Dogmatic Slumber Party

Dogmatic Slumber Party is the 97th episode of the Very Bad Wizards podcast, released on August 30, 2016. The opening segment is a discussion on . The main segment is a discussion on . The preroll contains the standard disclaimer and theme_music.

Opening Quote

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Show Notes

Do you have strong views on climate change, taxes, health care, or gun control? Do you think the evidence and reason support your side of the debate? How do you know you're right? David and Tamler discuss a recent paper by Dan Kahan and colleagues showing how prone people are to make errors in processing information to favor positions they are predisposed to believe. And even more shocking: the higher your numeracy skills, the more prone you are to fall prey to this bias. So how do we correct for this? Can we know anything at all with any confidence? Could it be that 'Are You There God? It's Me Margaret' in not in fact a completely accurate depiction of how young girls think about puberty? Plus, we decide whether to join Neil deGrasse Tyson as a citizen of Rationalia. To paraphrase Mr. T, I pity the newscasters!

• Reflections on Rationalia
  
• Vulcan learning pods from Star Trek (2009)
  
• Motivated numeracy and enlightened self-government.
  
• Motivated skepticism: Use of differential decision criteria for preferred and nonpreferred conclusions.
  
• Support Very Bad Wizards