Carl Sagan just might be my favorite non-fiction author. As Richard Dawkins said, he was incapable of constructing a bad sentence.
One of my favorite parts of this book was the essay "The Dragon in my Garage". The essay argues that if you can't provide any testable or falsifiable evidence for a dragon's existence, then its existence is no different than the absence of a dragon.
Mentioned it in my blog -
"The promise of an afterlife is a cornerstone of many religions, offering comfort in the face of mortality. However, this promise often hinges on the existence of an all-powerful deity, whose nature and existence remain subjects of debate. Central to many afterlife beliefs is the notion of an invisible, immortal soul or spirit capable of experiencing emotions, enabling the concepts of reward or punishment. Yet, no empirical evidence has been found to confirm the existence of such a soul. Acclaimed science author Carl Sagan illustrated this challenge with his “dragon in the garage” analogy. If someone claims to have a dragon that is invisible, silent, intangible, and undetectable by any means, there is no practical difference between the dragon’s existence and non-existence. Similarly, without verifiable evidence, the existence of an immortal soul remains unproven."
My other favorite books from him are -
1. Pale Blue Dot - That "look again at that dot" might be the most poetic thing I've read.
For the unaware, or for those who want to read it again, here's the full quote -
"Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known."
2. Cosmos.
3. BILLIONS AND BILLIONS - the part he described coming to know that he had cancer was beautifully written.
4. Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors: A Search for Who We Are with Ann Druyan.
I never read that fiction book he wrote - Contact.
But, man, I'm going to add one of his books to my To Be Read list again lol.
I read this book many years ago and it made a big impression on me.
His view is that normal, rational, intelligent people... can have fictional stories in their heads about how things work. It takes energy and focus and research to fix these wrong stories, so often we live with them or don't recognize them.
Many times I've been casually talking with someone, say something, then realize that doesn't make any sense. My wrong story made sense in my head, but not when I speak it out loud.
By practicing the scientific method, we can gradually weed out the wrong stories in our heads.
Now I'm going to re-read `The Demon-Haunted World`
I once lent my copy to a friend of a friend prone to conspiratorial thinking, who professed to be open-minded and interested in my viewpoint. A few years later, after many reminders, he returned it to me. I asked him what he thought of it. He said he never read it, but it made for a great paper weight. This was the first of many realizations for me that magical thinking cannot be altered with logic.
It's more you can't get someone to change their thinking by giving them a book if they don't want to change or read the book. My mum gives me books on the Baha'i faith but that doesn't work well either because I'm not interested. It's more about whether the person is motivated to change than about logic I think.
"While asleep I had an unusual experience. There was a red screen formed by flowing blood as it were. I was observing it. Suddenly a hand began to write on the screen. I became all attention. That hand wrote a number of results in elliptic integrals. They stuck to my mind. As soon as I woke up, I committed them to writing..."
> Back when I was at university, a friend mentioned to me that he wanted to read The Demon Haunted World by Carl Sagan. I had been a fan of Sagan since my teenage years, but had put off reading that book. Asking him if he’d read any of Sagan’s works, he said “No, but this book is often present in skeptic reading lists.”
> Many years later, I finally read the book. I’m surprised with it being recommended by skeptics, as it has a lengthy criticism of skeptics.
...
Quotes taken straight from the book:
"And yet, the chief deficiency I see in the skeptical movement is in its polarization: Us vs. Them—the sense that we have a monopoly on the truth; that those other people who believe in all these stupid doctrines are morons; that if you’re sensible, you’ll listen to us; and if not, you’re beyond redemption. This is unconstructive. It does not get the message across. It condemns the skeptics to permanent minority status; whereas, a compassionate approach that from the beginning acknowledges the human roots of pseudoscience and superstition might be much more widely accepted."
...
"In the way that skepticism is sometimes applied to issues of public concern, there is a tendency to belittle, to condescend, to ignore the fact that, deluded or not, supporters of superstition and pseudoscience are human beings with real feelings, who, like the skeptics, are trying to figure out how the world works and what our role in it might be. Their motives are in many cases consonant with science. If their culture has not given them all the tools they need to pursue this great quest, let us temper our criticism with kindness. None of us comes fully equipped."
It is indeed a great book. I would caution folks here that it is not particularly representative of Carl Sagan's books. If you loved/hated this book, it doesn't mean you'll love/hate his other books.
I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time — when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.
Chapter 13:
One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We're no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It's simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we've been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.
Chapter 25:
In every country, we should be teaching our children the scientific method and the reasons for a Bill of Rights. With it comes a certain decency, humility and community spirit. In the demon-haunted world that we inhabit by virtue of being human, this may be all that stands between us and the enveloping darkness.
Why is the book so expensive (in Britain)? I found a picture online of the back cover showing ISBN 0-7472-5156-8 and £7.99, but the prices I see for ordering it now are ... discouraging.
The 25 chapters are mostly independent and some of them are updated versions of something published earlier. Obviously the chapters complaining about the state of science education in the USA in the 1990s are less interesting for a European reading today. For me the most interesting chapters were 4-15 and 24, about witchcraft and human gullibility, for example.
I find the cheerleading for science in the initial chapters rather tiresome. That's just a personal reaction. I don't think the author is in any way "wrong". I suppose it's partly because it's something I feel I've grown out of. I read a lot of science popularisation when I was young, and I studied sciences, but in my old age I usually prefer literary fiction. I can't help feeling that "Science works!" is a very dull claim in view of the fact that anything that works gets accepted as "science". And the much vaunted "scientific method" is really just common sense, isn't it, really? Can that be taught? I have my doubts. Interestingly, his chapter 18 on !Kung San hunters somewhat makes that same point ...
A nit: He repeats the tired old myth about rhino horns being used medicinally to prevent impotence. More credible writers on that subject[] say they are used for jewellery, knife handles and the like.
[] "Last chance to see", co-authored by Douglas Adams, perhaps? I can't remember whether it's mentioned in there but I'd recommend that book in any case.
Some research in neuroscience suggests that potentially the majority of our actions happen primarily in the limbic regions of the brain and then later our pre-frontal cortex makes up a logical story for why we acted this way. This is really trippy and can cause you to rethink your own sanity if you think about it long enough. It’s quite possible I don’t know why I do much of what I do… but I am good at making up a story to explain to keep me sane. Crazy to think about.
I think that may be something that LLMs are lacking. They've got the make up a story bit but not the limbic system.
I've got a theory that the experience of consciousness is down to something like that - different systems in the brain interacting, like it being a bit of the brain that brings together info from the senses and memory recall and thinking outputs and then makes up a story/model of it.
I've been thinking a lot of Mark Fisher's Hauntology lately.
Hauntology is about this sense of loss. That there are these other futures that were due and coming, but have been cancelled. Fisher argues that Western society mid-future lost it's ability to generate "new", trapped recycling and recombining.
And it feels like that, and so much worse. We're not just lacking in our generative wow, in our ability to go forth & be "yes we can" people. We're utterly dogged and dragged down into the muckiest disrealities by endless people deliberately haunting the world. That half of politics everywhere has become pro-haunting parties. That dis-reality and fear, scaredness of the world and other people, has no real purpose but it keeps people weak and dumb and slow, as Sagan said. Off kilter with no sense and sensibility.
It feels like the dishonesty and fearmongering of politics, the calling of enemies, the unwillingness to come back to reasonability and reason and faith and trust in each other, to be good: it's haunting us so badly. We're in an age where The Demon-Haunted World is a playbook. Being used everyday by the very powerful.
To make people into: scared people, afraid of demons haunting them, believing in shadows and fear more than truth and reason. We humanity are being haunted by spook science going on in the Head of the Health and Human Services (RFK). It's Presidents getting up and telling us our cities are warzones and our Senator getting up and asking for photos of today & it being an incredible place. The President's Truth acocunt posting AI-generated "med-bed" dis-realities! https://bsky.app/profile/wyden.senate.gov/post/3lzy6exxcf22n
This world is demon haunted, and it's not just ignorance of the dark. It's destroying the worthy good futures, refusing arrival of decent obvious truth, by ensnaring us and locking us in fantasy. It's using many-headed-hydra tactics, to flood the zone of reality, to brow-beat disreality forever, to insist insanity has a valid spot on the Overton Window.
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[ 6.3 ms ] story [ 36.5 ms ] threadOne of my favorite parts of this book was the essay "The Dragon in my Garage". The essay argues that if you can't provide any testable or falsifiable evidence for a dragon's existence, then its existence is no different than the absence of a dragon.
Mentioned it in my blog -
"The promise of an afterlife is a cornerstone of many religions, offering comfort in the face of mortality. However, this promise often hinges on the existence of an all-powerful deity, whose nature and existence remain subjects of debate. Central to many afterlife beliefs is the notion of an invisible, immortal soul or spirit capable of experiencing emotions, enabling the concepts of reward or punishment. Yet, no empirical evidence has been found to confirm the existence of such a soul. Acclaimed science author Carl Sagan illustrated this challenge with his “dragon in the garage” analogy. If someone claims to have a dragon that is invisible, silent, intangible, and undetectable by any means, there is no practical difference between the dragon’s existence and non-existence. Similarly, without verifiable evidence, the existence of an immortal soul remains unproven."
My other favorite books from him are -
1. Pale Blue Dot - That "look again at that dot" might be the most poetic thing I've read.
For the unaware, or for those who want to read it again, here's the full quote -
"Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known."
2. Cosmos.
3. BILLIONS AND BILLIONS - the part he described coming to know that he had cancer was beautifully written.
4. Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors: A Search for Who We Are with Ann Druyan.
I never read that fiction book he wrote - Contact.
But, man, I'm going to add one of his books to my To Be Read list again lol.
His view is that normal, rational, intelligent people... can have fictional stories in their heads about how things work. It takes energy and focus and research to fix these wrong stories, so often we live with them or don't recognize them.
Many times I've been casually talking with someone, say something, then realize that doesn't make any sense. My wrong story made sense in my head, but not when I speak it out loud.
By practicing the scientific method, we can gradually weed out the wrong stories in our heads.
Now I'm going to re-read `The Demon-Haunted World`
- Srinivasa Ramanujan
> Back when I was at university, a friend mentioned to me that he wanted to read The Demon Haunted World by Carl Sagan. I had been a fan of Sagan since my teenage years, but had put off reading that book. Asking him if he’d read any of Sagan’s works, he said “No, but this book is often present in skeptic reading lists.”
> Many years later, I finally read the book. I’m surprised with it being recommended by skeptics, as it has a lengthy criticism of skeptics.
...
Quotes taken straight from the book:
"And yet, the chief deficiency I see in the skeptical movement is in its polarization: Us vs. Them—the sense that we have a monopoly on the truth; that those other people who believe in all these stupid doctrines are morons; that if you’re sensible, you’ll listen to us; and if not, you’re beyond redemption. This is unconstructive. It does not get the message across. It condemns the skeptics to permanent minority status; whereas, a compassionate approach that from the beginning acknowledges the human roots of pseudoscience and superstition might be much more widely accepted."
...
"In the way that skepticism is sometimes applied to issues of public concern, there is a tendency to belittle, to condescend, to ignore the fact that, deluded or not, supporters of superstition and pseudoscience are human beings with real feelings, who, like the skeptics, are trying to figure out how the world works and what our role in it might be. Their motives are in many cases consonant with science. If their culture has not given them all the tools they need to pursue this great quest, let us temper our criticism with kindness. None of us comes fully equipped."
It is indeed a great book. I would caution folks here that it is not particularly representative of Carl Sagan's books. If you loved/hated this book, it doesn't mean you'll love/hate his other books.
America would be much less divisive if they ignored the preachings of their tribe leaders, and made up their own minds.
The 25 chapters are mostly independent and some of them are updated versions of something published earlier. Obviously the chapters complaining about the state of science education in the USA in the 1990s are less interesting for a European reading today. For me the most interesting chapters were 4-15 and 24, about witchcraft and human gullibility, for example.
I find the cheerleading for science in the initial chapters rather tiresome. That's just a personal reaction. I don't think the author is in any way "wrong". I suppose it's partly because it's something I feel I've grown out of. I read a lot of science popularisation when I was young, and I studied sciences, but in my old age I usually prefer literary fiction. I can't help feeling that "Science works!" is a very dull claim in view of the fact that anything that works gets accepted as "science". And the much vaunted "scientific method" is really just common sense, isn't it, really? Can that be taught? I have my doubts. Interestingly, his chapter 18 on !Kung San hunters somewhat makes that same point ...
A nit: He repeats the tired old myth about rhino horns being used medicinally to prevent impotence. More credible writers on that subject[] say they are used for jewellery, knife handles and the like.
[] "Last chance to see", co-authored by Douglas Adams, perhaps? I can't remember whether it's mentioned in there but I'd recommend that book in any case.
I've got a theory that the experience of consciousness is down to something like that - different systems in the brain interacting, like it being a bit of the brain that brings together info from the senses and memory recall and thinking outputs and then makes up a story/model of it.
Hauntology is about this sense of loss. That there are these other futures that were due and coming, but have been cancelled. Fisher argues that Western society mid-future lost it's ability to generate "new", trapped recycling and recombining.
And it feels like that, and so much worse. We're not just lacking in our generative wow, in our ability to go forth & be "yes we can" people. We're utterly dogged and dragged down into the muckiest disrealities by endless people deliberately haunting the world. That half of politics everywhere has become pro-haunting parties. That dis-reality and fear, scaredness of the world and other people, has no real purpose but it keeps people weak and dumb and slow, as Sagan said. Off kilter with no sense and sensibility.
It feels like the dishonesty and fearmongering of politics, the calling of enemies, the unwillingness to come back to reasonability and reason and faith and trust in each other, to be good: it's haunting us so badly. We're in an age where The Demon-Haunted World is a playbook. Being used everyday by the very powerful.
To make people into: scared people, afraid of demons haunting them, believing in shadows and fear more than truth and reason. We humanity are being haunted by spook science going on in the Head of the Health and Human Services (RFK). It's Presidents getting up and telling us our cities are warzones and our Senator getting up and asking for photos of today & it being an incredible place. The President's Truth acocunt posting AI-generated "med-bed" dis-realities! https://bsky.app/profile/wyden.senate.gov/post/3lzy6exxcf22n
This world is demon haunted, and it's not just ignorance of the dark. It's destroying the worthy good futures, refusing arrival of decent obvious truth, by ensnaring us and locking us in fantasy. It's using many-headed-hydra tactics, to flood the zone of reality, to brow-beat disreality forever, to insist insanity has a valid spot on the Overton Window.