Talks and events related to Wikipedia, Wikimedia, free knowledge and open content are on a separate page.
Saturday 3/ Sunday 4 November, BHA Northwest Regional Conference: Humanism for a Better World
Create Your Own Religion/ Humanist Question Time
Thursday 1 November 2012, Bristol Atheist, Agnostic and Skeptical Students
Create your own Cult, the Scientology Way
Monday 29 October 2012, Oxford Atheists, Secularists and Humanists
Create your own Cult, the Scientology Way
Thursday 25 October 2012, Cardiff Skeptics in the Pub
Create your own Cult, the Scientology Way
This was one of the smaller SITP venues I’ve been to, yet there was a good attendance, despite the event having to be rescheduled from its normal slot. There were a surprising proportion of the audience who had not been to a Skeptics event before: none were Scientologists though. There was very vigorous discussion, especially about the wider questions of whether religions deserve tax exemption. One of the most fun nights out I’ve had in a while: if you live anywhere near Cardiff, or even across the water in Bristol, join their Facebook group.
Tuesday 16 October 2012, Leicester Skeptics in the Pub
Create your own Cult, the Scientology Way
I’m so grateful to Simon and Alex for being gracious hosts. The Leicester crowd were great (again!) and were willing to recognise Scientology recruits as people who had been exploited at a vulnerable time of their lives: the discussion was much more about this rather than about mocking their beliefs.
Saturday 11 August 2012, Edinburgh Skeptics on the Fringe (part of PBH’s Free Fringe)
Create your own Cult, the Scientology Way
Three things to love about Edinburgh are the Free Fringe, the Banshee Labyrinth and an Enlightenment tradition of rational debate and questioning. Skeptics on the Fringe involves a different guest speaker each night for a month, including many of my heroes. A team of awesome volunteers handles the organisation and publicity of this biggest event in the UK skeptical calendar. Though there are no tickets, audiences donate night after night to keep it going.
We had a packed, rather sweaty, venue for my slot, as well as a great atmosphere. There were more big laughs than in a lot of the “comedy” shows I’ve seen on the Free Fringe. (That’s not as big a compliment as it looks: free shows run the gamut from inspired comedy gold all the way down to totally dire.)
(Storify of Twitter reactions)
Saturday 30 June 2012, Dublin Offlines: Speaking out against the Scientology Cult
Introductory presentation with extract from “Create your own Cult, the Scientology Way”
Monday 28 May 2012, Watford Skeptics in the Pub
How to create your own cult: The Scientology wayI turned up to this one as asked, but there was no organiser, no publicity and no event: it seems the group had been wound up!
17 March 2012, Association of Humanist Students convention 2012, London
Create your own cult: the Scientology way
A shorter version of the talk than usual, but in the lovely old main hall of Conway Hall and with some of my skeptical heroes in the audience. Thanks to the students for their great feedback!
13 October 2011, Greater Manchester Skeptics in the Pub
How to create your own cult: The Scientology way
Rarely has an audience so followed the emotional contour of the talk: they laughed at all the bits I wanted them to laugh at, and gasped at the shocking bits. The bar was open until 1am and we had an animated discussion about Scientology all that time. Great fun!
12 October 2011, Birmingham Skeptics in the Pub
How to create your own cult: The Scientology way
This was one of my favorite experiences of public speaking, with a very packed bar and very vigorous discussion, although it was hot and sweaty for the audience. I’ve assembled a Storify of Twitter feedback from the evening.
10 October 2011, Horsham Skeptics in the Pub
How to create your own cult: The Scientology way
The audience were great for this one, but I found the whole evening hard work due to breathing trouble which my asthma medication didn’t seem to help with: I was constantly on the edge of losing my voice.
2 August 2011, Plymouth Skeptics in the Pub
How to create your own cult: The Scientology way
Plymouth SitP are off to a strong start: this was their second event. Jo, Jess and the gang made me very welcome. I played up the comedy aspects of the talk even more this time. Quite a few of the audience were involved with the University, and Scientology’s recruitment of overseas students prompted concerned discussion.
22 June 2011, Bath Skeptics in the Pub
How to create your own cult: The Scientology way
Hayley Stevens is a force of nature in the skeptical world. Her SitP group is very well organised and everyone is made to feel welcome. This time I fixed the problem that I’d had at Lewes and gave the whole thing more of an ebb and flow. One of the audience had an intense personal reaction as she saw the parallels between Scientology and things that her family were involved in.
Wednesday 25 May 2011, Lewes Skeptics in the Pub
How to create your own cult: The Scientology way
This was my first trip to Lewes; a picturesque town in impossibly green Sussex countryside, and only 20 miles from the national headquarters of Scientology in East Grinstead. Tickets for this talk sold out in 24 hours, thanks to an interview with me that appeared the free local listings magazine Viva Lewes. Lewes has a very high skeptic-per-population rate, and I got to meet a very friendly and well-informed bunch of people. I approached the talk in a slightly different way than before, and it was a mistake because it ended up a bit flat, without a dramatic rise and fall. Sorry to the audience that I wasn’t at my best!
Tuesday 15 March 2011, Leicester Skeptics in the Pub
How to be certain about anything, even when you’ve got no evidence
I was far from my best for the previous versions of this talk (Glasgow and Bristol) but third time lucky!
Although the talk was about individual psychology, the audience were deeply concerned about how to counteract the distortion of evidence by the mass media, or by deliberate misinformation campaigns, so there was a lot of discussion of this during the questions.
8 December 2010, Atheist, Agnostic and Skeptical Society (AASS), University of Bristol
How to be certain about anything, even when you’ve got no evidence
Once again I’m very grateful to this group of current and former Bristol students for their friendly welcome, patient listening and informed questions.
18 November 2010, Merseyside Skeptics in the Pub
How to create your own cult: The Scientology way
This was the fifth version of the Scientology talk (see below), and went down very well. I enjoyed myself a great deal and I’m grateful to the Liverpool crowd for their friendly welcome, intelligent discussion and good humour.
16 July 2010, panel appearance at Bristol Skeptics in the Pub
John Dixon, the councillor who described Scientology as “stupid” on Twitter, came to speak in Bristol and I was allowed to add a little bit of commentary after his talk. Dixon was awaiting a disciplinary hearing arising from an official complaint about the tweet. A couple of weeks later, sanity prevailed and he was told there was no case to answer.
18 August 2010: Glasgow Skeptics in the Pub
The New Psychological Skepticism
I tried to do an ambitious new talk, combining philosophy, psychology and some wacky bits, but it went wrong. I overreacted to some problems with the venue and stressed out, drawing a blank for some of the things I had prepared to say. This was unprofessional of me and I’m very sorry to the kind and welcoming Glasgow audience. The questions after the talk helped me get back on my feet and convey most of what I had meant to say.
15 July 2010: Five minute opening talk at Ignite Bristol #2
What is Bayesianism and why should you care?
A paper by Thomas Bayes, an 18th Century Anglican vicar, solved a crucial problem in the logic of uncertainty – the reverse inference problem – and, two hundred years later, set off a revolution which affected many areas of science. Here I explain to a lay audience what reverse inference is and why we should celebrate Bayes’ achievement. I learnt from the information overload of my previous Ignite talk (see below) and got rid of bullet points entirely.
28 April 2010: Public lecture hosted by Bristol Skeptics in the Pub
How to start your own cult: The Scientology way
My Scientology talk continues to evolve: less texty this time, and with some video clips (on the helpful feedback of the Glasgow Skeptics in the Pub). However, technical problems meant the video couldn’t be played. It’s still very difficult to give an full introduction to this topic in a short time. The organisers only publicised the event the day before, so the audience was smaller than it could have been. Still, we had a very useful and enjoyable discussion session.
4 March 2010: Five minute talk at Ignite Bristol as part of Global Ignite Week
The Triumph of Social Knowledge
The Ignite format requires the speaker to speak to twenty slides, which automatically advance every 15 seconds, making the talk exactly five minutes long. It was a privilege to be one of the fourteen speakers at this evening of fascinating and varied talks. Better still, they were filmed by a professional crew and put on YouTube. My own talk raced through my interests in bias research, and how a lot of what is taken to be expertise isn’t really expertise at all. There was no time to develop a full argument, but I threw out some terms that I hope people will Google for further information. The “social knowledge” moniker was a bit of marketing. It’s not a term from academic literature, but it captured the idea of “checkability” that I was getting at.
19 January 2010: Public lecture hosted by Glasgow Skeptics in the Pub
Scientology: It’s worse than you think
Glasgow SitP are a very friendly and interested bunch and I’m incredibly grateful to them for flying me up to Scotland and letting me talk at their third event. I was having asthma difficulties that evening, and unfortunately this affected my speaking. The questions were very good indeed and I hope my answers lived up to them.
8 July 2009: Talk to colleagues at Information Services, University of Bristol
Mind Hacks: Secrets from the Science of Happiness
I wanted this one-hour session to be more interactive than a talk, so I chose a guided discussion format. It was a risk, but I was pleased with how it went. Most of the points I made were from Daniel Gilbert’s research, but with some general lessons from behavioural economics, including contrast effects and framing effects. Notes from the talk were written up on the blog.
23 October 2008: Public lecture hosted by Atheist, Agnostic and Skeptical Society (AASS), University of Bristol
Scientology: It’s worse than you think
A very energetic atmosphere for this student talk that had to be moved to a bigger seminar room.
2 July 2008: Talk to colleagues at Institute for Learning and Research Technology, University of Bristol
The Digital Natives are Restless: Student Activism in an Online Age
This talk built on my experiences protesting alongside Anonymous in their campaign against the Church of Scientology. I show that Anonymous’ way of working is extremely collaborative, with discussion boards allowing a natural division of labour. The campaign includes many examples of the collaborative creation of media. To someone familiar with how things are done in either the private sector or public sector, the idea that a leaderless group with no formal roles or membership can get so much done is an eye-opener.
11 March 2008: Public lecture hosted by Atheist, Agnostic and Skeptical Society (AASS), University of Bristol
Cognitive Bias, Introspection and Religious Belief
Essentially the same talk given earlier to the Central London Humanists (see below). Some very erudite questions from this audience.
21 February 2008: Departmental seminar, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Bristol
The Functional Equation Approach to Optimal Reasoning and Decision-making
I summed up what I’d learned during my PhD about the normative basis of Bayesian probability, in particular why we should take the Cox Theorem seriously.
15 January 2008: Public lecture hosted by Central London Humanists
Cognitive Bias, Introspection and Religious Belief
This was an adapted version the “Beginner’s Guide to Bias” talk but towards the end focused on the idea of religious “revelation”. It was the third time I’d used the overconfidence exercise and the results were just what the Tversky and Kahneman book predicted each time. The humanist audience were very welcoming and thoughtful
11 January 2008: Talk to colleagues at Information Services, University of Bristol
A Beginner’s Guide to Bias
A weekly series of talks gave staff members the opportunity to talk about topics that interest them.
12 December 2007: Talk to colleagues at the Institute for Learning and Research Technology, University of Bristol
Mind Hacks: A Beginner’s Guide to Bias
I’m glad that my workplace allows opportunities to develop my presentations. In this talk, I do an overconfidence experiment which shows people that they set confidence intervals much narrower. I tried to apply the biases to workplace situations as much as possible, and we had a nice discussion about the Fundamental Attribution Error, based on what Tavris and Aronson write about how it undermines relationships.
9 July 2007: Talk to colleagues at the Institute for Learning and Research Technology, University of Bristol
Mind Hacks: Memory
I use some mental imagery tricks to help myself remember PIN numbers, passwords, sequences and so on; essentially focused daydreaming. This was an attempt to pass on those tricks to other people.
24 August 2006: Public lecture at London Skeptics in the Pub
Scientology: It’s worse than you think
Now that there are Skeptics In The Pub evenings all over the country, it’s easy to forget that for a long time there was just one, in London. Getting on the train was the only way for me to spend an evening in a room full of other skeptics. On this evening, I was terrified of legal comebacks so I self-censored a great deal. I avoided mentioning a lot of the more serious allegations against the Church of Scientology.
The talk went down generally well, but the title proved to be an obstacle. Some audience members took it as a personal insult that they were assumed not to know how bad Scientology can be. For subsequent talks (see above), I have changed the title and become much more bold in what I say.
6 July 2005: Conference presentation at Progic 2005: Second workshop on combining probability and logic, special focus on Objective Bayesianism
Deduction is like Induction, only more so
24 July 2004: talk to colleagues at Institute for Learning and Research Technology, University of Bristol
Designing for the Brain
I apply some of what I’ve learnt about perceptual psychology to web design, drawing out some lessons for designers and content editors. Some of this presentation fed into a later one-day workshop on writing for the web.
21 August 2003: Research Seminar at the Institute for Learning and Research Technology, University of Bristol
Motivating Other People
Mainly about the difference between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, and how shaping someone’s self-image is a more effective method of persuasion than offering them a reward for a task
7 October 1998: Departmental research seminar, Department of Philosophy, University of Bristol
Induction and Information in the 20th Century
When you study philosophy, you are taught David Hume’s position that inductive reasoning is a purely psychological phenomenon, outside the realm of logic. This talk was my attempt to update the audience on some developments since Hume in statistics, logic and information theory. In this literature it is accepted that there is such a thing as inductive logic. The seminar was not part of my PhD but arose out of the study of inductive logic I did as a background to the thesis. One of the professors present said that this work was worth a PhD in itself, which was a wonderful compliment.
In my more distant past, there are more seminars and presentations from my days at a Philosophy graduate student. I gave another departmental research seminar in addtion to the one mentioned above, a paper in a day conference and frequent talks as part of a series of lunchtime sessions for postgraduates that I co-organised. I don’t have dates or titles for all these.
