Anyone interested in a skeptic community?
Anyone interested in a skeptic community?
Hello, I'm a Reddit refugee and I was a prolific poster on r/skeptic. I would love a Lemmy skeptics community, but I haven't found an active one anywhere. Mander seems like a good place for one. If I started one, would people be interested?
Personally, I also visit communities such as r/skeptic and also r/conspiracy for interesting discussions.
There are already some c/skeptic community in the fediverse:
Mander seems like a good place for one.
I am not so sure. Skepticism fuels scientific inquiry, and yes, people should be skeptical when discussing science. And this skepticism should show up in every community.
What worries me about a community dedicated to 'being a skeptic' is that, in my experience, this is a space that can easily concentrate polarizing views - about religion, gender identity, politics, who is misinformed and who isn't, conspiracies, etc. These become spaces to debate charged political and social issues, and science is rarely the priority.
I think that we have more than enough polarizing spaces in the internet and in the fediverse, so I really try to make an effort to minimize the volume of polarizing topics in this instance.
It is very rarely a hard 'no' for me. You are of course free to create a skeptic community, and it is possible to create a community that does not fall into the 'traps' I've mentioned. If you choose to that, I would appreciate it if you are at least mindful of the mission of avoiding polarizing spaces and trying to stick to the topics of science and nature.
I suspect that a large number of people are interested in discussing socially relevant and politically charged topics in a skeptics community, and so my recommendation would be to use the communities that I mentioned above.
Hey Salamander! Good to see you on this side! I'll check those out, thanks. I've been looking but couldn't find anything active.
EDIT: Looks like both of them have been inactive for days. I understand what you're saying about here, but I think if we keep it on a scientific level, it will work. I agree that skepticism is often more social and political, but maybe we can keep those posts off of here? Maybe I should just use one of those others and try to liven them up? Not sure.
but I think if we keep it on a scientific level, it will work
You are welcome to try! _ I am just letting you know my immediate thoughts and worries, so that later on I don't end up surprising you if things become too polarizing and I see the need to step in. But I am always in favor of trying things out.
Leery but could be cool. I really like looking at why people are so attracted to conspiracies in general and why they judge things as conspiracies even if they aren't as a meta topic but I'm not sure that fits.
I would love it personnally!
What's the elevator pitch for it?
I'm not sure what more is needed for an elevator pitch, but I'll try- A community for skeptics to gather and share information, news, have discussion, etc. Typical for Lemmy from what I've seen so far. I just want an alternative to r/skeptic.
I have never had any exposure to r/skeptic so that's probably why I'm lost. But being a skeptic is more a state of mind for me. This being a science instance, I assumed was everywhere. Like people wouldn't take things at face value without scientific publication backing statements and such. I don't know what a specific community for skepticism would add in this environment.
Like, what would a post be like? Reference another post or a news article and deconstruct it with references to academic publications?
I would comment there.