I find it unsettling that we're taught to outright dismiss skeptics as "conspiracy theorists," but sometimes they are just drug fueled paranoid rants.
I think that misrepresents what skepticism is. A skeptic isn't someone who has made up their mind and won't be moved the way conspiracy theorists are. A skeptic is someone who keeps an open mind and accepts the possibility that what they think they know could be wrong. We dismiss conspiracy theorists when they provide complicated explanations for why something happened or works the way it does and dismiss any criticism of their explanations as gullibility or apathy.
I'm not a skeptic when I can debunk your ideas. I'm a skeptic when I can debunk my own.
I mean that, when a skeptic says, "The government has been lying to us about this 'NSA spying' thing," the average taxpayer will instead call them a conspiracy theorist and ignore what they're saying. And that this knee jerk reaction comes from media, news, movies, etc.
I think that misrepresents what skepticism is. A skeptic isn't someone who has made up their mind and won't be moved the way conspiracy theorists are. A skeptic is someone who keeps an open mind and accepts the possibility that what they think they know could be wrong. We dismiss conspiracy theorists when they provide complicated explanations for why something happened or works the way it does and dismiss any criticism of their explanations as gullibility or apathy.
I'm not a skeptic when I can debunk your ideas. I'm a skeptic when I can debunk my own.
Totally agree.
I mean that, when a skeptic says, "The government has been lying to us about this 'NSA spying' thing," the average taxpayer will instead call them a conspiracy theorist and ignore what they're saying. And that this knee jerk reaction comes from media, news, movies, etc.