Two days ago, I had to write a persuasive speech for my English 411 class.  It took me a while to think of a topic I cared enough about to try to convince people to agree with me on.  Eventually I picked skepticism.  I thought about going off on creation science (which is not science), but thought I should warm up with a lighter topic like astrology.  My plan was to ease into creation science from astrology through psychics (I don't buy it).  Eventually I realized that I was already going to be pushing the 8 minute upper limit, and religion might be too touchy a topic anyway, so I just argued about skepticism in general.  Here it is.

            I’d like to speak to you about the importance of skepticism.  I believe that people are often all too comfortable with their gullibility.  Often we get lazy and allow ourselves to believe what is comfortable instead of what is reasonable.  The problem with this is that we don’t get to choose what is true.  Assuming our goal is to understand the world as it truly is, our level of comfort with an idea is entirely irrelevant.  The important thing is the evidence, so I encourage you to keep a question ready for any astounding claim you hear: “Is there a more rational explanation?”

            The first example I’d like to touch on is astrology.  As a group of well educated college students, I hope I won’t be offending any of you when I say that astrology is entirely fraudulent.  I will even go so far as to say that if you believe astrology has any use beyond cheap entertainment, you are a foolish person.  There is no scientific evidence to suggest that a person’s astrological sign is related to their personality traits, luck, or fate.

            A person’s astrological sign is determined by the zodiac constellation oriented behind the rising sun on their birthday.  I was born on March 3^rd which many of you can probably identify as the sign Pisces.  The modern convention is that the Pisces sign applies to anyone born between February 20^th, and March 20^th, but here’s the kicker.  On my birthday, the sun doesn’t rise in front of the Pisces constellation.  In the 2000 years since astrology was “developed” the Earth’s orientation in inertial space has wobbled so that all of the astrological signs have shifted by about a month, so my “true” sign would be Aquarious.

            One might argue astrology is valid because it is consistent with real life, and I agree that it is consistent.  Take me for example.  You’ve all had almost an entire semester to get an impression of me.  Tell me if this astrological description of me sounds accurate:

The Pisces person is compassionate, empathetic, imaginative, sensitive, mystical, spiritual, dreamy, passive, easy-going, idealistic, visionary, inspirational, accepting, undiscriminating, charitable, believes in soul growth, self-sacrificing and artistic. They can also sometimes be distracted, detached, illusory, impractical, gullible, neglectful, escapist and lazy.

I personally don’t see myself as visionary, much less charitable, self-sacrificing, artistic, detached, impractical, gullible, or escapist; and I’m sure that the adjective “sensitive” isn’t the first one that pops into your mind to describe me.  There were a lot of adjectives in there that could apply to me, but it’s easy to find some accurate descriptions in such a long stream of adjectives.  The real question to ask here is how many of you felt like this described you a bit? 

            This is a “cold read” which means it’s vague enough that everything in it seems to apply to the reader.  James Randi once performed an experiment where he handed out professionally developed personal horoscopes to a classroom of students based on their birth information.  The students all rated their horoscopes 4/5 or 5/5 for accuracy.  Then James Randi allowed the students to trade, showing them that all of the horoscopes were identical.

            Now I’ll admit that this experiment didn’t prove all horoscopes false, but it does answer that question I posed to you earlier: “Is there a more rational explanation?”  So I ask you which is more rational.  Option 1: Someone can tell you about your fate, personality, and luck based solely on the month you were born.  Or option 2: Someone other than James Randi figured out how to write a cold read.  James Randi has a standing offer of $1 million to anyone who can prove paranormal abilities under laboratory conditions.  His offer has been standing since 1964 with no winners.

            Hopefully, debunking astrology is old news to all of you so I’d like to move on to a closely related field: psychics.  If you listen to a psychic, or pull up some videos on YouTube, you’ll notice that their responses are always vague enough to answer the question with little chance of being wrong.  If you’re asking for a name, they might give you a letter, but it won’t be any old letter.  It will probably be E, R, S, or T because these are the most commonly used letters in English.  If you’re asking for a location, they’re inclined to respond with something vague like “there’s something tall nearby” or a description like hot or cold.  Can any of you think of a place you go to normally that doesn’t have something tall nearby?

            Now I’d like to ask a new question specifically tailored to psychics.  Why don’t they gamble?  If they can read minds, they can win at poker.  If they can guess numbers, they can win at roulette.  If they can see the future, they can win the lottery.  As always, it’s important to ask “Is there a more rational explanation?”  Do psychics possess these amazing abilities, but avoid casinos because they would rather charge people in need of their help?  Or is it more reasonable to think these so-called psychics have learned how profitable vagueness can be?

            In fact, when psychics are forced to be specific, they show zero ability.  When psychic Sylvia Brown was asked to make predictions for the year 2007 on television, she was exactly incorrect.  She said George Bush would pull out of Iraq, major drug busts would be made on both the East and West coast, terrorists would be caught smuggling bombs into the U.S., and the housing market was the safest investment.  As soon as we check for objective outside verification, the fabrications fall apart.

            Keep searching for outside verification when you hear a claim, but search honestly.  It’s easy to find support when you start from a conclusion, so we must approach investigation scientifically.  I wrote an entire research essay in High School claiming that Attention Deficit Disorder was due to candy, and that medication couldn’t treat it.  That was the idea I had in my head before I started writing, and I found the support for it.  I had to rely on outdated studies and unscientific sources, but with a lot of effort I backed up my conclusion.  Had I started with the topic and done research before making my conclusion, I would have finished earlier.  I wouldn’t have had to spend so much time ignoring reputable studies.  I wouldn’t have had to dig through blogs to find personal anecdotes by unqualified citizens arguing unsupported opinions.  Only when we question our beliefs can we truly learn.

            I know it’s uncomfortable to question the things you believe.  It might lead you down a path you don’t like.  It might shatter your world view, or redefine what’s important to you; but I assure you, the truth is worth it.  I stand before you both as a victim of skepticism, and someone who has been saved by it.  When critical thinking started disassembling the beliefs I held so dear, I was terrified.  I didn’t know what to do if the things I had sworn were important weren’t.  I felt lost, scared, alone, and unimportant.  If you develop the habit of skepticism, you might go through some of the same crises. 

While they may be scary, they’re incredibly liberating experiences.  When you finally realize that you don’t have to contrive reality, you can spend time on the things you learn are actually important.  The bottom line is that you can’t change reality just by wanting it to be one way or the other.

            We face fabrications that can give us false hope, but we tell ourselves that false hope is still hope.  Why do people suffer from consistent gullibility?  It’s because we’re afraid.  We’re afraid that we can’t know what will happen next.  We’re afraid that there’s no structure and reassuring plan for our lives.  We’re afraid that we’re small and insignificant.  We’re afraid that our existence is a meaningless series of random events.  What if all it’s true?  What if tomorrow is a surprise?  What if our chances really are random?  What if you’re really just one of 6 billion people living on just one of billions of planets in one of too many galaxies to count?

            Like it or not, your existence is cosmically insignificant, but that’s not really a problem.  To me, we’re important.  I hope you think we’re important to.  So, lacking a strict definition of important who’s to say we’re wrong.  Why do we need to succumb to our gullibility?  Things are the way they are, and maybe there’s not a problem with that. Documentation:
I got the pisces info from wikipedia.org
I learned that the signs are shifting from Bill Nye (youtube clip), and double checked with another site, but I forget it's address.
I got the James Randi challenge info from his website randi.org
I got the info on Sylvia Brown from a video clip of her on youtube.com