De Defectu Scepticismi in My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Iterum!
"De Defectu Scepticismi in My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Iterum!"
"About the Skepticism Fail in My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Again!"
Not long ago, I mentioned the Skepticism Fail in the new My Little Pony show:
Scientistria Pinkie Pie
Here is a video of the episode in question:
That reminds me of great post about a certain awful anti-skeptic movie that Russell Glasser (of the Atheist Community of Austin) wrote a few years ago:
The Reaping: another awful anti-skeptic movie
Russell's synopsis is excellent:
Act 1, scene 1
Skeptic: "Hi, I'm an atheist and I think supernatural stuff is all bunk!"
Believer: "An atheist, eh? Why, you must have had some tragic experience in your life that made you mad at God."
Skeptic: "Why yes, as a matter of fact I did!"
Act 1, scene 2
Messenger: "Hey skeptic, some weird supernatural events are happening in this out-of-the-way location, and I think you should check it out."
Skeptic: "Supernatural events? Nonsense! There is a perfectly logical scientific explanation! Therefore, I will drop everything else in my life and go check it out."
Messenger: "I thought you'd say that. Car's ready, let's go."
Act 2
(Obviously supernatural events happen.)
Skeptic: "Nonsense, there is a perfectly rational scientific explanation for all of this. Give me a minute and I'll make some up."
Act 3
Skeptic: "Holy cow, it turns out that these events were supernatural all along! I have certainly learned many things and grown as a person. So much for my vaunted 'scientific method.'"
Now if you just got rid of the "atheist" and "tragic experience" tropes, you'd have an excellent synopsis of the aforementioned My Little Pony episode.
Russell continues:
You understand, of course, that I'm not complaining because a fictional story has fictional elements in it. I'm complaining about the really bad way that the skeptical main character is portrayed, in that she is confronted with an unprecedented level of real, concrete evidence... which she blithely ignores right up until the very end.
And "ignore the evidence" seems to be the only thing that Hillary Swank ever does in her capacity as a skeptic. For somebody with such a supposedly scientific mind, she certainly doesn't bother doing any of the obvious tests that I, who am not a scientist, think of immediately. For instance, the first thing she goes to investigate is a river that has turned red like blood.
More importantly:
This whole idea that you can just make up a "logical, scientific explanation" by ad libbing stuff off the top of your head, without taking any data or evidence into account, is what bugs me about this and many other movies in the way they portray skeptics. It's quite similar to cargo cult science, because it's clearly somebody who has no idea what science is, writing a script showing what sciency people sound like.
Exactly.
Lauren Faust might be a great animator, and she seems to be very good at putting sciency-sounding know-it-alls in their place, but she does not know (or care) how to write scripts that inspire and foster scientific curiosity among young girls.
"About the Skepticism Fail in My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Again!"
Not long ago, I mentioned the Skepticism Fail in the new My Little Pony show:
Scientistria Pinkie Pie
Here is a video of the episode in question:
Click to viewThat reminds me of great post about a certain awful anti-skeptic movie that Russell Glasser (of the Atheist Community of Austin) wrote a few years ago:
The Reaping: another awful anti-skeptic movie
Russell's synopsis is excellent:
Act 1, scene 1
Skeptic: "Hi, I'm an atheist and I think supernatural stuff is all bunk!"
Believer: "An atheist, eh? Why, you must have had some tragic experience in your life that made you mad at God."
Skeptic: "Why yes, as a matter of fact I did!"
Act 1, scene 2
Messenger: "Hey skeptic, some weird supernatural events are happening in this out-of-the-way location, and I think you should check it out."
Skeptic: "Supernatural events? Nonsense! There is a perfectly logical scientific explanation! Therefore, I will drop everything else in my life and go check it out."
Messenger: "I thought you'd say that. Car's ready, let's go."
Act 2
(Obviously supernatural events happen.)
Skeptic: "Nonsense, there is a perfectly rational scientific explanation for all of this. Give me a minute and I'll make some up."
Act 3
Skeptic: "Holy cow, it turns out that these events were supernatural all along! I have certainly learned many things and grown as a person. So much for my vaunted 'scientific method.'"
Now if you just got rid of the "atheist" and "tragic experience" tropes, you'd have an excellent synopsis of the aforementioned My Little Pony episode.
Russell continues:
You understand, of course, that I'm not complaining because a fictional story has fictional elements in it. I'm complaining about the really bad way that the skeptical main character is portrayed, in that she is confronted with an unprecedented level of real, concrete evidence... which she blithely ignores right up until the very end.
And "ignore the evidence" seems to be the only thing that Hillary Swank ever does in her capacity as a skeptic. For somebody with such a supposedly scientific mind, she certainly doesn't bother doing any of the obvious tests that I, who am not a scientist, think of immediately. For instance, the first thing she goes to investigate is a river that has turned red like blood.
More importantly:
This whole idea that you can just make up a "logical, scientific explanation" by ad libbing stuff off the top of your head, without taking any data or evidence into account, is what bugs me about this and many other movies in the way they portray skeptics. It's quite similar to cargo cult science, because it's clearly somebody who has no idea what science is, writing a script showing what sciency people sound like.
Exactly.
Lauren Faust might be a great animator, and she seems to be very good at putting sciency-sounding know-it-alls in their place, but she does not know (or care) how to write scripts that inspire and foster scientific curiosity among young girls.