Friday, December 21, 2012

A Near Universal Expression of Skepticism

I love the apocalypse. It seems to come around once a year or so, and every time it gets any mainstream attention I enjoy the comments and memes all over my facebook and twitter accounts. It's a fairly universal expression of skepticism (save for a few true believers), and I was thinking on why it is that this is the case.

I think the apocalypse is a pretty attractive area of skepticism, mainly because it's a very easy claim to test: just wait for the day to pass and then give yourself a pat on the back for not being so gullible. Pretty easy.

But until that day comes, we're all faced with a problem: what should our opinion be until that day comes? I find that whenever the apocalypse is mentioned, almost everyone finds it to be ridiculous, but we haven't run the test yet -- how could we predict what's actually going to happen, and how should we come to the opinion that no apocalypse will occur? It depends on the claim, but I submit that until any actual evidence is presented to demonstrate that the world is ending, I can safely dismiss the claim without having to prove that it's not. The burden of proof lies with whomever is making the positive claim in the first place.

Why is this important? It's important to me because it's one of the few times that my approach to skepticism is almost exactly in line with everyone elses. I think through the same process every time I'm approached with a claim. The very same logic and skepticism that you and I apply to the apocalypse is the process I apply to alternative medicine, conspiracy theories, religious claims, cryptozoology, political ideology... you name it. Not everything has such an easy and lazy test as does the apocalypse, but the initial approach is still consistent -- don't believe it unless there's compelling evidence.

Normally at this point I'd go into some examples of commonly held irrational beliefs and invite you to employ the same skeptical approach to analysing them, but for once I don't think that's necessary -- the apocalypse is clearly a perfect example that in many ways we're already skeptical. It's getting rid of our favourite pet belief that can often be the problem.

Even though we technically don't know if the world will end, we still don't believe it. Everyone seems comfortable with that, and if someone told you, "YOU CAN'T PROVE THE WORLD WON'T END!!" you'd probably reject their logic. So how come I often hear the same phrase when talking about god?