Every day from the time we wake up until the time we go to bed, we are bombarded with information from all sides, from TV, radio, newspapers and books; from family, friends, and colleagues. As a new cable television subscriber, I am  ly amazed at the quantity and varying levels of information quality on cable television. Including the networks, there are eight TV "news" organizations vying to provide us with all the information we can possibly absorb. Newspaper, magazines, books, radio, the Internet, email, snail mail, and the telephone all compete for our attention and our minds. At the office conversations around the water cooler and coffee maker serve to spread even more items of information.   There is valuable information out there about the world we live in, on topics as varied as health, safety, traffic, nutrition, business, finance, philosophy, nature, science, weather, history and the human condition. There is also a large amount of misleading and outright false information, not just on controversial subjects such as politics and religion but on any topic one can think of, including all of the topics mentioned above.   With all this information coming at us from all directions, how does one sift through it all to sort out the facts from the fiction, the truth from the lies, the more important from the less important? Should we turn off the TV, cancel our newspaper subscriptions, disconnect our phones and modems to become information "hermits"? Probably not.   A better method of sifting through the information wave without being overwhelmed and confused is to become a skeptical inquirer-or skeptic-with regard to the surrounding world. By "skeptic"-I do not mean a cynic-a person who rejects new ideas simply because they are new. A skeptic is one who questions the validity of a particular claim by calling for evidence to prove or disprove it. Skepticism is a method, not a position. It is a provisional approach to all factual claims. In terms of processing information, a skeptic needs to be able to grasp reality and acquire knowledge about the environment that agrees with reason, logic, and evidence. In other words, as skeptics, when we hear a claim that may or may not be fantastic, we should say, "That's nice, prove it." What can we conclude from the difference between a skeptic and a cynic?
Skeptics are reasonable but cynics are too optimistic. Skeptics are reasonable but cynics are too pessimistic(opposite of optimistic). Skeptics take a position but cynics are extreme in their attitude. Skeptics reject all new ideas but cynics only reject some of them.