Guy P. Harrison
Simply message; skepticism and being contrarian fosters critical thinking, and a healthy dose of doubt is good for your thinking capacity. Sure, this book needed almost 200 pages in order to make that point clear, but still worth it. There is also an extensive section on cognitive biases that are worth the read.
Amazon Page for details
My Rating: 8 / 10
Click Here to Read My Notes
Simply message; skepticism and being contrarian fosters critical thinking, and a healthy dose of doubt is good for your thinking capacity. Sure, this book needed almost 200 pages in order to make that point clear, but still worth it. There is also an extensive section on cognitive biases that are worth the read.
Amazon Page for details
My Rating: 8 / 10
Click Here to Read My Notes
Skepticism is an important issue for everyone. It’s something we all need, regardless of intelligence, education, location, social status, or income.
The most effective antidote for bad thinking is good thinking
Thinking like a scientist in this context only means that you maintain a healthy level of curiosity and doubt. You aren’t afraid to ask questions and request evidence, and you don’t draw conclusions about things until you have very good reasons to do so. You also must be willing to change your mind if your conclusions turn out to be wrong.
Deciding to think like a scientist is the hard part; doing it is fairly easy.
Proof comes before belief. Nothing is ever beyond question or revision.
Skepticism is just about having a healthy dose of doubt and using reason to figure out what is probably real from what is probably not real. It means not believing you know something before you can prove it or at least make a very good case for it. Skepticism is nothing more than thinking and withholding belief until enough evidence has been presented.
Skepticism is negative? Ridiculous.
Skepticism is the brain’s perfect diet. It trims away the fat and turns you into a lean thinking machine.
The scientific process helps us to discover amazing things about the universe and ourselves every day.
However, a person who ignores or rejects science in our time turns her back on a staggering amount of important and exciting information.
I always try my best to separate the beliefs from the believers.
When someone gets cancer, you don’t get mad at the person, you get mad at the disease, right? In my opinion, good skeptics should avoid being too harsh with people who believe silly things.
Be less condemning and more understanding.
If you are a child or a teenager, do not accept that you are a robot to be programmed entirely by adults. Adults are often wrong, and you have in your possession a powerful brain. Use it.
And if you’re an adult, don’t think it’s ever too late to change the way you think. The sooner you can start thinking skeptically, the better.
And thinking skeptically is the highest form of self-respect because it means you care about the quality of thoughts and beliefs that inhabit your brain.
More than anything, this defines you. Your thoughts and your beliefs determine who you are and who you will be.
Unfortunately, most children grow up and enter adulthood unprepared for what they will face in the form of pseudoscience (false science), unproven claims that aren’t worthy of acceptance, and just plain lies.
Sadly, if your brain is not a top-notch reason machine, most of the time you won’t even realize that you are a victim.
A mistake many people make is to assume that thinking like a scientist in everyday life comes down to intelligence. Not only is that assumption wrong, it’s a destructive misconception that probably causes many people to shy away from adopting a skeptical outlook.
Many men and women with doctorates and master’s degrees are weak skeptics who believe things that a good high-school-age skeptic can dismantle in seconds.
Why do you suppose it is that the world’s professional astronomers spend virtually no time on astrology and UFOs? The reason is that they are good enough skeptics to know that their efforts will be better spent elsewhere because nothing is likely to come from trying to work out the influence of Jupiter on the love lives of people born in September or determining if the alien crew survived the Roswell UFO crash or died on impact.
It’s safe to assume, for example, that the hardest working psychic in history has contributed less to the world’s understanding of the human brain than, say, one lecture by one random psychology professor at any university.
It’s about having the will to ask the necessary questions and the courage to walk away if the answers don’t measure up.
It’s about withholding belief until you know.
The process of skeptical thinking works very well even when you don’t know much or anything at all about the particular claim.
The ability of a good skeptic to mount a respectable challenge to virtually any unusual claim that comes along is amazing when you think about it.
I’m just one guy, but I do pretty well in discussions/debates with the endless parade of people who try to convince me that weird things are true.
I don’t have to be smarter than them or even more informed on the specific topic in question. I just have to be a good skeptic.
Although knowledge is important, skepticism is not a body of knowledge. It’s a way of thinking. It’s less about something you know and more about something you do.
Becoming a good skeptic is about making a promise to yourself that you will not be an easy victim.
Sometimes you really have to view this as war, not against people but against lame ideas.
Tell yourself that you won’t go down without a fight when people try to convince you to believe in outlandish things that they can’t back up with very good evidence.
Carl Sagan, “Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence.”
One thing is consistent, however: When it comes to extraordinary claims, the more evidence, the better.
It is always important to keep the big picture in mind when trying to think critically about extraordinary claims.
“Faith is enough,” is a common claim. When you hear this, immediately go to DEFCON 2, signal red alert, and raise shields. When they say, “Just trust me,” it’s time to throttle up the skepticism and man your battle stations.
Relying on faith might sound sweet and sensible to some ears because it’s heavily promoted as something positive and reliable.
But the truth is that faith is really nothing more than pretending to know something that you don’t know.
It’s a terrible way to make your way through life because it can lead you to believe just about anything.
No matter how strange a conversation may become, however, I never assume people are lying or are hopelessly stupid.
Those who try to convince you that skepticism is negative, pessimistic, or destructive are either profoundly clueless on the matter, or they are being deceptive because they hope to sell you something that you don’t need.
Skepticism is positive, optimistic, and constructive.
The only people who should not be good skeptics are those who have a deep desire to be a victim, to be foolish, to waste time and money, and perhaps to risk their life for nothing.
Good skeptics know to always be ready to think, regardless of where they are or whom they are listening to.
You are free to believe before you think if you wish. But just know that taking such a stance in life puts you at risk.
Weak skepticism is perhaps the greatest unrecognized global crisis of all.
The quality, strength, and consistency of your skeptical thinking will likely have a direct impact on your safety, success, and quality of life.
Doing your best to stay free and clear from bad ideas and bad people who would take advantage of you should be a top priority.
The brutal truth is that human brains do a poor job of separating truth from fiction.
This is inattentional blindness, and it’s a normal, useful feature of our brains. We can’t pay attention to everything all the time, so our brains zoom in on some things while sacrificing broader awareness.
The implications ought to be obvious to aspiring skeptics. Not understanding inattentional blindness can lead us to be overconfident in our ability to take in everything around us and not let important things slip by. The truth is, however, we do miss important and unusual details—such as gorillas!
Anyone who hopes to be a good skeptic has to understand “confirmation bias” and consciously resist it.
Confirmation bias is the problem we all have—even good skeptics—when it comes to thinking about our beliefs. Without being aware of it, we tend to protect our beliefs.
Confirmation bias draws us toward evidence and arguments that support our beliefs while simultaneously turning us off to evidence and arguments that go against our beliefs.
For this reasons, it is not only the claims of others that we need to be skeptical of. We also must be skeptical of our own thoughts and perceptions.
Just because people may be in positions of power and trust, such as a mayor or an educator, doesn’t mean they can’t fall for bogus beliefs just like anyone else.
No one ever advised her that it is better to live with an unanswered question than to pretend to know something you don’t.
No one had ever suggested to that bright little girl that it was important for her to think before she believed.
Our entire world is diminished when minds, filled with potential, are sacrificed on the many altars of irrational belief.
It seems to me that we need all the brainpower we can muster, including yours.
Billions of smart, sane, and sincere people fall for nonsense every day because of these weird thought processes.
Basic brain-awareness information should be taught to everyone and taught early. Sadly, however, the vast majority of the world’s people go their entire lives without ever learning about it.
Don’t forget this about your memory: You can’t trust it! Human memory is a fragile and fallible thing. Our memories are constructed in our head, like stories based on bits of information. They are not reliable playbacks of “recordings.”
Skeptics are often accused of being “against everything” when in reality we are against nothing except mistakes, delusions, and lies.
Why should anyone disagree with this position? Furthermore, shouldn’t we all be against mistakes, delusions, and lies?
Don’t hesitate to utilize the scientific process when you bump up against weird things in everyday life.
Ask questions. This is critical. Don’t passively accept what you are told. It’s stunning how many people fail to simply ask questions when confronted by an unusual claim. Nothing more than a couple of key questions can derail most invalid claims.
Observe. Look and listen with deliberate effort. When someone says “prayer heals any and all illnesses,” for example, observe the world. If you see people get sick and die every day—even though they pray—then maybe there is a problem with this claim.
Research. If you look for it, it’s not difficult to find credible information about most claims. Do your own fact-checking.
Share ideas and conclusions with others. This is a great way to get feedback from people who may know more than you about a given claim. The more good information, the better.
Remember the goal is not to debunk or discredit. The goal is to get to the truth, whatever it may be.
Go on the offensive when someone tries to sell you a bizarre belief.
Who cares if a lot of people believe? We need something more than a majority vote before accepting an extraordinary claim.
Reality, as we have seen over and over, operates independently of our beliefs.
Close friend David Kelly said in a 2013 60 Minutes interview that Jobs told him a short time before dying that bad decisions about treatments had doomed him and that he should have trusted in medical science.
The lesson is clear: It doesn’t matter how smart, cool, popular, or rich you are. Alternative medicine can seduce anyone who isn’t a good skeptic.
It’s okay to say “I don’t know.” Really, it’s fine.
Good skeptics do not claim to know with absolute certainty that all unusual and unproven claims are not true and could never possibly be true. A very important part of being a good skeptic is maintaining an open mind.
It helps if skeptics can do more than just demand evidence when faced with an unusual belief. Try offering ideas that are relevant to the claim, a bit of historical context, some science, some insight into how the brain works, and maybe a good alternate explanation.
Good skeptics encourage people to think critically about ideas; they dismantle bad beliefs, not believers.
We all care about the beating of our hearts, but it’s the buzzing of the brain that matters most of all.
But we never seem to hear: I’m skipping fast-food fries from now on because they’re bad for my brain. Or, No more soft drinks for me, dude, I don’t wanna end up with a brain that can’t think well. But this is precisely how we should be thinking.
If you are dehydrated, calorie deficient, or protein deficient, your brain will struggle. It will not think, create, solve problems, or be as alert as it can be. It will be more prone to bad moods.
Try to do the basic and obvious good things, such as eating lots of vegetables and keeping the total amount of food consumed reasonable on a daily basis.
For snacking, try to eat fruit and nuts more than candy.
I do recommend blueberries and blackberries specifically, as they appear to be good for the brain.
Don’t mistake healthy eating for magic. Consuming spinach, broccoli, and berries alone won’t be enough to get you accepted into Harvard or make you cancer-proof. This is about making wise choices most of the time over a lifetime so that you at least give yourself a fighting chance to be fit, healthy, and smart.
Exercise even causes your brain to grow new cells. This is amazing when you think about it: Exercise grows your brain.
When you stay up late to hang out with friends or watch TV, your brain suffers severely.
Shorting it a few hours of sleep may be the rough equivalent of whacking yourself in the head with a croquet mallet.
Insufficient sleep can reduce concentration, alertness, and the abilities to learn, problem solve, and remember.
Sleep deprivation has been linked to significantly higher risk for heart disease, cancer, diabetes, strokes, and obesity.
Moms are right. Get to bed on time!
Connective wiring, or “white matter,” as neuroscientists call it, is crucial to a healthy brain. The better the network of connections are, the better it works. So, if white matter is good, how do we get more of it?
You have to earn it the old-fashioned way: by learning new things.
Scientists have found strong evidence that reading (and writing) can help preserve the “structural integrity” of brains.
Reading is like taking your brain for a jog or a swim.
By scanning the brains of test subjects while they were reading, researchers found that the brain gets a vigorous and unique workout while reading.
Don’t spend your whole life inside a book, however. There is too much world out there to miss. And experiencing it is also good for your brain. So go outside and connect with the natural world on a regular basis. Visit a mountain, a desert, a forest, a pond, a beach.
Traveling to new countries is also wonderful brain stimulation.
If you ever have doubts about the joy and benefits of being eager to learn, just look at young kids. Most of them are profoundly inspiring. They know how to use their brains and don’t hesitate to do so. They want to learn. They have to learn.
Become a lifelong student and never stop exploring.
Dreaming and thinking must never cease.
More thinking makes you a better thinker.
The more you learn, the more you want to learn.
Do this and you are sure to create a wonderful circle of reinforcing strength that will serve you well for the rest of your life.
Brains do so much for us, yet most of us neglect them and do not care for them as well as we should.
A brain that is trapped inside a poorly fed body cannot be optimally healthy.
What will I lose? Is it worth it? Will I be okay if I give up some of my beliefs?
Often it is the same person who says all of these things. They cling to one or more dubious beliefs because they rely on them for comfort, excitement, and meaning—the whole shebang.
People who feel this way don’t just want beliefs. By their own admission, they need beliefs.
I could be wrong, but I don’t think that most people need to accept claims that probably are not true in order to have at least a fair chance of finding or achieving acceptable levels of comfort, excitement, and meaning in their lives.
In my opinion, virtually all people—whether or not they know it—are smart enough and strong enough to cope with the difficulties and uncertainties of life without needing to wrap themselves in fantastic claims.
A key challenge for the good skeptic is the common mind-set that says some beliefs are too special to question. To me it’s obvious that nothing should be off-limits to sincere and sensible inquiry.
It makes no sense to say that something is too serious to treat seriously.
Scrutiny should rise with importance, not go down.
Every day, I read news reports of horrors and heartbreak tied to one irrational belief or another. Skepticism is the prevention and the cure.
Our modern world is a nonstop parade of people being punished for their failure to think. Why don’t more people recognize this and react sensibly by deciding to think for themselves and question everything? Are they afraid of something? Are they waiting for something?
Being a good skeptic is not scary. What’s scary is letting other people think for you and then hoping that it all works out well.
Too many people still think that history is a stale compilation of cold facts and dates. It definitely is not. History is the greatest story of all.
Why would you want or need a belief to give your life meaning when it was likely only made up by someone anyway? Why not make your own meaning with your own brain?
The meaning of life, for you, is whatever you say it is. Don’t trade years of your life for delusions or lies manufactured by other people who failed to think well or just want your money.
Appreciate the magnificent brain you possess. Protect and nurture it. Strive to be a good skeptic so that few hours of your precious life will be squandered on dead-end beliefs. Always try to think like a scientist so that you might better know truth from fiction. When unusual claims and extraordinary beliefs come your way, challenge them. Question everything. Never flinch, never cave when faced with true mysteries. No matter how tempting, don’t pretend to know things you do not know. Always, the right reaction is to think. Think before you leap. Think before you believe. Just keep thinking.
Many people claim that various beliefs are necessary to find excitement, joy, and meaning in life. But the full and rewarding lives of many skeptics around the world prove that this is not necessarily true.
Science is a never-ending process of exploration, discovery, and imagination. New information and ideas are always coming. New questions are always generated. Make sure your brain is ready to welcome it all.
all history is your history.
There simply is no reason to rely upon unproven claims and dubious beliefs to make our lives interesting.
The most effective antidote for bad thinking is good thinking
Thinking like a scientist in this context only means that you maintain a healthy level of curiosity and doubt. You aren’t afraid to ask questions and request evidence, and you don’t draw conclusions about things until you have very good reasons to do so. You also must be willing to change your mind if your conclusions turn out to be wrong.
Deciding to think like a scientist is the hard part; doing it is fairly easy.
Proof comes before belief. Nothing is ever beyond question or revision.
Skepticism is just about having a healthy dose of doubt and using reason to figure out what is probably real from what is probably not real. It means not believing you know something before you can prove it or at least make a very good case for it. Skepticism is nothing more than thinking and withholding belief until enough evidence has been presented.
Skepticism is negative? Ridiculous.
Skepticism is the brain’s perfect diet. It trims away the fat and turns you into a lean thinking machine.
The scientific process helps us to discover amazing things about the universe and ourselves every day.
However, a person who ignores or rejects science in our time turns her back on a staggering amount of important and exciting information.
I always try my best to separate the beliefs from the believers.
When someone gets cancer, you don’t get mad at the person, you get mad at the disease, right? In my opinion, good skeptics should avoid being too harsh with people who believe silly things.
Be less condemning and more understanding.
If you are a child or a teenager, do not accept that you are a robot to be programmed entirely by adults. Adults are often wrong, and you have in your possession a powerful brain. Use it.
And if you’re an adult, don’t think it’s ever too late to change the way you think. The sooner you can start thinking skeptically, the better.
And thinking skeptically is the highest form of self-respect because it means you care about the quality of thoughts and beliefs that inhabit your brain.
More than anything, this defines you. Your thoughts and your beliefs determine who you are and who you will be.
Unfortunately, most children grow up and enter adulthood unprepared for what they will face in the form of pseudoscience (false science), unproven claims that aren’t worthy of acceptance, and just plain lies.
Sadly, if your brain is not a top-notch reason machine, most of the time you won’t even realize that you are a victim.
A mistake many people make is to assume that thinking like a scientist in everyday life comes down to intelligence. Not only is that assumption wrong, it’s a destructive misconception that probably causes many people to shy away from adopting a skeptical outlook.
Many men and women with doctorates and master’s degrees are weak skeptics who believe things that a good high-school-age skeptic can dismantle in seconds.
Why do you suppose it is that the world’s professional astronomers spend virtually no time on astrology and UFOs? The reason is that they are good enough skeptics to know that their efforts will be better spent elsewhere because nothing is likely to come from trying to work out the influence of Jupiter on the love lives of people born in September or determining if the alien crew survived the Roswell UFO crash or died on impact.
It’s safe to assume, for example, that the hardest working psychic in history has contributed less to the world’s understanding of the human brain than, say, one lecture by one random psychology professor at any university.
It’s about having the will to ask the necessary questions and the courage to walk away if the answers don’t measure up.
It’s about withholding belief until you know.
The process of skeptical thinking works very well even when you don’t know much or anything at all about the particular claim.
The ability of a good skeptic to mount a respectable challenge to virtually any unusual claim that comes along is amazing when you think about it.
I’m just one guy, but I do pretty well in discussions/debates with the endless parade of people who try to convince me that weird things are true.
I don’t have to be smarter than them or even more informed on the specific topic in question. I just have to be a good skeptic.
Although knowledge is important, skepticism is not a body of knowledge. It’s a way of thinking. It’s less about something you know and more about something you do.
Becoming a good skeptic is about making a promise to yourself that you will not be an easy victim.
Sometimes you really have to view this as war, not against people but against lame ideas.
Tell yourself that you won’t go down without a fight when people try to convince you to believe in outlandish things that they can’t back up with very good evidence.
Carl Sagan, “Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence.”
One thing is consistent, however: When it comes to extraordinary claims, the more evidence, the better.
It is always important to keep the big picture in mind when trying to think critically about extraordinary claims.
“Faith is enough,” is a common claim. When you hear this, immediately go to DEFCON 2, signal red alert, and raise shields. When they say, “Just trust me,” it’s time to throttle up the skepticism and man your battle stations.
Relying on faith might sound sweet and sensible to some ears because it’s heavily promoted as something positive and reliable.
But the truth is that faith is really nothing more than pretending to know something that you don’t know.
It’s a terrible way to make your way through life because it can lead you to believe just about anything.
No matter how strange a conversation may become, however, I never assume people are lying or are hopelessly stupid.
Those who try to convince you that skepticism is negative, pessimistic, or destructive are either profoundly clueless on the matter, or they are being deceptive because they hope to sell you something that you don’t need.
Skepticism is positive, optimistic, and constructive.
The only people who should not be good skeptics are those who have a deep desire to be a victim, to be foolish, to waste time and money, and perhaps to risk their life for nothing.
Good skeptics know to always be ready to think, regardless of where they are or whom they are listening to.
You are free to believe before you think if you wish. But just know that taking such a stance in life puts you at risk.
Weak skepticism is perhaps the greatest unrecognized global crisis of all.
The quality, strength, and consistency of your skeptical thinking will likely have a direct impact on your safety, success, and quality of life.
Doing your best to stay free and clear from bad ideas and bad people who would take advantage of you should be a top priority.
The brutal truth is that human brains do a poor job of separating truth from fiction.
This is inattentional blindness, and it’s a normal, useful feature of our brains. We can’t pay attention to everything all the time, so our brains zoom in on some things while sacrificing broader awareness.
The implications ought to be obvious to aspiring skeptics. Not understanding inattentional blindness can lead us to be overconfident in our ability to take in everything around us and not let important things slip by. The truth is, however, we do miss important and unusual details—such as gorillas!
Anyone who hopes to be a good skeptic has to understand “confirmation bias” and consciously resist it.
Confirmation bias is the problem we all have—even good skeptics—when it comes to thinking about our beliefs. Without being aware of it, we tend to protect our beliefs.
Confirmation bias draws us toward evidence and arguments that support our beliefs while simultaneously turning us off to evidence and arguments that go against our beliefs.
For this reasons, it is not only the claims of others that we need to be skeptical of. We also must be skeptical of our own thoughts and perceptions.
Just because people may be in positions of power and trust, such as a mayor or an educator, doesn’t mean they can’t fall for bogus beliefs just like anyone else.
No one ever advised her that it is better to live with an unanswered question than to pretend to know something you don’t.
No one had ever suggested to that bright little girl that it was important for her to think before she believed.
Our entire world is diminished when minds, filled with potential, are sacrificed on the many altars of irrational belief.
It seems to me that we need all the brainpower we can muster, including yours.
Billions of smart, sane, and sincere people fall for nonsense every day because of these weird thought processes.
Basic brain-awareness information should be taught to everyone and taught early. Sadly, however, the vast majority of the world’s people go their entire lives without ever learning about it.
Don’t forget this about your memory: You can’t trust it! Human memory is a fragile and fallible thing. Our memories are constructed in our head, like stories based on bits of information. They are not reliable playbacks of “recordings.”
Skeptics are often accused of being “against everything” when in reality we are against nothing except mistakes, delusions, and lies.
Why should anyone disagree with this position? Furthermore, shouldn’t we all be against mistakes, delusions, and lies?
Don’t hesitate to utilize the scientific process when you bump up against weird things in everyday life.
Ask questions. This is critical. Don’t passively accept what you are told. It’s stunning how many people fail to simply ask questions when confronted by an unusual claim. Nothing more than a couple of key questions can derail most invalid claims.
Observe. Look and listen with deliberate effort. When someone says “prayer heals any and all illnesses,” for example, observe the world. If you see people get sick and die every day—even though they pray—then maybe there is a problem with this claim.
Research. If you look for it, it’s not difficult to find credible information about most claims. Do your own fact-checking.
Share ideas and conclusions with others. This is a great way to get feedback from people who may know more than you about a given claim. The more good information, the better.
Remember the goal is not to debunk or discredit. The goal is to get to the truth, whatever it may be.
Go on the offensive when someone tries to sell you a bizarre belief.
Who cares if a lot of people believe? We need something more than a majority vote before accepting an extraordinary claim.
Reality, as we have seen over and over, operates independently of our beliefs.
Close friend David Kelly said in a 2013 60 Minutes interview that Jobs told him a short time before dying that bad decisions about treatments had doomed him and that he should have trusted in medical science.
The lesson is clear: It doesn’t matter how smart, cool, popular, or rich you are. Alternative medicine can seduce anyone who isn’t a good skeptic.
It’s okay to say “I don’t know.” Really, it’s fine.
Good skeptics do not claim to know with absolute certainty that all unusual and unproven claims are not true and could never possibly be true. A very important part of being a good skeptic is maintaining an open mind.
It helps if skeptics can do more than just demand evidence when faced with an unusual belief. Try offering ideas that are relevant to the claim, a bit of historical context, some science, some insight into how the brain works, and maybe a good alternate explanation.
Good skeptics encourage people to think critically about ideas; they dismantle bad beliefs, not believers.
We all care about the beating of our hearts, but it’s the buzzing of the brain that matters most of all.
But we never seem to hear: I’m skipping fast-food fries from now on because they’re bad for my brain. Or, No more soft drinks for me, dude, I don’t wanna end up with a brain that can’t think well. But this is precisely how we should be thinking.
If you are dehydrated, calorie deficient, or protein deficient, your brain will struggle. It will not think, create, solve problems, or be as alert as it can be. It will be more prone to bad moods.
Try to do the basic and obvious good things, such as eating lots of vegetables and keeping the total amount of food consumed reasonable on a daily basis.
For snacking, try to eat fruit and nuts more than candy.
I do recommend blueberries and blackberries specifically, as they appear to be good for the brain.
Don’t mistake healthy eating for magic. Consuming spinach, broccoli, and berries alone won’t be enough to get you accepted into Harvard or make you cancer-proof. This is about making wise choices most of the time over a lifetime so that you at least give yourself a fighting chance to be fit, healthy, and smart.
Exercise even causes your brain to grow new cells. This is amazing when you think about it: Exercise grows your brain.
When you stay up late to hang out with friends or watch TV, your brain suffers severely.
Shorting it a few hours of sleep may be the rough equivalent of whacking yourself in the head with a croquet mallet.
Insufficient sleep can reduce concentration, alertness, and the abilities to learn, problem solve, and remember.
Sleep deprivation has been linked to significantly higher risk for heart disease, cancer, diabetes, strokes, and obesity.
Moms are right. Get to bed on time!
Connective wiring, or “white matter,” as neuroscientists call it, is crucial to a healthy brain. The better the network of connections are, the better it works. So, if white matter is good, how do we get more of it?
You have to earn it the old-fashioned way: by learning new things.
Scientists have found strong evidence that reading (and writing) can help preserve the “structural integrity” of brains.
Reading is like taking your brain for a jog or a swim.
By scanning the brains of test subjects while they were reading, researchers found that the brain gets a vigorous and unique workout while reading.
Don’t spend your whole life inside a book, however. There is too much world out there to miss. And experiencing it is also good for your brain. So go outside and connect with the natural world on a regular basis. Visit a mountain, a desert, a forest, a pond, a beach.
Traveling to new countries is also wonderful brain stimulation.
If you ever have doubts about the joy and benefits of being eager to learn, just look at young kids. Most of them are profoundly inspiring. They know how to use their brains and don’t hesitate to do so. They want to learn. They have to learn.
Become a lifelong student and never stop exploring.
Dreaming and thinking must never cease.
More thinking makes you a better thinker.
The more you learn, the more you want to learn.
Do this and you are sure to create a wonderful circle of reinforcing strength that will serve you well for the rest of your life.
Brains do so much for us, yet most of us neglect them and do not care for them as well as we should.
A brain that is trapped inside a poorly fed body cannot be optimally healthy.
What will I lose? Is it worth it? Will I be okay if I give up some of my beliefs?
Often it is the same person who says all of these things. They cling to one or more dubious beliefs because they rely on them for comfort, excitement, and meaning—the whole shebang.
People who feel this way don’t just want beliefs. By their own admission, they need beliefs.
I could be wrong, but I don’t think that most people need to accept claims that probably are not true in order to have at least a fair chance of finding or achieving acceptable levels of comfort, excitement, and meaning in their lives.
In my opinion, virtually all people—whether or not they know it—are smart enough and strong enough to cope with the difficulties and uncertainties of life without needing to wrap themselves in fantastic claims.
A key challenge for the good skeptic is the common mind-set that says some beliefs are too special to question. To me it’s obvious that nothing should be off-limits to sincere and sensible inquiry.
It makes no sense to say that something is too serious to treat seriously.
Scrutiny should rise with importance, not go down.
Every day, I read news reports of horrors and heartbreak tied to one irrational belief or another. Skepticism is the prevention and the cure.
Our modern world is a nonstop parade of people being punished for their failure to think. Why don’t more people recognize this and react sensibly by deciding to think for themselves and question everything? Are they afraid of something? Are they waiting for something?
Being a good skeptic is not scary. What’s scary is letting other people think for you and then hoping that it all works out well.
Too many people still think that history is a stale compilation of cold facts and dates. It definitely is not. History is the greatest story of all.
Why would you want or need a belief to give your life meaning when it was likely only made up by someone anyway? Why not make your own meaning with your own brain?
The meaning of life, for you, is whatever you say it is. Don’t trade years of your life for delusions or lies manufactured by other people who failed to think well or just want your money.
Appreciate the magnificent brain you possess. Protect and nurture it. Strive to be a good skeptic so that few hours of your precious life will be squandered on dead-end beliefs. Always try to think like a scientist so that you might better know truth from fiction. When unusual claims and extraordinary beliefs come your way, challenge them. Question everything. Never flinch, never cave when faced with true mysteries. No matter how tempting, don’t pretend to know things you do not know. Always, the right reaction is to think. Think before you leap. Think before you believe. Just keep thinking.
Many people claim that various beliefs are necessary to find excitement, joy, and meaning in life. But the full and rewarding lives of many skeptics around the world prove that this is not necessarily true.
Science is a never-ending process of exploration, discovery, and imagination. New information and ideas are always coming. New questions are always generated. Make sure your brain is ready to welcome it all.
all history is your history.
There simply is no reason to rely upon unproven claims and dubious beliefs to make our lives interesting.