Tag Archives: TV

Randomly appearing in my Unix fortune program this morning, an excerpt from Carl Sagan’s “The Burden of Skepticism” about the difference between making decisions based on evidence and making decisions despite the evidence:

… Another writer again agreed with all my generalities, but said that as an inveterate skeptic I have closed my mind to the truth. Most notably I have ignored the evidence for an Earth that is six thousand years old. Well, I haven’t ignored it; I considered the purported evidence and then rejected it. There is a difference, and this is a difference, we might say, between prejudice and postjudice. Prejudice is making a judgment before you have looked at the facts. Postjudice is making a judgment afterwards. Prejudice is terrible, in the sense that you commit injustices and you make serious mistakes. Postjudice is not terrible. You can’t be perfect of course; you may make mistakes also. But it is permissible to make a judgment after you have examined the evidence. In some circles it is even encouraged.

Speaking of Carl Sagan, I have been enjoying Hulu’s free archive of the original Cosmos TV series recently. Holds up to this day. In fact, Denyse and I have been watching Stephen Hawking’s Universe which debuted on the Discovery Channel last month, and apart from the fancy computer graphics, there’s as much information in Cosmos. :) In any case, both are quite enjoyable programs.