeps your pocketbook from being swiped so when I was 13 years old I got into magic I was a professional magician for a number of years the opening chapter of the Tarbell course in magic is an essay by Harlan Tarbell where he says why should you youngster learn magic why is it beneficial for folks to learn magic not only because it's fun and cool and interesting but because it lets you see through other people trying to pull one over on it and that's our sales pitch for skepticism it's not foolproof and we are loaded with our own cognitive biases but skepticism in that sense I think appeals more broadly than just to white privileged middle class folks okay Tom as Andy said once again my name is Tom I'm from the Liverpool skeptics in my personal experience it seems that cognitive dissonance is a real block to people becoming more rational becoming more skeptical and in for example if it's a religious belief it might not be essentially from birth it can go back generations but once you get over it and I've had it to myself it's incredibly liberating but it's often very very scary to give up beliefs that you've held for often decades so how can you encourage people to get over their cognitive dissonance okay Tom thanks dissonance theorists and these are those nasty social scientists I was talking about have done a lot of really meaty research on communicating with people who have dug their heels in and so for the past couple years at TAN we featured North America's really leading social psychologist in this field her name is Carol Tavris and what I love about her work and we're working with her to develop hopefully some materials that the J-Ruff can put out on some of these topics what I love about her work is that when she goes to a skeptics event she is not telling skeptics how to use dissonance theory on other people but how to use her own cognitive dissonance right she's she probably won't like this characterization but she's giving sermons to us about our sins and that's what I like so that's a kind of roundabout way of saying learn from the experts right how do you engage well one way to do it is not by going up to someone and telling them how wrong they are although guess what that strategy does sometimes work I was told in the Bible college that I was full of it because I was the devout guy in my dorm who scolded other people for breaking God's commandments basically opened the door for me to start investigating those sorts of claims so it's not a one size fits all solution but generally I think we should adopt strategies that incorporate the truth and also the best ways to communicate it and dissonance theory I think is really suggests the path to go on that okay our final question and brief answer please DJ hi my name's Joe I'm standing on tiptoes could I suggest an extra one to your list please is only ever take the word of experts and never ever ever do your own research yeah I love that thank you well thank you everyone and congratulations again on such a great event DJ Grossman