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Author: Massimo Pigliucci
Quotes of Author: Massimo Pigliucci

Massimo Pigliucci _ Nonsense on Stilts: How to
Or maybe, another explanation goes, we are in fact surrounded by ETs and simply don't know it, perhaps because they decided to make the solar system a natural reserve, a place where other races can go and see what it is like to be in the infancy of civilization {appropriately, this has been nicknamed the "zoo hypothesis"}.
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Massimo Pigliucci _ Tales of the Rational :
are we going to teach the best of what we currently know about the world {however provisional such knowledge may be}, or shall we decide if the earth is flat or round by majority consensus?
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Massimo Pigliucci _ Nonsense on Stilts
if I think {and I do} that Deepak Chopra talks nonsense when he tells people about quantum mechanical elixirs of youth, I would first have to be an expert in quantum mysticism. But the problem is that quantum mysticism is {I think} quackery, and that therefore there is no such thing as an "expert" on quantum mysticism.
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Massimo Pigliucci _ How to Be a Stoic: Using
Better to endure pain in an honorable manner than to seek joy in a shameful one. There is a way to understand
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Massimo Pigliucci _ Nonsense on Stilts: How to
The many-worlds theory basically maintains that the reason quantum mechanics seems so strange is because we have access to only one of an infinite number of worlds. From our narrow perspective, the output of certain measurements{like that of the double-slit experiment} seems random and probabilistic, but that is an artifact of the fact that, literally, we don't have the full picture.
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Massimo Pigliucci _ Nonsense on Stilts: How to
Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition.-Adam Smith
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Massimo Pigliucci _ Nonsense on Stilts: How to
It is instructive to note that different cultures "discovered" completely different constellations in the sky, a fact that is more consistent with the idea that constellations are a whimsical projection of the human mind than a reflection of astronomic reality.
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Massimo Pigliucci _ Nonsense on Stilts
For every expert there is an equal and opposite expert; but for every fact there is not necessarily an equal and opposite fact. -Thomas Sowell, American economist
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Massimo Pigliucci _ Nonsense on Stilts: How to
…the boundaries separating science, nonscience, and pseudoscience are much fuzzier and more permeable than {or, for that matter, most scientists} would have us believe. There is, in other words, no litmus test.
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Massimo Pigliucci _ Nonsense on Stilts: How to
These and similar examples are easy enough to uncover, and they make two crucial points: first, good science does not require experiments, it can be done with an intelligent use of observational evidence; second, there is more than one way to do science, depending on the nature of the questions and the methods typical of the field.
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Massimo Pigliucci _ Nonsense on Stilts: How to
one does not need experiments to do science. While this claim may sound strange and counterintuitive at first, a moment's reflection will show that it is obviously true: astronomers do not conduct experiments, and yet we think of astronomy as solidly situated within the sciences, not the humanities or the pseudosciences. Why? Because astronomers can carry out the two fundamental activities that, jointly considered, truly characterize a science: systematic observations and the construction and testing of hypotheses.
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Massimo Pigliucci _ Tales of the Rational :
We are not becoming more educated; we are simply acquiring more knowledge. There is a fundamental difference between the two.
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