Reason

How to Change Your Mind Without Feeling Defeated

People often experience changing their mind as losing an argument, betraying a group or admitting weakness. A truth-seeking approach treats revision as evidence that learning has occurred.

Why Extraordinary Claims Need Stronger Evidence

An extraordinary claim is not merely unusual or unpopular. It is a claim that would require major revision of well-supported knowledge or depends upon causes outside reliably observed experience.

What Does It Mean for Something to Be True?

People use the word true in different ways. A statement may be sincerely believed, socially accepted or practically useful without accurately describing reality. Understanding truth requires separating what is the case from what people think is the case.

How Propaganda Works Without Telling Direct Lies

Propaganda does not always invent facts. It can mislead by selecting only favourable information, removing context, repeating emotionally useful details and ignoring evidence that would change the audience's judgement.

Are We Becoming Better Informed or Merely More Opinionated?

People now encounter more news, commentary and data than previous generations. Yet exposure to information does not necessarily mean that beliefs are more accurate or better reasoned.

When Should We Distrust the Consensus?

Consensus can reflect accumulated evidence and scrutiny, but it can also reflect conformity, institutional pressure or shared error. The important question is how the agreement was produced.

The Difference Between Expertise and Authority

Experts and authorities may overlap, but they are not the same. A person can hold power without relevant knowledge, while a genuine expert may possess knowledge without institutional authority.

Why Intelligent People Believe Irrational Things

Intelligence does not guarantee rationality. Highly capable people can hold unsupported beliefs because reasoning is influenced by identity, emotion, loyalty, incentives and prior commitment.

What Is the Difference Between an Unexplained Event and a Supernatural Event?

An event may be real and remain unexplained. That does not automatically make it supernatural. The distinction is essential when evaluating miracles, ghosts, psychic experiences and other unusual claims.

Why Do Intelligent People Believe Irrational Things?

Intelligence does not make a person immune to bias, identity, fear or social pressure. Highly capable people may use their abilities to investigate a belief—or to construct more sophisticated reasons for never questioning it.

How Can We Tell Whether a Religious Claim Is True?

Religious claims concern some of the most important questions humans ask. Their importance does not exempt them from investigation. The same commitment to fairness requires neither automatic belief nor automatic dismissal.

Why Popular Beliefs Are Not Necessarily True

Large numbers of people can share the same mistaken belief. Popularity may tell us something about culture, authority or human psychology, but it does not by itself tell us whether a belief is true.

Zhuangzi

Philosopher · Traditionally c. 369–286 BCE · Daoist philosophy, perspective, language, freedom, change and naturalness

Zhuangzi was an influential Daoist philosopher whose associated text uses stories and paradox to question certainty, rigid distinctions and conventional values.