What skepticism is

I was watching the TANK vodcast the other day. They had a short feature: "what is skepticism?" It had a series of vox pops shot in Sydney. People told us what they think skepticism is. It's all about being stubborn, close minded and refusing to believe the things that everybody else believes, apparently. The programme makers didn't answer the question themselves -- after all, "you and I know what it is". Well, I do know what skepticism is, but how would I explain it to those who don't? Skepbitch has managed to get in with an answer before me, but I'd like to add my own way of describing what it means to be a skeptic.

Skepticism is the opposite of naivety. Being a skeptic means being aware of all of the ways you can be deceived. It means knowing the methods that other people use to deceive you -- the propaganda and rhetoric techniques, and the fallacies in their own thinking. It means knowing the limitations of your senses, and designing ways to get around those limitations. And it means knowing the appropriate volume of evidence to demand for claims about the world. A skeptic does not have a closed mind, but their mind is not a free-for-all. Skepticism is the doorman who checks for fraudsters.

When I was very young, ghosts were fashionable in the UK. I loved the ghost stories on television -- Fortean TV on Channel 4, and an ITV programme whose name I forget, hosted by a man with large dusty book and a candle. Though the stories were transparent fiction, the ten year-old me believed them. He was naive. He got fooled, and one can chuckle at his expense. If more people realised that the antonym of "skeptical" is "naive", they might be a little less inclined to use it as a derogatory term. There is nothing to celebrate about being gullible and exploitable.