So I'm a Skeptic!
David Ogilsbie
How a common man kept his wits.
My name is David Ogilsbie. I am twenty-eight, and I am a skeptic.
The furthest my formal education goes is high school. My personal
interests extend to many scientific fields. This is a essay on how I
came to the modern skeptical movement.
Growing up in New Mexico, where a belief in extra-terrestrial visits
is part of our culture, I was lucky to have a father who worked in the
Air Force as a airplane mechanic. Every time someone made a claim to
have seen an alien craft, it was easy to go to my dad and say, “Hey
dad, whats that?” Invariably, his answers were rational, and based in
his knowledge of aeronautics. Common explanations for the things
people saw were: satellites orbiting the earth, high altitude weather
balloons, and experimental aircraft. To me these explanations were
fascinating. Isn't it amazing how far up we've gone? In my world,
U.F.O.s were interesting, but not nearly as interesting as when they
became I.F.O.s.
In my early school years I was fascinated by the scientific method,
and how simple it made it to evaluate complex ideas. It embraced
negative outcomes, and even sought them out. I thought that it was so
cool, that a scientist could come out and say, “Hey! I have worked on
this for years and it turns out my hypothesis was wrong. Oh well.” It
was truly amazing that people would admit that their ideas had been
wrong all along, abandon them, and continue on unburdened. It was a
process by which we could whittle away at the knowledge we had, and
refine it.
Sure, I wanted amazing things to be true, but I wouldn't accept that
they were unless they could be proven. When I would be faced with an
extraordinary claim, I would think, “Wow! That's so cool,” but I would
never leave it at that. I needed to know more. Had the idea been
tested? Did it stand up to criticism? All too often extraordinary
claims turned out to be completely silly.
High school wasn't that great for someone like me. I wasn't “nerdy”
but I wasn't anybody's dupe, either. I wasn't afraid to confront
bullshit, and make it clear what I thought. While I felt that this
was a desirable trait, my teachers and peers did not always agree.
One day, I was sitting in class and overheard a boy claiming to be
able to levitate. He proceeded to do the simple levitation trick that
is now performed by many street magicians. Many of my classmates were
credulous, but I simply laughed out loud. I stood up, got the
attention of the class, and proceeded to tear apart the trick with
detailed explanations and replications. You can imagine how my
constant debunking must have affected my popularity.
For a few years after high school, all I could do was get mad at the
the frauds, and those that bought into their claims. I didn't have
the captive audience that I had in the classroom, nor did I have any
authority amongst my peers(many of my new peers were older and
“wiser”). Surprisingly, television came to my salvation. First: South
Park, then: Mythbusters, and finally: Penn and Teller's Bullshit.
I was shocked! There were other people out there who thought the way I
did! Who were they? Where were they? How could I find them? So I did
the only thing I could: I looked up more Penn and Teller.
I have always liked illusionists and particularly enjoyed Penn and
Teller's no bullshit magic. They didn't try to pass off their tricks
as anything else. They proclaimed that they were in fact simply
performing clever illusions. They might as well have come onstage
announcing, “We are about to lie to you, and we are so good at it that
you won't catch us! We're not using any mystical powers, we're just
tricking you.”
Through Penn and Teller, I found many more people to look up to: James
Randi, the JREF, Phil Plait, Skeptic Magazine and The Skeptics Guide
to the Universe etc. I'm a Skeptic. I always was a Skeptic, and
(barring major head trauma) always will be.