Sunday, January 9, 2011

An interesting post on Skeptivism

In my vanity googling hours the fifth page on the Skeptivism list was an article by James Cole at The Twenty First Floor arguing that Skeptivism should target organisations and high-profile individuals who have the greatest potential for harm. I have to agree, it is important to focus on the largest groups and avoid personalising attacks, but is there a case to be made for proportionate responses to low-impact individuals who promote sloppy thinking?

I think there are enough skeptivists out there to justify some effort being directed at low-level activism against even the smallest blogs/sites. Of course, its a fine line between representing reason and trolling or flaming, and obviously the rehtoric should be toned down to suit the size of the traget, but even an innocent comment founded on illogic or false premise needs correction.

The other, more important issue is that the "Big Guns" of piffle start somewhere, and who knows where the nest Merryl Dorey is going to come from. In this age of interconnectedness, google throws up the those mom blogs along with everything else the search terms hit, and just as there are low-level perveyors of paff, there are and should be low-level skeptivists who do what they can to correct illogic wherever it appears.

Jame's blog is Stuff and Nonsense.

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