Toolbelt of Consistency

Though these probably are not the first words you have read here, they are the first I’ve written so… Welcome to Skeptuppet.

The goal here is to combine some of my interests, and in the process create something of use for others. The first is a surety, the latter is still in question.

With Skeptuppet, I want to give out powerful skeptical tools in an easy-to-absorb and entertaining manner – with puppets! And here in the blog portion I’ll go on (and on) in greater, wordier depth. Perhaps the combination will work.

I am, first and foremost, a skeptic. This doesn’t mean cynic, which has its own combination of letters and meaning. A skeptic doesn’t, as a rule, dismiss new ideas out of hand. What a skeptic does is refrain from fully embracing a new idea until its proved its worth. And even more importantly, a skeptic will GIVE UP and idea that is sufficiently shown to be incorrect by the current weight of evidence.

The “sufficiently” and “evidence” parts often cause some misunderstanding, just as the work “skeptic” sometimes does. (Though that is thankfully changing.)

Evidence comes in a wide range of qualities, and there are many tools a skeptic can use to measure that quality and assign levels of confidence to an idea based on those measurements. Lots of poor quality pieces of evidence will never outweigh a single very high piece of evidence, for example – Something that doesn’t fit with most people’s common sense, particularly when we’re using metaphors like “weight”. (Perhaps I should try to come up with a different metaphor in this blog’s future…) And a sufficiency is simply the summation of those quality measurements and the resulting press of truth-hood or fallacy that results.

It’s all rather fuzzy, but darn if it doesn’t WORK! You see, it doesn’t matter if you measure that 2×4 in feet, meters, or your arm, so long as you measure the car you want to transport it in with the same rule.

Skepticism is the name for that consistent set of tools, rules, and techniques that helps us make good decisions. With consistency, we gain relative perspective. And with relative perspective, we can take great strides in the direction of truth.