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In the long run, it is better to understand the way the world really is rather than how we would like it to be.

Michael Shermer

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Michael Shermer
Age: 70
Born: 1954
Born: September 8
Historian Of Science
Journalist
Philosopher
Psychologist
Sport Cyclist
Writer
Glendale
California
USA
Michael Brant Shermer
Really
Way
Would
Like
Rather
World
Understand
Running
Better
Long

More quotes by Michael Shermer

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The price of liberty is, in addition to eternal vigilance, eternal patience with the vacuous blather occasionally expressed from behind the shield of free speech.
Michael Shermer
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Machine intelligence of a human nature could be a century away, and immortality is at least a millennium away, if not unattainable altogether.
Michael Shermer
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My thesis is that morality exists outside the human mind in the sense of being not just a trait of individual humans, but a human trait that is, a human universal.
Michael Shermer
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Mammals are sentient beings that want to live and are afraid to die. Evolution vouchsafed us all with an instinct to survive, reproduce and flourish.
Michael Shermer
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Believing that the rustle in the grass is a dangerous predator when it is only the wind does not cost much, but believing that a dangerous predator is the wind may cost an animal its life.
Michael Shermer
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We are a fluke of nature, a quirk of evolution, a glorious contingency.
Michael Shermer
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Human history is highly nonlinear and unpredictable.
Michael Shermer
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But because we live in an age of science, we have a preoccupation with corroborating our myths.
Michael Shermer
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In science, if an idea is not falsifiable, it is not that it is wrong, it is that we cannot determine if it is wrong, and thus it is not even wrong.
Michael Shermer
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The recent medical controversy over whether vaccinations cause autism reveals a habit of human cognition — thinking anecdotally comes naturally, whereas thinking scientifically does not.
Michael Shermer
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We know evolution happened not because of transitional fossils such as A. natans but because of the convergence of evidence from such diverse fields as geology, paleontology, biogeography, comparative anatomy and physiology, molecular biology, genetics, and many more.
Michael Shermer
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Since humans are by nature tribal, the overall goal is to expand the concept of the tribe to include ALL members of the species, in a global free society.
Michael Shermer
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Anecdotal thinking comes naturally science requires training.
Michael Shermer
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Are science and religion compatible? It's like, are science and plumbing compatible? They're just two different things.
Michael Shermer
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No single discovery from any of these fields denotes proof of evolution, but together they reveal that life evolved in a certain sequence by a particular process.
Michael Shermer
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Accepting evolution does not force us to jettison our morals and ethics, and rejecting evolution does not ensure their constancy.
Michael Shermer
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People who espouse Intelligent Design believe nature is so complex as to require an intelligent designer-God. Similarly, liberals believe the economy is so complex as to require an intelligent designer-government.
Michael Shermer
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Science is not a thing. It's a verb. It's a way of thinking about things. It's a way of looking for natural explanations for all phenomena.
Michael Shermer
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For solving a surprisingly large and varied number of problems, crowds are smarter than individuals.
Michael Shermer
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Rationality tied to moral decency is the most powerful joint instrument for good that our planet has ever known.
Michael Shermer