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🔗 Skepticism 🔗 Business 🔗 Psychology 🔗 Cognitive science

In the field of social psychology, illusory superiority is a condition of cognitive bias wherein a person overestimates their own qualities and abilities, in relation to the same qualities and abilities of other people. Illusory superiority is one of many positive illusions, relating to the self, that are evident in the study of intelligence, the effective performance of tasks and tests, and the possession of desirable personal characteristics and personality traits. Overestimation of abilities compared to an objective measure is known as the overconfidence effect.

The term illusory superiority was first used by the researchers Van Yperen and Buunk, in 1991. The phenomenon is also known as the above-average effect, the superiority bias, the leniency error, the sense of relative superiority, the primus inter pares effect, and the Lake Wobegon effect, named after the fictional town where all the children are above average. The Dunning-Kruger effect is a form of illusory superiority shown by people on a task where their level of skill is low.

A vast majority of the literature on illusory superiority originates from studies on participants in the United States. However, research that only investigates the effects in one specific population is severely limited as this may not be a true representation of human psychology. More recent research investigating self-esteem in other countries suggests that illusory superiority depends on culture. Some studies indicate that East Asians tend to underestimate their own abilities in order to improve themselves and get along with others.

🔗 Russia 🔗 History 🔗 Skepticism 🔗 Sociology 🔗 Russia/language and literature of Russia 🔗 Russia/history of Russia

In politics and economics, a Potemkin village is any construction (literal or figurative) whose sole purpose is to provide an external façade to a country which is faring poorly, making people believe that the country is faring better, although statistics and charts would state otherwise. The term comes from stories of a fake portable village built solely to impress Empress Catherine II by her former lover Grigory Potemkin, during her journey to Crimea in 1787. While modern historians claim accounts of this portable village are exaggerated, the original story was that Potemkin erected phony portable settlements along the banks of the Dnieper River in order to impress the Russian Empress; the structures would be disassembled after she passed, and re-assembled farther along her route to be viewed again as if another example. The term is a translation of the Russian: потёмкинские деревни (IPA: /pɐˈtʲɵmkʲɪnskʲɪɪ dʲɪˈrʲɛvnʲɪ/; romanization: potyómkinskiye derévni).

🔗 Philosophy 🔗 Skepticism 🔗 Philosophy/Logic 🔗 Philosophy/Social and political philosophy 🔗 Philosophy/Philosophy of science 🔗 Sociology 🔗 Science

Scientism is the promotion of science as the best or only objective means by which society should determine normative and epistemological values. The term scientism is generally used critically, implying a cosmetic application of science in unwarranted situations considered not amenable to application of the scientific method or similar scientific standards.

🔗 Philosophy 🔗 Skepticism 🔗 Philosophy/Logic 🔗 Psychology 🔗 Cognitive science

A cognitive bias is a systematic pattern of deviation from norm or rationality in judgment. Individuals create their own "subjective reality" from their perception of the input. An individual's construction of reality, not the objective input, may dictate their behavior in the world. Thus, cognitive biases may sometimes lead to perceptual distortion, inaccurate judgment, illogical interpretation, or what is broadly called irrationality.

Some cognitive biases are presumably adaptive. Cognitive biases may lead to more effective actions in a given context. Furthermore, allowing cognitive biases enables faster decisions which can be desirable when timeliness is more valuable than accuracy, as illustrated in heuristics. Other cognitive biases are a "by-product" of human processing limitations, resulting from a lack of appropriate mental mechanisms (bounded rationality), impact of individual's constitution and biological state (see embodied cognition), or simply from a limited capacity for information processing.

A continually evolving list of cognitive biases has been identified over the last six decades of research on human judgment and decision-making in cognitive science, social psychology, and behavioral economics. Daniel Kahneman and Tversky (1996) argue that cognitive biases have efficient practical implications for areas including clinical judgment, entrepreneurship, finance, and management.

🔗 Internet culture 🔗 Environment 🔗 Skepticism 🔗 Chemicals 🔗 Sociology

The dihydrogen monoxide parody involves calling water by an unfamiliar chemical name, most often "dihydrogen monoxide" (DHMO), and listing some of water's well-known effects in a particularly alarming manner, such as accelerating corrosion and causing suffocation. The parody often calls for dihydrogen monoxide to be banned, regulated, or labeled as dangerous. It demonstrates how a lack of scientific literacy and an exaggerated analysis can lead to misplaced fears.

The parody has been used with other chemical names, including "dihydrogen oxide", "hydroxyl acid", and "hydroxylic acid".

🔗 Philosophy 🔗 Skepticism

The motte-and-bailey fallacy (named after the motte-and-bailey castle) is a form of argument and an informal fallacy where an arguer conflates two positions which share similarities, one modest and easy to defend (the "motte") and one much more controversial (the "bailey"). The arguer advances the controversial position, but when challenged, they insist that they are only advancing the more modest position. Upon retreating to the motte, the arguer can claim that the bailey has not been refuted (because the critic refused to attack the motte) or that the critic is unreasonable (by equating an attack on the bailey with an attack on the motte).

🔗 Physics 🔗 Skepticism

Polywater was a hypothesized polymerized form of water that was the subject of much scientific controversy during the late 1960s. By 1969 the popular press had taken notice and sparked fears of a "polywater gap" in the US.

Increased press attention also brought with it increased scientific attention, and as early as 1970 doubts about its authenticity were being circulated. By 1973 it was found to be illusory, being just water with any number of common organic compounds contaminating it.

Today, polywater is best known as an example of pathological science.

🔗 Internet culture 🔗 Skepticism

Time Cube was a personal web page, founded in 1997 by the self-proclaimed "wisest man on earth," Otis Eugene "Gene" Ray. It was a self-published outlet for Ray's theory of everything, called "Time Cube," which polemically claims that all modern sciences are participating in a worldwide conspiracy to teach lies, by omitting his theory's alleged truth that each day actually consists of four days occurring simultaneously. Alongside these statements, Ray described himself as a "godlike being with superior intelligence who has absolute evidence and proof" for his views. Ray asserted repeatedly and variously that "academia" had not taken Time Cube seriously.

Otis Eugene Ray died on March 18, 2015 at age 87. Ray's website domain names expired in August 2015, and Time Cube was last archived by the Wayback Machine on January 12, 2016. (January 10–14)

🔗 Film 🔗 Television 🔗 Skepticism 🔗 Film/British cinema

Alternative 3 is a television programme, broadcast once only in the United Kingdom in 1977, and later broadcast in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, as a fictional hoax, an heir to Orson Welles' radio production of The War of the Worlds. Purporting to be an investigation into the UK's contemporary "brain drain", Alternative 3 uncovered a plan to make the Moon and Mars habitable in the event of climate change and a terminal environmental catastrophe on Earth.

The programme was originally meant to be broadcast on April Fools' Day, 1977. While its broadcast was delayed until 20 June, the credits explicitly date the film to 1 April. Alternative 3 ended with credits for the actors involved in the production and featured interviews with a fictitious American astronaut.

🔗 Philosophy 🔗 Skepticism 🔗 Alternative Views 🔗 ArtAndFeminism

'Pataphysics (French: 'pataphysique) is a "philosophy" of science invented by French writer Alfred Jarry (1873–1907) intended to be a parody of science. Difficult to be simply defined or pinned down, it has been described as the "science of imaginary solutions".