I contend once again, Carl Sagan was neither correct, nor really all that brilliant. In his oft-lauded ‘The Demon-Haunted World’ quip, he miscalled entirely the constituency who would end up becoming our problem. I fixed it.
I bear an apprehension about an America in my, my children’s, and grandchildren’s time – when oligarch and technology powers rule and are in the hands of a few elite cronies, and no one representing the public interest is permitted to speak against, much less stop what is occurring; when the people have lost the ability to control their own destinies and are forbidden access to the resources and rights to question those in authority; when, clutching our progressive buzzwords and nervously surveying our science communicators’ latest witch-hunt, our critical faculties seared, unable to distinguish between virtuous-sounding agitprop and what’s actually ethical or scientific, we slide, almost without noticing, straight into civil strife, an equality in paucity, and oppression.
The Ethical Skeptic, “The Human Haunted World – An Equality in Paucity”; The Ethical Skeptic, WordPress, 13 Oct 2021; Web, https://theethicalskeptic.com/2021/10/13/the-human-haunted-world-an-equality-in-paucity/
One very sad and annoying thing about Sagan and his most infamous quote (you know which one I mean): Even those who disagree with his barely informed pseudoskeptical antics seem to think that the latter is unsurpassably sound, even bordering on being a (meta-)physical law that needs to be constantly repeated. What is an “extraordinary” claim? What is “extraordinary” evidence? Compared to what, “ordinary” claims and “ordinary” evidence? Who judges this? Who could possibly judge this? “Extraordinary” claims are always those that the “judge” cannot possibly believe or even take seriously from the very beginning, no matter what. This is… Read more »