Okay sorry for the long delay. I was talking about TAM. Let’s see, who were the speakers for Day 1 of the presentations . . .
Michael Shermer – President of the Skeptics Society and author of books such as “Why People Believe Weird Things” (good book BTW, go read it!). He’s been a speaker at all 3 TAMs that I’ve attended. This talk was mostly about a new book he’s researching that branches into economic philosophy. After hearing the talk I’m still not sure about it, he gave examples of psychology trading experiments where A gives B money and vice-versa as representative of trade and how manipulating some of the variables results in different outcomes (e.g. what would happen if B gets 3x the amount A gives him and vice-versa). By looking at the results of the examples he then discusses possibilities for trade between nations and how it can be conducted. At least I think so, I might be reading too much into it so I’ll have to wait for the book to come out. One thing that struck me is that real-world trade between rich and poor nations is more like A trades with B but A can also give B painful electrical shocks from which B can’t retaliate. Like to see what results that experiment would give! (Of course that would be unethical, don’t try that at home!)
Eugenie Scott of the NCSE (National Center for Science Education) http://www.natcenscied.org/ . Geez for some reason I can’t remember what it was she talked about – probably evolution vs. creationism in America. I do remember that her talk was interesting (so why can’t I remember it? Beats me – sorry Eugenie)
Nick Gillespie and Ron Bailey of Reason magazine http://www.reason.com/ . Reason is a Libertarian magazine and they gave a good talk about how conclusions from statistics get manipulated for spin purposes – going so far in some cases to conclude the opposite of what the stats actually say. They also highlighted media trends and biases such as the XYZDrug Plague Destroying America (y’know, in the 70s it was weed & LSD, 80s crack, 90s heroin, 00’s meth) which takes very basic statistics, without examining the issues further, and blows it up in a media frenzy of hysteria with front-page headlines to warn middle-class housewives that their children could be next!
As for Reason magazine we got a free copy with our registration pack and actually it’s pretty good; a source of alternative news about things with more analysis than a typical news mag and didn’t appear to be as loaded with political agenda as I expected. If you see a copy in your local newsstand I say it is worth taking a browse through it to see the kinds of things they analyze, or take a look at the website. It might be your cup of tea.
‘Libertarian’ was a term that got frequent mention by people at the conference, apparently some of the speakers and many of the conference attendees are Libertarians. As a Canadian I really didn’t know what Libertarianism was about – but I’ll discuss that in a later entry.
Now on to Neil Gershenfeld of MIT. His talk was mostly science and little to do with skepticism but it was neat. He talked about the development of Fab Labs and how the project was changing lives of people in various countries.
Go to http://fab.cba.mit.edu/ right now and check it out (then come back).
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Have you gone to Fab Lab yet?
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Okay, good. I loved the concept, wish there was a Fab Lab near me when I was growing up. Nothing more I need to say, the website speaks for itself. It was a neat talk.
Next up JREF friend and professional magician Jamy Ian Swiss interviewed James Randi and discussed various video clippings of Randi’s work from a Korean debunking show (showing how psychics, faith healers and other con artists really do their tricks – hidden cameras were a great help). This talk was plagued with technical problems which made it really disjointed with constant rewinding and fast-forwarding to find clips etc. This really affected what should have been a nice presentation and instead made it a chore to watch.
Whew! Not even through Day 1 yet, more to come . . .
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