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originally posted by: 808Funk
Been reading a bit on various Skeptics like James Randi, Joe nickels, Micheal Shermer etc and from my view a lot of them come over as aggressive tunnel visioned "I'm right your wrong" type's in which you find you get in certain religious, argumentative, ideology and political types.I know a lot of the stuff out there in reports, book's, internet and film, Youtube is either fake, bollocks or easily explained but if a skeptic hasn't had an experience then why are they hell bent on proving your wrong ?
originally posted by: skyblueworld
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, same rule applies to the UFO phenomenon. I've never seen one single shred of evidence of the paranormal that could hold up in a court of law.
originally posted by: 808Funk
a reply to: Krazysh0t
Maybe
In psychology, the false-consensus effect or false-consensus bias is an attributional type of cognitive bias whereby people tend to overestimate the extent to which their opinions, beliefs, preferences, values, and habits are normal and typical of those of others (i.e., that others also think the same way that they do).[1] This cognitive bias tends to lead to the perception of a consensus that does not exist, a "false consensus".
This false consensus is significant because it increases self-esteem (overconfidence effect). It is derived from a desire to conform and be liked by others in a social environment. This bias is especially prevalent in group settings where one thinks the collective opinion of their own group matches that of the larger population. Since the members of a group reach a consensus and rarely encounter those who dispute it, they tend to believe that everybody thinks the same way. The false-consensus effect is not restricted to cases where people believe that their values are shared by the majority, but it still manifests as an overestimate of the extent of their belief. For example, fundamentalists do not necessarily believe that the majority of people share their views, but their estimates of the number of people who share their point of view will tend to exceed the actual number.
Additionally, when confronted with evidence that a consensus does not exist, people often assume that those who do not agree with them are defective in some way.[2] There is no single cause for this cognitive bias; the availability heuristic, self-serving bias, and naïve realism have been suggested as at least partial underlying factors. Maintenance of this cognitive bias may be related to the tendency to make decisions with relatively little information. When faced with uncertainty and a limited sample from which to make decisions, people often "project" themselves onto the situation. When this personal knowledge is used as input to make generalizations, it often results in the false sense of being part of the majority.[3]
The false-consensus effect can be contrasted with pluralistic ignorance, an error in which people privately disapprove but publicly support what seems to be the majority view (regarding a norm or belief), when the majority in fact shares their (private) disapproval. While the false-consensus effect leads people to wrongly believe that the majority agrees with them (when the majority, in fact, openly disagrees with them), the pluralistic ignorance effect leads people to wrongly believe that they disagree with the majority (when the majority, in fact, covertly agrees with them). Pluralistic ignorance might, for example, lead a student to engage in binge drinking because of the mistaken belief that most other students approve of it, while in reality most other students disapprove, but behave in the same way because they share the same mistaken (but collectively self-sustaining) belief. In a parallel example of the false-consensus effect, a student who likes binge drinking would believe that a majority also likes it, while in reality most others dislike it and openly say so.
originally posted by: skyblueworld
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, same rule applies to the UFO phenomenon. I've never seen one single shred of evidence of the paranormal that could hold up in a court of law.