Skepticism (part 1)

Being independently minded is not finding the center of argumentation. The center is not always the truth. The truth comes from being skeptical of authority. The truth comes from thought, not a calculation.

For example, many people in America, and around the world for that matter, define themselves as moderate because they believe the truth comes from the center of an argument. Which basically means the outlier who screams louder brings the average closer to the truth. If a person is exposed to only one type of outlier then they'll calculate to that direction. For example in the case of the autism "controversy" a small minority of people are screaming outlandish allegations towards medical advances of vaccines, while a moderate majority-of-scientists believe that autism is formed by other factors, such as genes. The common argument is that when the rise in vaccines happened a similar rise in autism diagnosis happened. Here's a common graph (found on google images):

Now, one problem is the reasoning. It is not proving anything. Now someone will say "look it rises", but it is simply a correlation. It is a logical fallacy called Post Hawk, Ergo Prompter Hawk (meaning it happened after and therefore caused it). You may now it as Correlation Does Not Equal Causation. I think I can show this better in one graph then explaining it (I'll do that later):

Look, pirates cause global warming. It's obviously an direct relationship. How can they cause global warming-- are they more prone to fart than other humans, causing more greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere? Most likely not. Therefore with testing we have proven that pirates do not cause global warming (the rise in CO2 is different because it has scientific evidence backing it up). But, do you see how plotting a line on a graph might make a correlation, might even suggest a causation depending on previous evidence, like pirates fart more, but does not prove a causation?

So, if you hear two sides and calculate the middle, you'd be wrong . Many more logical fallacies are present but none as prevalent as Argumentum Ad Homenim. Ad Homenim is either an appeal to an authority, or calling someone names, to make a case. For example, people who spell a name with two "w's"are bad people; therefore, we are correct about pirates causing global warming. What can a person prove in this, that pirates cause global warming, with evidence, but not that people who spell their names with two "w's" are wrong, unless they prove that their collective position is wrong.

Another example is, that man/women is in charge of the EPA he must know about environmental issues; therefore she must be infallible about environmental issues. Wrong again. The head can, and probably will be, right about environmental issues, but humans make mistakes. We'd have to test his hypothesis about say, pirates cause global warming. But, since this is not true we must know him or her to be false.

This is also to say that if you hear two sides and calculate the middle, you'd be wrong.

If we can't calculate the middle then what can we do as citizens with limited knowledge in certain areas to judge those areas? We'd have to look at the data(um), the reasoning behind it, and whether or not they did it correctly. This is easy enough to tell with a firm grasp of skeptical reasoning. How can we do this? First go to logicalfallacies.info to gain knowledge of the various logical fallacies. Then move on to harder stuff like analyzing arguments. So whenever you hear a balanced" pundit round table talking about something don't believe the middle; instead, dissect the arguments.