Skepticism and Denial

There's an important distinction between the two, but people conflate them all too often on this great big internet of ours. Skepticism and doubt are healthy, even necessary to our understand of the world. When honestly pursued, these questions push us towards a better concept of ourselves and our environment.

On the other hand, flat out denial is worse than useless. It prevents the discussion from even occurring. Let's look at something relatively non-controversial like ghost stories. Eye witness accounts are generally assumed false and left at that. This may be fairly safe assumption, but it doesn't actually tell us anything. If there were strange lights or displaced objects or even full on apparitions, then I want to know WHY! I don't expect the souls of the dead are messing with us, but there must be a root cause. Who knows? We might find something wholly unexpected. Even if the cause is something truly mundane, the effect on our perception and interpretation is fascinating. People who simply say an a priori "No" and move on have no sense of scientific wonder.

Occam's Razor is a good guiding principle, but it is not the be all and end all of investigation. If even a single datum is without appropriate representation, the simplest solution is incomplete.

Even if you have done the research yourself, simply yelling "No" on the internet isn't going to convince anyone. Leaving out the evidence just makes people dig in their heels. Treating your opponent as a rational human being doesn't guarantee you a reasonable discussion partner, of course, but it comes off much better to the outside observer.