Quotes About Doubt

not accepting other people's wisdom as gospel.

the benefits promised in the book seem grossly overstated.

As much as it is ingrained in our habits and conventional wisdom, confirmation can be a dangerous error.

Como veíamos antes, los casos de desconfirmación tienen mucha más fuerza para establecer la verdad. Sin embargo, tendemos a no ser conscientes de esta propiedad.

could not understand what made one explanation more likely than the other

It is true that 1,000 days cannot prove you right, but one day can prove you to be wrong.

But there are some things I can remain skeptical about, and others I can safely consider certain.

Mother of all harmful mistakes - mistaking absence of evidence for evidence of absence.

Do not question his procedure, only his confidence.

It will take a lot of statistical information to override your hesitation.

Many of them blindly believe in it.

Diagoras asked, "Where were the pictures of those who prayed, then drowned?" The drowned worshippers, being dead, would have a lot of trouble advertising their experiences from the bottom of the sea.

They don't know what you can do with it, and will live in a state of uncertainty.

we know a lot more what is wrong than what is right

You will never fully convince

But it remains the case that you know what is wrong with a lot more confidence than you know what is right. All pieces of information are not equal in importance.

Even Fleming lost faith in the idea before it was subsequently revived.

He provides the example of a philosopher who puzzles about the reality of time, but who nonetheless applies for a research grant to work on the philosophical problem of time during next year's sabbatical—without doubting the reality of next year's arrival.

At the core, he tends to mistake the unknown for the nonexistent.

People are scared of the alternative.

It has been difficult for people to understand that, historically, skepticism has been mostly skepticism of expert knowledge rather than skepticism about abstract entities like God, and that all the great skeptics have been largely either religious or, at least, pro-religion (that is, in favour of others being religious).

only suckers wait for answers; questions are not made for answers):

Fat Tony did not believe in predictions.

mistaking absence of evidence (of harm) for evidence of absence