Thursday, July 17, 2014

The Amazing Movement: Evidence Based Decision Making

Magician, Skeptic, Star of "An Honest Liar" and
All Around Affable Human Being, James Randi (and me)
I am fresh back from Las Vegas where I attended this year's national centerpiece conference on skepticism: The Amazing Meeting.   For those untouched by James Randi's brainchild, this conference consisted of four days of serious discussions on science and evidence based thinking.  Additionally there were opportunities to socialize with celebrity skeptics, and numerous workshops and other fun events generally highlighting the skeptic movement, its progress and its challenges toward increasing evidence-based decision-making into our world at large. (in brief, a skeptic is someone who wants to discover and journey the path that is Reality, a reality that evidence supports; fictitious ideas are grand, so long as we recognize and treat those ideas as the fiction they are!)

The topics at TAM were varied and most were excellent.  I walked away with numerous bits of knowledge from various skeptics who host their own blogs (The Arizona History Chick,The Kazoo Sutra and Skeptical Medicine), podcasts (SGU), artists (manga artista Sarah Mayhew and webcomic artist Kyle Saunders) and great thinkers and personalities (Michael Shermer, Bill Nye, and James Randi to name a few).  The Interweb is your obvious path to find out more about any of these great people.

In addition to thought provoking sessions, there was plenty of time to meet, chat and laugh with skeptics from all over the world.  Perhaps some of the people I met are reading this blog right now.  I encourage my fellow TAM 2014 attendees to chime in and share their favorite moments at the conference.

...next week I'll be back with yet another mindful Goodness First topic...in fact, if you have a question or an idea for a topic on how we might move closer to a world full of greater Goodness,feel free to email it to me with "GF Suggestion" in the subject line and I will gladly respond, and perhaps make it the centerpiece of an upcoming blog post.

Peace out!


2 comments:

  1. Carol Tavris blew me away with her clarity of thinking in navigating a controversial topic and ability to communicate it clearly in her "Origins of the He Said/She Said Gap In Sexual Allegations" presentation. Hearing her talk reminded me of the first time I read Bertrand Russell and the first time I heard Richard Dawkins.

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  2. Her presentation was great. I've put Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts by Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson (Mar 2008) on my to read list!

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