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Filipe comments on Scooby Doo and Secular Humanism [link] - Less Wrong
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In contrast consider this quote:
G.K. Chesterton
The quote is actually considered by the end of the article:
Ensnare them with some sort of Rube-Goldberg contrivance and tear their rubber masks off?
The reason I never made this whole connection as a kid, even one very positively disposed towards skepticism and rationality, was because the methods and skills used in Scooby Doo seemed so inapplicable to real life.
It's been a while since I watched much (any) Scooby-Doo, but IIRC, isn't the Rube Goldberg contraption only the start (a dramatic opening demonstration), and then Velma etc. explain all the clues and oddities that would have convinced anyone with a brain (of what the contraption forced even the dullest townspeople to realize)?
The Rube Goldberg contrivance (usually not so much a device as an unnecessarily convoluted plan to accomplish a simple task) is generally how they arrange to catch the villain. The plan usually goes wrong in some way, but ends up succeeding regardless due to dumb luck. Then they take the villain's mask off, and explain the clues that allowed them to know who was underneath in advance.
Once they've worked out that all the supernatural menaces are actually human charlatans, they could deal with nearly all of them (those which aren't some sort of device operated remotely) simply by catching them and taking their masks off, thereby circumventing the need to figure out who's inside beforehand.