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Postdiction
Postdiction involves explanation after the fact. In skepticism, it is considered an effect of hindsight bias that explains claimed predictions of significant events such as plane crashes and natural disasters. In religious contexts, theologians frequently refer to postdiction using the Latin term '' vaticinium ex eventu'' (foretelling after the event). Through this term, skeptics postulate that many biblical prophecies (and similar prophecies in other religions) appearing to have come true may have been written after the events supposedly predicted, or that the text or interpretation may have been modified after the event to fit the facts as they occurred. Skeptics of premonition use these terms in response to claims made by psychics, astrologers and other paranormalists to have predicted an event, when the original prediction was vague, catch-all, or otherwise non-obvious. Most predictions from such figures as Nostradamus and James Van Praagh express the future with such ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nostradamus
Michel de Nostredame (December 1503 – July 1566), usually Latinisation of names, Latinised as Nostradamus, was a French Astrology, astrologer, apothecary, physician, and reputed Oracle, seer, who is best known for his book ''Les Prophéties'' (published in 1555), a collection of 942 poetic quatrains allegedly predicting future events. Nostradamus's father's family had originally been Jewish, but had converted to Catholic Christianity a generation before Nostradamus was born. He studied at the University of Avignon, but was forced to leave after just over a year when the university closed due to an outbreak of the Bubonic plague, plague. He worked as an apothecary for several years before entering the University of Montpellier, hoping to earn a doctorate, but was almost immediately expelled after his work as an apothecary (a manual trade forbidden by university statutes) was discovered. He first married in 1531, but his wife and two children died in 1534 during another plag ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Postdictable
Postdictable concepts are those concepts that can be justified after having been seen.Upal, M. A. An Alternative View of the Minimal Counterintuitiveness Effect, Journal of Cognitive Systems Research, 11(2), 194-203. Upal labeled a counterintuitive concept as postdictable if the postdiction process is successful making sense of the concept i.e., the reader is successfully able to construct a justification given the reader's background knowledge, level of motivation and interest, and the cognitive resources (including time) available to the reader. According to the context-based model of minimal counterintuiveness, postdictable counterintuitive concepts are minimally counterintuitive and are remembered well. Those counterintuitive concepts that are not postdictable in a given context are considered to be maximally counterintuitive and are not remembered well by people. Thus the concept of a flying elephant is postdictable (and thus minimally counterintuitive) when set up in the con ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Prophecy Of The Popes
The Prophecy of the Popes (, "Prophecy of Saint-Archbishop Malachy, concerning the Supreme Pontiffs") is a series of 112 short, cryptic phrases in Latin which purport to predict Pope, popes (along with a few antipopes) of the Catholic Church, beginning with Pope Celestine II, Celestine II. It was first published in 1595 by Benedictine monk Arnold Wyon, Arnold Wion, who attributed the prophecy to Saint Malachy, a 12th-century Archbishop of Armagh. Given the accurate description of popes up to around 1590 and lack of accuracy for the popes that follow, historians generally conclude the alleged prophecy is a pseudepigrapha, pseudepigraphic fabrication written shortly before publication. The Catholic Church has no official stance, although some Catholic theologians have dismissed it as forgery. The prophecy concludes with a pope identified as "Peter the Roman", whose pontificate will allegedly precede the destruction of the city of Rome and the Last Judgment. History Publication an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Prophesy
In religion, mythology, and fiction, a prophecy is a message that has been communicated to a person (typically called a ''prophet'') by a supernatural entity. Prophecies are a feature of many cultures and belief systems and usually contain divine will or law, or preternatural knowledge, for example of future events. They can be revealed to the prophet in various ways depending on the religion and the story, such as visions, or direct interaction with divine beings in physical form. Stories of prophetic deeds sometimes receive considerable attention and some have been known to survive for centuries through oral tradition or as religious texts. Etymology The English noun "prophecy", in the sense of "function of a prophet" appeared from about 1225, from Old French ''profecie'' (12th century), and from ''prophetia'', Greek language">Greek ''propheteia'' "gift of interpreting the will of God", from Greek ''prophetes'' (see prophet). The related meaning, "thing spoken or written b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Moving The Goalposts
Moving the goalposts (or shifting the goalposts) is a metaphor, derived from goal-based sports such as football and hockey, that means to change the rule or criterion ("goal") of a process or competition while it is still in progress, in such a way that the new goal offers one side an advantage or disadvantage. Etymology This phrase is British in origin and derives from sports that use goalposts. The figurative use alludes to the perceived unfairness in changing the goal one is trying to achieve after the process one is engaged in (such as a game of football) has already started. Logical fallacy Moving the goalposts is an informal fallacy in which evidence presented in response to a specific claim is dismissed and some other (often greater) evidence is demanded. That is, after an attempt has been made to score a goal, the goalposts are moved to exclude the attempt. The problem with changing the rules of the game is that the meaning of the result is changed, too. Use Some inclu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Planet X
Following the discovery of the planet Neptune in 1846, there was considerable speculation that another planet might exist beyond its orbit. The search began in the mid-19th century and continued at the start of the 20th with Percival Lowell's quest for Planet X. Lowell proposed the Planet X hypothesis to explain apparent discrepancies in the orbits of the giant planets, particularly Uranus and Neptune, speculating that the gravity of a large unseen ninth planet could have perturbed Uranus enough to account for the irregularities. Clyde Tombaugh's discovery of Pluto in 1930 appeared to validate Lowell's hypothesis, and Pluto was officially named the ninth planet. In 1978, Pluto was conclusively determined to be too small for its gravity to affect the giant planets, resulting in a brief search for a tenth planet. The search was largely abandoned in the early 1990s, when a study of measurements made by the ''Voyager 2'' spacecraft found that the irregularities observed in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Wilson Reagan (February 6, 1911 – June 5, 2004) was an American politician and actor who served as the 40th president of the United States from 1981 to 1989. He was a member of the Republican Party (United States), Republican Party and became an important figure in the American conservative movement. Presidency of Ronald Reagan, His presidency is known as the Reagan era. Born in Illinois, Reagan graduated from Eureka College in 1932 and was hired the next year as a sports broadcaster in Iowa. In 1937, he moved to California where he became a well-known film actor. During his acting career, Reagan was president of the Screen Actors Guild twice from 1947 to 1952 and from 1959 to 1960. In the 1950s, he hosted ''General Electric Theater'' and worked as a motivational speaker for General Electric. During the 1964 United States presidential election, 1964 presidential election, Reagan's "A Time for Choosing" speech launched his rise as a leading conservative figure. After b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Hinckley Jr
John Warnock Hinckley Jr. (born May 29, 1955) is an American man who attempted to assassinate U.S. president Ronald Reagan as he left the Hilton Hotel in Washington, D.C., on March 30, 1981, two months after Reagan's first inauguration. Using a revolver, Hinckley wounded Reagan, police officer Thomas Delahanty, Secret Service agent Tim McCarthy and White House Press Secretary James Brady. Brady was left disabled and died 33 years later from his injuries. Hinckley was reportedly seeking fame to impress actress Jodie Foster, with whom he had a fixation after watching her in Martin Scorsese's 1976 film ''Taxi Driver''. He was found not guilty by reason of insanity and remained under institutional psychiatric care for over three decades. Public outcry over the verdict led state legislatures and Congress to narrow their respective insanity defenses. In 2016, a federal judge ruled that Hinckley could be released from psychiatric care as he was no longer considered a threat to hims ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Allegory
As a List of narrative techniques, literary device or artistic form, an allegory is a wikt:narrative, narrative or visual representation in which a character, place, or event can be interpreted to represent a meaning with moral or political significance. Authors have used allegory throughout history in all forms of art to illustrate or convey complex ideas and concepts in ways that are comprehensible or striking to its viewers, readers, or listeners. Writers and speakers typically use allegories to convey (semi-) hidden or complex meanings through symbolism (arts), symbolic figures, actions, imagery, or events, which together create the moral, spiritual, or political meaning the author wishes to convey. Many allegories use personification of abstract concepts. Etymology First attested in English in 1382, the word ''allegory'' comes from Latin ''allegoria'', the latinisation (literature), latinisation of the Greek language, Greek ἀλληγορία (''allegoría''), "veiled ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Skepticism
Skepticism ( US) or scepticism ( UK) is a questioning attitude or doubt toward knowledge claims that are seen as mere belief or dogma. For example, if a person is skeptical about claims made by their government about an ongoing war then the person doubts that these claims are accurate. In such cases, skeptics normally recommend not disbelief but suspension of belief, i.e. maintaining a neutral attitude that neither affirms nor denies the claim. This attitude is often motivated by the impression that the available evidence is insufficient to support the claim. Formally, skepticism is a topic of interest in philosophy, particularly epistemology. More informally, skepticism as an expression of questioning or doubt can be applied to any topic, such as politics, religion, or pseudoscience. It is often applied within restricted domains, such as morality (moral skepticism), atheism (skepticism about the existence of God), or the supernatural. Some theorists distinguish "good" or mode ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
September 11, 2001 Attacks
The September 11 attacks, also known as 9/11, were four coordinated Islamist terrorist suicide attacks by al-Qaeda against the United States in 2001. Nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercial airliners, crashing the first two into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City and the third into the Pentagon (headquarters of the U.S. Department of Defense) in Arlington County, Virginia. The fourth plane crashed in a rural Pennsylvania field during a passenger revolt. The attacks killed 2,977 people, making it the deadliest terrorist attack in history. In response to the attacks, the United States waged the global war on terror over multiple decades to eliminate hostile groups deemed terrorist organizations, as well as the foreign governments purported to support them. Ringleader Mohamed Atta flew American Airlines Flight 11 into the North Tower of the World Trade Center complex at 8:46 a.m. Seventeen minutes later at 9:03 a.m., United Airlines Fli ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Confirmation Bias
Confirmation bias (also confirmatory bias, myside bias, or congeniality bias) is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor and recall information in a way that confirms or supports one's prior beliefs or Value (ethics and social sciences), values. People display this bias when they select information that supports their views, ignoring contrary information or when they interpret ambiguous evidence as supporting their existing attitudes. The effect is strongest for desired outcomes, for emotionally charged issues and for deeply entrenched beliefs. Biased search for information, biased interpretation of this information and biased memory recall, have been invoked to explain four specific effects: # ''attitude polarization'' (when a disagreement becomes more extreme even though the different parties are exposed to the same evidence) # ''belief perseverance'' (when beliefs persist after the evidence for them is shown to be false) # the ''irrational primacy effect'' (a greater relia ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
