Stargazing Guy

– Carl Sagan’s Fine Art of Baloney Detection, extracted from The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

Rules for critical thinking (1 of 10):

Carl Sagan developed a “baloney detection kit” — a set of cognitive tools and techniques that fortify the mind against penetration by falsehoods. But the kit, Sagan argues, isn’t merely a tool of science — rather, it contains invaluable tools of healthy scepticism that apply just as elegantly, and just as necessarily, to everyday life. By adopting the kit, we can all shield ourselves against clueless guile and deliberate manipulation.

Sagan shares nine of these tools in his book (with his wife Ann Druyan) The Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark. These will be shared (sometimes with commentary, sometimes without) over the next nine blogs (including a summary at the end), with the first one below.

Number 1:

Wherever possible there must be independent confirmation of the “facts.”

According to the University of Maryand, “The only real way to know if an observation is repeatable is actually to repeat it.”

This tool, along with the following eight, will help you, not only with your everyday life and consumer purchases, but for seeing through the baloney you’ll hear from politicians – and some scientists.

PS: I love coffee. BuyMeACoffee, leave a message with a date and time and we can share it, remotely, at the same time, and think about the Cosmos.

In the meantime, take care of yourself and if you can, someone else, too, because as Adam Smith said, “we naturally desire not only to be loved but to be lovely”.

Contact Stargazing Guy for any copyright-related requests or queries @ stargazer1@stargazingguy.co.uk