Are you a skeptic?

I'm with you. Now, I'm a scientist so I'm making a living questioning things. But as I get older and see more and more BS coming from government I've grown pretty jaded/skeptical in that arena, too. So many flat-out lies, and the majority of the population are too lazy, stupid, and uninformed to bother checking facts for themselves.

I am an eternal optimist.  I believe 100% in the basic goodness of people because I have seen it manifested on thousands of occasions.  I accept that there is evil, and I have stared it in the face many times.......it doesn't hold a candle to the good I've seen, so no worries at all from me.

I just want to say I think this is pretty awesome.
What was their response when you presented your data? Oops?

I'm a cynic.  I expect the worst out of people, so that I'm not disappointed.

Lets just say it was a little uncomfortable and the head of the judiciary personally apologized afterwards.

We always hear about lobbyists, but what they really do is introduce laws.  Our lawmakers rarely write the laws, they are often handed language by some lobbyist who is paid money by some external entity who will benefit by the laws passage.  OK, I make widgets and our sales our down.  I can spend $100k on a lobbyist and throw a big fundraiser dinner for this senator and change the state law to mandate that all people who are in this category have to use my widget.  Boom, my sales just went through the roof because of the law.

nope.  

edit: I think those are already covered by GPS

I find that when someone makes a claim about something, whether it's something I agree with or not, I tend to be really skeptical and want to see the evidence backing up their position for myself.  But it depends on context too.   If it's coming from someone or somewhere I respect and I've known to be credible in the past I'll be a little more willing to take their word on something compared to some random person writing on their blog or someone with an obvious agenda.where I'll be much more skeptical of claims they make.  For me it doesn't matter if I agree with it or not and find that sometimes I'm actually more skeptical of claims that agree with my position. 

Overall though I find it hard to question people's motivations and probably fall more on LB's side of things of being more optimistic.  Until proven otherwise, I generally give people the benefit of the doubt that they're acting in good faith and doing what they think is right, even if I think they're wrong.

I don't believe you.

I believe you do.

Doh! Damn sunshine.

Let's just say this is one of the podcasts that I have on rotation:

https://www.theskepticsguide.org/ 

I believe in people.

Politicians, in general, have lost their humanity and don't count.

I completely agree with you when listening to "biased" people, but I've often found that the most "biased" people are the ones presenting themselves as "unbiased".  So, I find myself most skeptical of people and organizations who claim to be unbiased.

I'm not sure that I believe in this thread.

I'm not sure that I believe that you aren't sure that you believe in this thread.