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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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Michael Shermer
Age: 70
Born: 1954
Born: September 8
Historian Of Science
Journalist
Philosopher
Psychologist
Sport Cyclist
Writer
Glendale
California
USA
Michael Brant Shermer
Cannot
Ideas
Even
Determine
Thus
Wrong
Idea
Science

More quotes by Michael Shermer

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I’m a skeptic not because I do not want to believe, but because I want to know. How can we tell the difference between what we would like to be true and what is actually true? The answer is science.
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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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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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
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We are a fluke of nature, a quirk of evolution, a glorious contingency.
Michael Shermer
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I just witnessed an event so mysterious that it shook my skepticism.
Michael Shermer
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Providentially, learned habits can be unlearned, especially in the context of moral groups.
Michael Shermer
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Because of the complexity of the problem, environmental skepticism was once tenable. No longer. It is time to flip from skepticism to activism.
Michael Shermer
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Science is the best tool ever devised for understanding how the world works.
Michael Shermer
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Either the soul survives death or it does not, and there is no scientific evidence that it does.
Michael Shermer
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We do not just blindly concede control to authorities instead we follow the cues provided by our moral communities on how best to behave.
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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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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Scientists like Bjorn Lomborg in The Skeptical Environmentalist have, in my opinion, properly nailed environmental extremists for these exaggerated scenarios.
Michael Shermer
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Anecdotal thinking comes naturally science requires training.
Michael Shermer
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No such individual would find the Golden Rule surprising in any way because at its base lies the foundation of most human interactions and exchanges and it can be found in countless texts throughout recorded history and from around the world - a testimony to its universality.
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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Being a skeptic just means being rational and empirical: thinking and seeing before believing.
Michael Shermer
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Skepticism is not a position that you stake out ahead of time and stick to no matter what.
Michael Shermer