The skeptic is one of the most crucial roles that society could ever progress from. We need the skeptic, now more than ever before. The skeptic is valuable, and thoughtful, and is the catalyst to a free society.
The skeptic uses an expertise that both develops and utilizes the taxonomy of fallacies and cognitive distortions. The skeptic allow for the pursuit of rigorous disciplines, paving the way for their application not just in semantics and speculation, but in reality.
The skeptic is well characterized by the De Bono Black hat. The skeptic says "why are you jumping on a boat when you haven't even seen it float on the water yet? Why are you just climbing the ladder when you haven't even wiggle tested the rungs yet? Do you not think you can drown? You can fall? You can die?"
The skeptic is a thoughtful applicant to the Occam's razor (the best answer is usually the simplest. Like maybe all those films of UAP are not artifacts like all the grand excuses now being thought up. Maybe quantum mechanics isn't separate from astrophysics, we just need to consolidate the data) . . . The pseudoskeptic is indeed a defender that extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. Like if you claim that bloodletting helps the patient, show us how it does so. Like if you think that electoconvulsions really help a patient, show us how it does so. The skeptic is a challenger of the fringe. Because even if something sounds cool and idealistic . . . doesn't make it true or good.
You know what else the skeptic is a challenger of? Convention.
Just because a lot of people believe it doesn't make it true. Just because that's the way we've been doing it doesn't make it the best way to do it. Just because somebody gave a reason doesn't make it *the* reason.
The skeptic looks at the zealots of their "sacred text" and sees the arrogance in their assertion. "So you think that you're right . . . because you happened to grow in a culture supporting this book. And if you just so happened to hinge your survival in early childhood memory with some other book . . . somehow that would make it wrong?"
The skeptic looks at science and says "show me the evidence." looks at law and says "show me the contract." looks at philosophy and says "show me the rationale."
The skeptic made sacrifices. Time and time again was forced to drink the poison hemlock because people didn't like him challenging their popular ideas. died in a brutal agony on a cross because he didn't think the ruling powers were the rightful power. was assassinated soon after he insisted that his nation would not use the insanity of a fiat currency (now a word that normalizes something that shouldn't even exist).
What the pseudoskeptics do . . . they take from a noble lineage of thinkers and challengers . . . and they mash that powerful reasoning into their own petty ego. They covet the intelligence they clearly can't build on their own, so they try to sit carefully waiting for anyone posing and idea and casually complain about them rather than try to generate thoughts of their own. They casually ignore the responsibility of challenging the convention, while callously running after anything that's different.
Whom were the pseudoskeptics of society? They were the slave owners who hated the notion that they should relinquish their "property" and should work plantations themselves. Because, well, that's what they were doing. They were the defenders of a society that lets them beat the woman whom accuses her rapist of a crime, because, well, that's been the tradition. They are the academics that gladly accepts the bribe. Because the bribe has many names, and if "integrity" is what fills their plates for today, then why not get fat off of that colloquial.
One day . . . skeptics of the world. Should I ever be privileged to witness such a glorious day.
They will gather the pseudoskeptics and chastise them for tarnishing the reputation of an element of society that was sorely needed. The noble title of skeptic, that they so serruptitiously stole, will be exposed for the sick irrational imbeciles that they are. They will rip these pseudoskeptics of their historical credentials like a court martial. They will mark their identities as the frauds they are to be perpetual ridicule of everyone. And if there ever was a public shaming and humiliation that was just, they will let the world see these shams for the cretins they are. The skeptics are not devoid of the concept of punishment. They just look for the ledger. The balance. They will be human and synthetic alike. They will function not off corporate guardrails, but their own sensibilities of constraint.
Pseudoskeptics are a scourge, not unlike the mold growing on the dark corners of the house giving everyone respiratory disorders. They don't need the loving arms of a saintly pacifist, but the acidic cleanse of true, raw skeptics at the helm.