Receptive Skepticism

Welcome to Receptive Skepticism™

We are an outreach organization built to promote receptive skepticism, a skepticism designed using counseling psychology, that is applicable to everything we make decisions about,  and one that makes it easier to get along with and get a better hearing from those with whom we disagree.  This skepticism is an alternative to selective types, such as Scientific Skepticism, which apply it as only a tool, or solipsist skepticism types which claim nothing can be trusted as known.

As the skepticism we represent is about outreach, our organization focuses on outreach and advocacy.

Our hosting of an online Endurance-Based Dispute platform is a fundamental aspect of our organization, as this platform provides the means for discussion with the open-mindedness and receptivity for which we advocate, while disabling the ability for scorn to result in “selective considering” of ideas.

We will soon begin hosting a prototype Endurance-Based Dispute platform for its alpha-testing.  We also host Facebook groups, designed to promote the skepticism for which we advocate.

We Oppose Scorn & Selective Considering

Our organization advocates for awareness that maintaining scorn and “selective considering” as social regulation resources is morally atrocious.  (We aren’t pushy about this, but we are working to raise awareness of this).  Scorn is an unreliable, avoidable, problem-ridden, and severely harmful social mechanism, that presently shields wrong ideas, harms relationships and impairs self-improvement, and holds back social equality. When practiced, it is an amazingly dangerous shield against change for the better, and provides a false sense of satisfaction and success about the efficacy of its use.  The effectiveness of scorn has been further weakened in the digital age.

Scorn and selective considering (basically closed-mindedness) go hand in hand.  We oppose the disregard of bad and harmful ideas.  We call for awareness that the wrong things are disregarded too often with selective considering, and that substantially grave harm has been caused by this disregard/closed-mindedness.   Considering bad ideas might not be fun, and at times it might be scary, but we also advocate to trust that a fair consideration with a receptive skepticism methodology, will expose reasons why they are bad, and very likely will reveal a stronger case for why a bad thing is bad.

We advocate Alternatives to Scorn

Scorn operates exploitatively through a prosocial pathway, and that pathway can be better used to root out harmful ideas directly, rather than the indirect scorn route.  The great alternative is open-mindedness.  Open-mindedness is the easiest way to keep people of all intelligence levels on track since unlike scorn, all people can support the virtue of being fair to ideas.  Bad ideas grow better in the dark, where they are protected, and preserved through misrepresenting their opposition via scorn.

Making a person a part of your group has an impact on their susceptibility to aligning with how your group sees things.

Other alternatives to scorn come from behaviorism, such as Differential Reinforcement of Incompatible Behavior (DRI), where one provides reinforcement to the behavior that is desired, instead of fighting against the one being replaced.  In the RS groups, moderators often try to use DRI with members who are behaving poorly, instead of immediately slamming the book on them.

Practical Interventions are interventions that are recommended when other options aren’t working, and one wants to stop a problem that can’t be solved through warmer means.  In a practical intervention, an interference, restraint, or removal, and other efforts of that nature occurs.  Scorn is not needed to have to respond swiftly to a problem.  Nor is it needed when the harsh reality of a true statement said without scorn can provide extra incentive.  Interventions that put people on the defensive, however, should be less preferable, because people become less easy to sway when on the defensive.