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wackojacko1138
topic
01:08:35 PM May 5th 2010
The core concept of this proof is problematic for me. Why should the fact that new evidence has changed a skeptic's mind about a specific topic break the skeptic's skepticism?
helterskelter
11:39:53 AM Jul 27th 2010
I might be misunderstanding your meaning, but the trope isn't "Skeptics Are Wrong" its "Skeptics Are Wrong When Singing Angels From Heaven Come Visit Them On A Regular Basis And They Refuse To Believe It". Despite every reason to believe the contrary, a character who continuously goes "No, there's a scientific reason for that" when we know that's not the reason, is considered an Arbitrary Skeptic. They just won't acknowledge it, because, well, they're skeptics. That's what they do.

Again, your sentence doesn't make a lot of sense to me.
muninn
09:20:30 AM Sep 19th 2010
Actually, the trope is "Skeptics who Have Single Angels From Heaven Visit Them on A Regular Basis are skeptical when somebody claims to see a unicorn"

It's not somebody refusing to believe in something contrary to evidence that it exists, it's somebody who believes in something normally considered not to exist ("angels"), yet is closed-minded about the possibility that something else normally considered not to exist ("unicorns") also might exist.
91.64.30.1
topic
02:48:02 PM Sep 7th 2010
I deleted the following justification from the Stargate entry " * They probably dismiss the idea of a dragon of the kind depicted in the Arthurian legends being real, because such a creature is biologically impossible. A "dragon" in and of itself, okay, dinosaur. A flying dragon, only possible if it's fairly small. A fire-breather? No, just no. "

Firstly, it's a whole paragraph of justification. Secondly, it's only safe to say that dragons are pretty much imposible in our world - but our world doesn't have huge insects (impossible in their own right, considering insects don't scale up too well) capable of multiplying by overwriting a human victim's DNA so it bodily turns into lots and lots of said insects either.
Drolyt
topic
02:06:25 AM Jan 1st 2011
About the following line: "Can cause Fridge Logic; if dragons are a regular and accepted occurrence in the characters' world, then why would they use it as an example to compare with something that doesn't?" I would like to add something pointing out that this makes more sense if there is some sort of conspiracy or whatever where most people don't believe in all the supernatural stuff (like in most Urban Fantasy settings) but I'm not sure how to word this. In other news, the description should probably be more clear. I think what this trope is is when a skeptic is convinced of one thing that goes against previous beliefs (say dragons) but instantly reverts back to skeptic mode when he sees something else (say elves). This would make sense if the two things are unrelated, but often the skeptic decides to belief in mythological creature a but then doubt mythological creature b even though they are part of the same mythology or whatever.
XiVXaV
topic
02:21:07 PM Jan 19th 2012
Can I just lodge a complaint about this trope in general? It seems to go against the very nature of having a skeptical outlook on life to ever not be skeptical of something entirely because some other thing turned out to be real.

Take the page quote for example. I would have to agree with Wash: So? What does living in a spaceship have to do with whether or not psychic powers exist? Why does living in a world where ghosts exist mean zombies must also?

The description even acknowledges this, but only very briefly and seems to want to just stuff the problem in the corner so you won't notice it.

Also, this: "In reality, no claim requires 'extraordinary proof', just sufficient proof." This treats 'extraordinary' and 'sufficient' as if they're mutually exclusive concepts, when they're not. Perhaps the proof must be 'extraordinary' in order to be 'sufficient'.
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