I'm off to CSICon!
A week of wonders, wit, wisdom, woo, wonks, and wows
Tomorrow morning at 6am I board the first of three overcrowded flights — typically my luck is to be one of the three biggest guys on the plane all jammed into one row, usually with me in the middle — heading to Buffalo, NY. (Sadly there were no upgrades left by the time I received my tickets.)
CSICon is the annual conference of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, the descendent of the great CSICOP founded in 1976 by Carl Sagan, James Randi, Isaac Asimov, and others of a similar ilk. CSICon remains the “Last Conference Standing” after the passing of James Randi ended the fantastic The Amaz!ng Meetings and the also-excellent NECSS went online-only. The silver lining there is that all the best speakers now converge in a single place; the bummer is that I get to see so many old friends only once a year.
This is the 50th (!!!!) anniversary. “No way,” you say, until you compute 2026-1976. Yeah. Wow.
I have the easiest gig ever this year — I’m hosting one of the two tour buses taking conference attendees to a special tour of Niagara Falls the day after the conference. The rest of the week I get to play “Gentleman of Leisure” and hope nobody notices. Conference speakers (check all of us out) always prefer to go earlier in the week; once you’re done your work is behind you and you can relax the rest of the week. Mine is quite literally the very last event of the conference, but since it’s a fun trip, it’s hard to see it as impending work.
Here’s a thing that surprises me every year at CSICon. There will always be speakers who are newer folks, perhaps better known on social media than in traditional media, and always giving a talk on something that we’d typically dismiss old news — often wellness bullshit, homeopathy, coffee enemas, or astrology — stuff that the science community dismissed decades ago. Why are we getting a talk on it now? Because it’s become new again!!!
Gen Z is only just now hearing about these things for the first time (usually from their favorite TikTok influencers) and are believing in them wholesale — just like older generations did decades ago.
It really is amazing — everything old is new again is as true as ever.
For a stark example, crack open your copy of Martin Gardner’s (another CSICOP founder) famous and glorious book Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science. It was written in 1952 — three quarters of a century ago — and you’ll see crap claims that you may have also heard yesterday.
Anyway, I truly hope you’re coming to CSICon this week, and I truly hope to see you there. Please say hello.
👍🏼
PS — Skeptoid listeners who run into me at conferences always have a standing invitation to buy me a beverage. 😉