 good pain in the ass to become a really good painter this Canadians are right question repository he's like a pleasant skeptical suppository that's right how to be come a really good pain in the ass please welcome Christopher DiCarlo thank you very much pleasure to be invited down here I want to thank DJ and James Randy and everybody else who was involved in having me come down and it's been a wonderful conference so far I've met a lot of interesting people and and hope to talk to you some of you after after my talk today which is as you just heard about how to become a really good pain in the ass so what what I've done is I basically written a book for critical thinking based on the idea of asking questions that or people to get them to think more clearly about why does they believe what they do and why does they behave the way they do so it's really named after Socrates and the ancient skeptics because they were extremely good at asking people these questions Socrates likened himself to a gadfly or today like a mosquito something that would would bother people and whatnot and and I just figured today we would call such a person you know a pain in the ass but Socrates and the ancient skeptics they were really good at what they did so hence that's why we we have that particular title it's based on how people respond to five important questions really important questions so important that I call them the big five and these are the questions that humans have evolved to ask themselves through the evolution of language and consciousness and they basically run like this what are the limits of my knowledge what can I know why am I here what am I how should I behave and what is to come of me and yesterday you might remember Lawrence said it's not why we shouldn't be asking you know you hear why questions you hear this from from kids all the time why why why you know and Louis C. K. says you know shut up and eat your french fries right but so I've asked a lot of different questions you know the what's the why's in the house and I find them to be extremely important because how we answer these questions really tells us a great deal about ourselves and it tells us a great deal about other people as well so you know when I look on television I see things like you know speed dating the phenomenon of speed dating and how you know people get together and determine whether or not they want to continue on to have another date or that sort of thing I guarantee you you ask any person any or all of those five questions you will immediately know an awful lot about what makes them tech who they are what they believe and potentially how they behave how they act and the way in which we answer these questions tends to have a kind of trickle-down effect you know about other really really important questions things like you know abortion and euthanasia and human rights and you know crime and punishment healthcare law and even art so they are very powerful questions and they do tell us an awful lot about about who we are and over this weekend I've been watching and listening to a lot of people speak and we consider ourselves skeptics and I was thinking what is it about skepticism in particular why do we do what we do and it really comes down to ways of looking at the world and the way in which people answer questions and go about thinking about things and it can bother us to a certain extent in the way in which people answer those questions because how you answer them can affect your behavior and that behavior can harm others and so skepticism is really about looking at the ways in which people see the world and then pointing out aspects or shortcomings or inconsistencies and contradictions so that essentially it's it's it's a knowledge-based but also a compassion-based enterprise it's a way of of going about living it's a way of life and so I divided the book essentially into three parts and in the first part I call it you know the ABCs and DEFs of of critical thinking and I mean that literally so we have A is for argument B is for bias C is for context D is for diagramming E is for evidence and F is for fallacies and in part one you basically get the the tools of the trade so to speak these are what are going to make you better thinkers and and reflect you know in more responsible ways about what we believe and why we believe that in part two I look at Socrates in the ancient skeptics because I really do think they are you know the best damn pains in the ass in history and I take a look at the Socratic method many of you all already know what that is but it's an interesting way in which to have a discussion with somebody and that is you you can basically be engaged with the person and get them to talk more and more about what it is they believe what they do Socrates would feign ignorance and he made a distinction between blind ignorance and reflective ignorance and we heard Stewart's paper about ignorance and scientific ignorance whatnot and I'm fascinated with this subject because I'm a philosopher of science and I will tell you right now that yes Lawrence Krauss and I do kind of have a friendly battle he's not a huge fan of philosophers but you might have heard in his talk yesterday he said some of them are okay so he did look at me when he said that so I'm going to accept that that he's kind of coming on board now this technique is used very effectively in the Daily Show and the Colbert report and if any of you are fans of those shows you'll know that instead of being immediately adversarial many of the reporters will agree with the person they're interviewing to demonstrate how ludicrous what what it is they believe and what it is they're saying it's a very effective approach and of course when I look at the skeptics they developed a wonderful method known as the modes to show a systematic demonstration of how people don't really have answers to the big five or other questions of that importance at what I call an absolute or big T level of truth now in in part three I basically just look at all of the big five questions again but I look at the way in which people answer these questions on a natural level and a supernatural level and show the differences between the two some people try to try to connect them try to hybridize the natural with the supernatural so I just look at the scientific way or the way science answers the big five and then I look at the way super naturalist answer the big five and then I ask essentially the reader where do you fit and why do you fit into these these particular ways of answering these questions today I'm going to look at question one because as skeptics you know we want to know what are the limits of our knowledge what do we know and what can we say so I'll look a bit at at Socrates but more more specifically at the ancient skeptics so to begin in case you didn't know Dick Cheney was apparently a robot or is apparently a robot this would certainly explain an awful lot a big foot kept a lumberjack is a love slave I haven't photographed by the Hubble telescope but somebody get Lawrence Crowe's back in here very quickly he's going to want to want to know this and sadly of course the final issue of weekly world news right yes I know now we look at these things right we ask what why would anybody believe these things right or similar stories right and when we do we make an assumption that there are really better and worse ways to interpret and to act on them and the term is called epistemic responsibility and that means how responsible were we in gathering information that we call knowledge and then acting on that that information so we essentially doubt their truth why because they're inconsistent right with the logical structure and methods and means for explaining you know events and cause and effect relationships in the world and so we have reservation about these things sometimes disdain for them and we have good reason to doubt them we are of course skeptical of their truth now it's important to ask ourselves what it means to be skeptical today by tracing its rich ancestry so the theme of 1010 is the future of skepticism and I thought when I was asked what better topic to to discuss today than to look back at the roots of skepticism to see how we got to where we are now which might give us a better way of understanding what's going to happen in the future and when we have this understanding we'll see a basic clear obvious path a connection between the evolution of scientific reasoning as well so there's a definite path of skeptical reasoning and thinking and scientific investigation now as many of you will probably already know the Greek term skepticos literally means inquire or investigator so I'm going to go old-school on you now and I'm gonna go right back to some of the first recorded historical figure so Piro of Alice what was known as Puranism was the founder of this this first school of skepticism around 360 BCE and he basically said we have to ask ourselves three questions about the world what is the stuff of things what do people think reality actually is in what relation do we stand to things around us here we have one of the first recorded instances in history of an of a human demonstrating that we affect or can affect what it is we're observing and then what is the result as far as our happiness is concerned with this kind of metaphysical you know detachment so what he did was he basically looked out into the world and he saw a lot of people bickering about what reality actually was and here's what he came up with he said you know what I don't know but neither do any of you you don't know what reality is you might think you do but you don't so he shrugged his shoulders and in Greek this is this is a term called apple case to suspend suspend belief and instead of being ridden with this kind of existential angst of not knowing what reality actually is he found that he was relieved he found that he was kind of in a state of of tranquility because he wasn't burdened by having to try to figure out you know what absolute reality actually was and so he abstained from fanaticism concerning these types of things and he lived in a kind of contented and peaceful way basically not claiming to know what is absolutely true or false about the true nature of reality he exercised moderation in the face of massive unyielding forces of nature things like death and illness that everyone must face this is a Greek term known as metro patea and it means we can control our passions when confronted with natural forces that are really beyond our control and he used an example an analogy known as pierrot's pig and the story goes like this he was at sea on a ship during a tumultuous storm very you know a wild tempest and people were panicking and they didn't know what was going to happen and pierrot apparently was sitting fairly calmly and people were coming up to him saying what is wrong with you don't you realize we could die don't you realize what's going on and he apparently pointed to this this pig that was eating at slop and the stall and he said it's totally unaware of what's going on but it's hungry so it's going to eat I don't know what's going to happen but you think I'm going to act like you are you making the situation better by acting in this way so it demonstrates the capacity to recognize when we have control and we do not have control within specific natural instances or circumstances today we might consider another popular figure using this this particular method so in times of crises it would be favorable to have cool-headed clear thinkers who can act accordingly and so in this way a skeptic is always made they're never born it takes considerable time and it takes a lot of discipline to be able to recognize and accept one's ignorance and their constraints I think this guy said it best and dirty Harry man's got to know his limitations or a person has to know their limitations and I'm referring to epistemic limitations now the academic skeptics lived at the time play-doh so we had the pre-academics with pure and the academic skeptics they made this wonderful distinction between reality like appearance and reality and they separated metaphysical matters you know those which really cannot be resolved or or figured out in any kind of rational or empirical way and they separated these from the common sense you know practical matters those that we have to deal with on a day-to-day day-in day-out basis on a practical level so there's a similarity between this type of approach and the eventual development of modern science science we know is generally pragmatic which means you know if it works and it's communally agreeable then it's provisionally warranted and it's accepted so scientists are generally not in the metaphysical business one of the superstars of the the academic skeptic period was it was a gentleman named Arkesi less of butane and he said knowledge of the inner nature of things is not possible without determining first absolute criteria by which to make such determinations and this is extremely important because the problem of establishing a criterion or a set of criteria which can justify metaphysical beliefs this notion has been around for millennia and it's really the type of thing we can demand of those who make these types of claims but people often conveniently forget or ignore this I'm a Canadian and when I come I come to this country I see bumper stickers I see all kinds of billboards what not you know God bless America and to say that is is to assume that such a being actually exists I don't know I'm kind of naive I assume it means Allah I'm not sure which God they're referring to or quits a quaddle I'm not sure but to say that it's fairly audacious it's to say I have absolute information of the very reality of our experiences there's not could be nothing higher than this this can also lead to lazy and unwarranted thinking for other factors and can have considerable influence on pseudo scientific thinking mysticism paranormal activity and and other aspects so what what the skeptics find is that we're humbled by acknowledging that we're limited in our knowledge once we make this realization we can get on with matters which affect us more directly such as common sense practical affairs and of course eventually scientific investigations epistemic humility when it's attained in this matter is really a responsible starting point in the acquisition of information being ignorant in this way we have to get the message out is not such a bad thing it's actually a liberating thing it makes us all equal we're all on the same level playing field so this type of humility is egalitarian reflecting on this ignorance in this way is a responsible manner it applies to every person on this planet and it cuts through any and all barriers whether they're naturally evolved or culturally created this is the great equalizer our capacity to reflect on our ignorance of what is absolutely real and it's reason why as many people find it difficult to say you know I don't know and and this gets taught in schools to some degree from K to 12 and through college and and so on and so forth where you're rewarded for having the so-called right answer and and you don't begin at a basis of ignorance which maintains that it's okay you're at the same starting point as everyone else so one of the greatest legacies I think the ancient skeptics have given us is this understanding of this kind of overall epistemic framework in which we attempt to understand the world and our place in it one of our species greatest cultural and conceptual accomplishments is really the separation of big team metaphysical truth from what I call little t or common sense and scientific truth and I think we have to we have an obligation personally as a professor and an educator to get the message out that it's okay if you don't have big T truth that nothing really changes and I get a thought experiment I get a thought experiment to kids sometimes in my classes I say let's just assume okay that your understanding of big T truth when you answer you know those five questions is really not the case what does it really change you're still here you still have to get along with everybody you still enjoy certain aspects of life and avoid other aspects so it's it's an exercise or a thought experiment I try to get students to consider in classes now with the post academic skeptics we have Anna Sadimas and a gentleman named sex this empiric is and what they found is that when it comes to trying to figure out what what is real what is not real and so on they acquiesce to the appearances and they live according to what they called a four stage practical criterion I would recommend any of you to find anywhere online or or anywhere else outlines of purism it's literally the basis of all skepticism what what sex this empiricist did is he took all of the information from all of the centuries of skepticism and put them into a four volume work and if you really want to know about the history of skepticism outlines of purism is it and the four stage practical criterion look at how common sensical it is they live according to the guidance of nature you know things like gravity try not to put your hand into a flame for too long you know I if you don't believe in in in the effects of gravity than just flap your arms and fly around this room right you will learn very quickly that in fact it works the second criterion is the constraint of bodily drives we have to eat and sleep and go to the washroom and have sex and so on and so forth these are just facts of nature the tradition of laws and customs are to have rules if you've ever lived with the roommate from hell you know that without rules people can basically do whatever they want so we get together and we establish agreed upon ways of living and they called instruction in the arts or essentially to do something to get a job to do something you're good at preferably skepticism requires this kind of common sense acceptance of an environment in which we develop concepts ideas behaviors and this is known that the technical term is hypothetical realism in other words things like people animals plant stars galaxies these things actually exist right in common sense terms we just call this the world or the universe and they exist separate from our thinking of them otherwise we would just be a big collective room full of solipses unless future evidence warrants concern a good skeptic treats these things as though they exist separately from our thinking about them so at the common sense level and then eventually in greater detail at the scientific level but if there's no absolute criterion no set of criteria no reality measuring stick whatsoever and we can't establish absolute certainty then how do we distinguish good ideas from bad ones what is our measuring stick at this small t level of truth well if we look at something called historical facticity this basically means that we are sort of locked in as it were to our usage of mathematics logic of scientific reasoning ethical reasoning at this particular period of time in twenty twelve in other words Aristotle couldn't have discussed gene therapy Newton could not have discussed downloading information off the internet and right now we can't discuss ways in which future generations are going to describe aspects of their world as well so this context that we are in right now of historical facticity we use the tools that are best available to us right now yes information might change about how we understand the world in the future but this is what we're doing right now so scientific knowledge is gradual it's cumulative we see as far today because we're essentially standing on the shoulders of giants right of those who did the hard work before us and we continue on with that effort the measuring sticks we use today to distinguish idea good ideas from bad ones basically have specific criteria this is what determines what makes an idea for us a good one or a bad one they adhere to criteria like consistency you don't want to leave a speaker's talk and say how much you admired the inconsistency of that talk you would rarely do that so we do value criteria consistency parsimony or simplicity where it applies non-contradiction and the prediction of novelty we've established and agreed upon rules which are impartial and fair to all why we tried to establish universality so we conduct experiments here we hope that they can be conducted in similar matters regardless of where they're done throughout the world and as skeptics we have an obligation to continue to establish universal rules of reasoning in an effort to hold people accountable not only for their beliefs throughout the stomach responsibility but more importantly for their actions which may be harmful to other humans or other species in this way we become useful and really good pains in the ass skeptics today or a great deal of thanks to a great tradition of ancient thought one of the driving principles of all modern skeptics and scientists today resonates from the collective works of the ancient skeptics think responsibly act accordingly thank you