Might as well throw this in, since this damned video of Day Two is taking too sodding long to upload…
I’m currently sitting on the floor, next to Shaun of the JREF, near the audio booth. If there’s anyone attending the Daniel Loxton ‘Manifesto’ panel, that’s where I’m hiding. When I have the footage up on my YouTube account, you’ll be able to see some of the video I’ve taken of this panel too.
It’s probably the best view in the entire house, because I can see everyone on the panel (that’s Randi, Hrab, Wagg – who wasn’t scheduled and ran in late – DJ Grothe, Lori Lipman Brown, Ben Radford and Karen Stollznow). The mic has just been handed to Randi to start.
By the way, if there’s anyone reading who attended the ‘dowsing’ show (which was meant to be about the Million Challenge, but turned out NOT to be someone doing a legit challenge – just a random person from the audience who ended up scoring two out of three tries for a ‘find the water’ thing that was hyped up) – Randi got some kudos from me today, because there was a hideous happening at said ‘challenge’.
A person, who was probably best described as a believer in the paranormal, went up to ask Randi a question during the Q&A. And a ’skeptic’ in the audience threw a plastic water bottle at them. For standing up and asking a simple question.
Randi, rightly asked that the person be allowed to ask his question. But I have never been so damned ashamed at this sort of behaviour, and there’s quite a few regretful things about skeptics and their attitudes some times.
Anyway. Listening to Randi right now; he gives a few anecdotes, about the bible, about skeptics… I think I’ve heard two of them before. This is kind of something that happens if you hear a lot of the lectures, I guess. Speaking of lectures, got another one tomorrow, on skepticism internationally.
Randi: “Science looks for evidence, religion doesn’t need it…Shermer has a different approach to skepticism, if they have an epiphany, their attitude was different. He can relate to the religious believers…. I consider religion to be a self-delusion, just my personal opinion… we don’t fight religion, it is everybody’s right to believe what they want to believe… You can’t examine something for which there isn’t any evidence. Approaches to skepticism is something very, very important, we have to sympathise, to deal with and understand the true believer out there. That they have this sort of thing going for them and I try to gently lead them into the paths of rationality.”
What else have I done today? It’s starting to feel like three days in one, every day. Thankfully, one of the JREF people (which pretty much floored me, I expected to be stuck until my panel was on) came over to the Skeptic Track table over at the Marriott to give me enough time to sort out the powerpoint for the Skeptic Zone podcast/vodcast. I didn’t recognise who they were though.
I think our Skeptic Zone show went over pretty well! I got to ask Dr Ginger Campbell (who is just FANTASTIC in real life too, I must add) one of those questions that just really bug me – about superstitions in the ER room and the usual moon-myths effect on crisis situations. Also got to ask about popular culture’s influence on views of medicine. Which kind of trickled over to my question about pop culture in regards to Dr Phil Plait, who was our other interviewee.
And he was photographed wearing feather boas. So, he’s a good sport to our hi-jinks, which we appreciated. My wearing of my bunny-hat was due to my efforts to enjoy our little vodcast/podcast, since I know that we’re not well known and we should be embracing the fun aspect of doing the show. We’re not on the iTunes popular list, but who cares? We’re proud of our product and working to improve.
And yes, I’m wearing my Stop Sylvia Browne shirt in support of Robert Lancaster. Hope he’s getting better, as the very first Australian conference I went to, I wore that shirt. It was just before his site got started and I was happy to get some buzz going about it back then.
Oh, thank holy hades. George Hrab just said pretty much exactly the same thing that I said about that idiot who threw a bottle at the believer who was asking a question of James Randi at the dowsing show. That’ll end up on YouTube as I just got it on tape. Karen Stollznow mentioned about confirmation bias with this sort of behaviour, echoed by Hrab about how it will just close down lines of communication.
Karen Stollznow just talked then about her inclusive attitude towards getting people into skepticism. Which has to be said, that there’s no one ‘face’, regarding gender, age, et al.
Phil Plait has just been asked to come to the panel… he’s standing up at a standing mic (he apparently got caught up in the elevators, which are revoltingly slow, by the way – the Skeptic Zone gang have taken to using the stairs most days as we’re all on floor five). He is been touted as the future of skepticism after all, as Derek says.
Plait says that there’s mostly white faces, but a lot of women. This is important for a lot of reasons (…and he then goes on to make comments about sexist jokes) – he says that women tend to be more prone to believe in more horoscope things, that there’s Oprah that targets women… but that the presence of women amongst all the bald guys is a good help towards making a balance. And then points out that his daughter is twelve and ‘not ready to listen to Penn’. Which is a good point – that he notices that TAM isn’t targeted at the younger years and that perhaps it really isn’t designed to anyway.
Phil Plait: There’s more people who understand that there’s skeptics out there… that the people on the panel been recognised here… the people we’re appealing too are younger people. I love FARK, they’re big fans of the mythbusters, there’s a picture of Randi and it’s turned into one of those inspirational-posters. Randi is a meme on FARK and this is good (’this is your meme, this is your meme on FARK’).
This is hitting our target audience, middle-aged-adolescents, people who are starting to self-identify as skeptics. A piece of skepticism is online, I’d like to see us bigger and stronger that way.
DJ Grothe: I’m worried about preaching to the choir – the same people attending the same conferences – with forums and podcasts, we’re reaching a new audience who wouldn’t read the magazines or attend to the soundbites on TV…. I asked a question of the campus outreach groups and found that a third of attendees found out about us online. I think it behooves this audience to use the new media to help us do outreach… this is something grassroots activists do on Facebook, MySpace and forums.
Plait: A lot of it is viral, videos that debunk things. The cell-phone that pops popcorn, for example, created by bluetooth to scare people into buying headsets! We can do these things as well, a video to pale blue dot, and it’s huge. More videos like that, eventually you’ll nail this.
Hrab: Try to get your foot into the door, without kicking them in the head. Get the molecule of doubt, which really likes to reproduce (hang on, he means ‘bacteria’). … get away from the font and write your own font!
A little more on acceptance of the religious people… and my battery is running out. Right, that’s enough for you lot, I’m off to see the live version of Dr Horrible’s Sing-Along-Blog.
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{ 5 comments }
As a newcomer to public skepticism, I’m thinking there needs to be a little more hand-holding. Just basic advice on good ways to skepticificise-icate (or whatever the verb from of skepticism is) so more people feel comfortable “spreading the word”.
I’m especially interested in the legal aspects/ramifications of criticising and debunking. I’ve asked at JREF but responses weren’t especially helpful.
eg. It’s easy to assume that since there are so many videos out there saying all manner of things about individual “psychics” that they are fair game and safe territory. Instinct tells me this is unlikely to be a safe assumption so I fuss about what I say on my blog and what I post to Youtube (hence one video so far – and that one worries me) and I hope that using ridicule and cartoons as my main approach that no one will really take too much offence but the message still gets through (How do you condemn an industry without upsetting the practitioners and believers in it?).
I guess what I’m saying is that it would be good if people who’ve being at the game for some time could shed light on their experiences and knowledge in the art of public skepticism. Obviously and Australian viewpoint would be especially useful to Aussies.
Geez, my typing is crap!
The audio of this particular session is now out on Skepticality.
This was great! Will you be going along this year?
Yes – I’ll be doing this again. And isn’t it interesting that Loxton went on to create the ‘105 Things for Skeptical Activism’, just like AndyD suggested?
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