Content-type: text/html Downes.ca ~ Stephen's Web ~ Carl Sagan’s “Baloney Detection Kit”: A Toolkit That Can Help You Scientifically Separate Sense from Nonsense

Stephen Downes

Knowledge, Learning, Community

I link to this "Baloney Detection Kit" to contrast the accounts of critical thinking that depend a lot on source and authority. Sagan (like most scientists) isn't having it. "Arguments from authority carry little weight — "authorities" have made mistakes in the past. They will do so again in the future. Perhaps a better way to say it is that in science there are no authorities; at most, there are experts." And we all know not to trust the experts. More: Carl Sagan, Pale Bue Dot. Also: The Frontier is Everywhere. Sagan was always my hero.

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Stephen Downes Stephen Downes, Casselman, Canada
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Last Updated: Oct 15, 2024 12:18 a.m.

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