Immediately as I saw this book on the list I knew it was
going to pull me in, this book is all about why people believe in things that
to a skeptic sound crazy. The book starts out with Sagan getting off of a plane
and into a car with a driver that was sent for him. In this car the driver asks
Sagan many questions which he believes are very scientific although they are
all pseudoscience. Over the course of the book Sagan discusses why people
believe pseudoscience. There is an emphasis on critical thinking and how it is
a tool to combat pseudoscience.
My favorite part in the book is from chapter ten the dragon
in my garage, the imaginary conversation that Sagan has is very reminiscent of
children playing a game they made up and adding rules in their favor when they
want to. In my experience this is how people react when someone tries to challenge
what they believe. There is no winning with a person who has this kind of
attitude because anything that you say to dispel their claims gets met with a
new factor that they conveniently didn’t tell you about before, such as the UFO they took a picture of is invisible. This book
relates to the course because it deals with a lot of the same pseudoscience examples
that we learned about in the lectures.
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