The Demon-Haunted World
A prescient warning of a future we now inhabit, where fake news stories and Internet conspiracy theories play to a disaffected American populace “A glorious book... A spirited defense of science... From the first page to the last, this book is a manifesto for clear thought.”—Los Angeles Times How can we make intelligent decisions about our increasingly technology-driven lives if we don’t understand the difference between the myths of pseudoscience and the testable hypotheses of science? Pulitzer Prize-winning author and distinguished astronomer Carl Sagan argues that scientific thinking is critical not only to the pursuit of truth but to the very well-being of our democratic institutions. Casting a wide net through history and culture, Sagan examines and authoritatively debunks such celebrated fallacies of the past as witchcraft, faith healing, demons, and UFOs. And yet, disturbingly, in today's so-called information age, pseudoscience is burgeoning with stories of alien abduction, channeling past lives, and communal hallucinations commanding growing attention and respect. As Sagan demonstrates with lucid eloquence, the siren song of unreason is not just a cultural wrong turn but a dangerous plunge into darkness that threatens our most basic freedoms.
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What Hacker News says
- One could argue "AI" fanatical cults are already a societal problem, as people seek emotional support & therapeutic value from what is essentially a polished psychopathic entity.
Carl Sagan had predicted people losing understanding of their world could be a possible tragic consequence of irrational thought. Perhaps an allusion to the lotus-eaters from Homer's The Odyssey would be more accurate. =3
https://www.amazon.com/Demon-Haunted-World-Science-Candle-Da...
- “Keeping an open mind is a virtue—but, as the space engineer James Oberg once said, not so open that your brains fall out.” ― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
- Science has always been in Chaos. I know of zero laboratories doing “science” that isn’t biased or otherwise tainted with politics or money
The US public never cared about science anyway. Go read Carl Sagan’s 1996 demon haunted world and it’s only gotten worse from there
You could do a search for this headline and get a result for every year since Francis Bacon started publishing
- Asimov wrote about it[0], and talked about it quite a bit.
So did Sagan. If you haven't watched Cosmos in awhile it might hit a little different these days, for multiple reasons (not all bad). The book is great too. Not to mention Sagan wrote "The Demon Haunted World".
There's a new form and an old form of this same thing happening today too. We have flat earthers, but other cults too. One of the common features of this cult of ignorance: having a little knowledge and thinking it is much more general. We all know those people who read a sentence or two and extrapolate. This happens all the time. Even in flat earthers. It's often seeking evidence to support the prior belief rather than updating that belief. Updating that belief can either strengthen the belief it weaken it. But if you're seeking truth you need you be willing to throw your beliefs out the window. Resistance to that is ego
- If you want to be thoroughly depressed go ahead and reread Karl Sagan‘s 1996 book the Demon haunted world
Literally everything he described in there is precisely the world we live in today
- The points you raise are indeed wilful ignorance, easily rebutted.
I gave you a link which summarizes the subject well, with plenty of references. If you're genuinely interested in understanding the world, you would study that. But what you're doing instead is cherry-picking reasons to refuse to accept strong evidence. Al Gore, really? You're really scraping the bottom of the denial barrel.
Ironically, in your attempts to not be conned by grifters, you're falling for one of the biggest cons of all: the ongoing oil company attacks on anything that threatens the oil industry. If you're not getting paid by them, you're being suckered.
Aside from the reference I gave, you would also benefit from reading books like "Asking the Right Questions", by Neil Browne & Stuart Keeley; Carl Sagan's "The Demon Haunted World"; and "Thinking and Deciding" by Jonathan Baron. These will help you distinguish between rational thinking and rationalizations.
> So, spare me your shame game identity politics.
Nothing I've said even remotely approaches anything like that. I'm describing well-documented and well-supported facts, and pointing out that refusing to try to understand or accept those is problematic, and that by doing so along with millions of others, you're perpetuating major problems in the world. But your victimhood mentality fits right in with the conspiratorial mindset.
