Rationally Speaking #6 - Fluffy Thinking
Rationally Speaking Podcast
New York City Skeptics
4.6 • 787 Ratings
🗓️ 10 April 2010
⏱️ 33 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Fluffy Thinking is a peculiar type of uncritical thinking that sounds sophisticated, and is next to impossible to criticize frontally both because it barely has anything to do with empirical evidence, and because it is hard to articulate what, exactly, these people are saying. These people include scientific luminaries like Freeman Dyson and Paul Davies. Also, Karen Armstrong, author of "The Case for God", and Krista Tippett, author of "Einstein's God" and host of National Public Radio's "Speaking of Faith", where scientific notions are regularly distorted and mixed up with barely intelligible mystical “insights” that are put forward as profound truths.
The question is not only whether there is anything interesting in what these people are saying, but rather the much more difficult issue of why it is that smart individuals, who make their living thinking and writing about science and philosophy, are attracted by fluffy thinking.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Rationally Speaking is a presentation of New York City skeptics dedicated to promoting critical thinking, skeptical inquiry, and science education. |
| 0:22.6 | For more information, please visit us at NYCCEceptics.org. |
| 0:30.6 | Welcome to Rationally Speaking, the podcast where we explore the borderlands between reason and nonsense. |
| 0:40.4 | I am your host, Massimo P. Lucci, and with me, as always, is my co-host, Julia Galev. |
| 0:45.5 | Julia, what are we going to talk about it today? |
| 0:48.1 | Massimo, today we're going to dive into the world of fluffy thinking, by which we mean talk that sounds profound to a lot of people, but is |
| 0:55.5 | actually when you examine it a little more closely, wrong at best and nonsense at worst. |
| 1:00.8 | So we're going to talk about what makes fluffy thinking fluffy. Why does it appeal to so many people? |
| 1:06.2 | And why do so many smart and educated people who should know better engage in it? |
| 1:10.9 | So I guess in some sense, I've been thinking about this topic as sort of counterbalance |
| 1:15.1 | to a recent podcast that we've done. |
| 1:18.2 | So recently we talked about how some rational skeptic or perhaps even hyper-rational skeptics |
| 1:25.9 | such as hardcore defenders of atheism and hardcore critics of religious thinking, |
| 1:33.2 | perhaps overdo it in terms of overstretched the limits of rational thinking, and particularly in scientific thinking. |
| 1:42.0 | This time we're going to sort of take a look at the opposite end of the spectrum where we're going to take a look at what it is that makes some |
| 1:49.2 | otherwise intelligent people say things that almost literally make no sense. And I'm not talking about |
| 1:56.8 | the easy stuff, right? We're not talking about creationism or denial of the global warming |
| 2:02.9 | or denial of the fact that there is no connection between vaccines and autism. We're not talking |
| 2:07.3 | about simple pseudoscience, the kind of stuff that is factually, clearly, you know, wrong, |
| 2:13.4 | or at least that there is a lot of empirical evidence, and so we can talk about the evidence. We're |
| 2:16.9 | talking about something much more, as you said, fluffy. |
| 2:19.8 | Right. So who do you think are the worst offenders? |
... |
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