“The truth may be puzzling. It may take some work to grapple with. It may be counterintuitive. It may contradict deeply held prejudices. It may not be consonant with what we desperately want to be true. But our preferences do not determine what's true.” ~ Carl Sagan
It seems obvious that the idea that the truth matters is self-evident,
and it seems bizarre to have to defend it in any debate.
I am truly baffled by what people even mean
when they assert beliefs that have no body of evidence to support them
as having as much or more credence than actual facts supported by evidence.
I don't really understand why people believe something without necessarily thinking it's true.
My only response is a defense of the philosophical and ethical necessity of prioritizing the truth
over our imaginings about it.
Obviously the problem with that is, if one has already abandoned reason;
such matters are not on the radar.
We seem to be losing the ability, or at least the desire; to prioritize good evidence and critical thinking over ideology and preconception, which includes declining to accept propositions without good evidence, and letting go of conclusions when the evidence doesn't support them.
I suggest that embracing a healthy degree of skepticism can make our lives happier, healthier and more satisfying. Today there are very real challenges to a skeptical approach to everyday life.
The rewards make those challenges worth navigating however.
We must all learn to make skepticism a personal discipline.
(Note- I'm writing here about skeptical rigor, I'll be rigorous and point out this piece is anecdotal in nature. It's not as if I have double-blinded, peer-reviewed, replicated research showing that a skeptical life is a more satisfying life.)
Making a habit of letting go of beliefs we're attached to, when the evidence contradicts them is not exactly easy, especially when we are bombarded by "information" bubbles that are devoted entirely to disallowing skepticism. Skepticism probably does not come naturally, and there is a skill set to the matter...it takes practice.
It takes discipline.
Skeptical analysis is a discipline that pays off in specific pragmatic results,
as well as in the broader, deeper, less obviously tangible areas of personal fulfillment.
We live in the era of cognitive dissonance but once you become aware of it, rationalizing it becomes a lot harder. Becoming aware of the cognitive errors skeptics are always always keen to point out, errors like confirmation bias and hindsight bias and the clustering illusion and so on: once you start noticing them in others, they become a lot harder to ignore in yourself.
Skepticism is both an outward and inward journey.
Caution!
Today there are three important issues on which there is scientific consensus but controversy among the gullible less informed, or willingly ignorant :
climate change, biological evolution and childhood vaccination.
On all three issues, prominent members of the Trump administration, including the president, have lined up against the conclusions of research. This widespread rejection of scientific findings presents a perplexing puzzle to those of us who value an evidence-based approach to knowledge and policy.
If you look at the arguments presented by science deniers, there are commonalities.
First they see no shades of gray.
There is a striking parallel between a type of thinking error involved in many mental health disturbances and the reasoning behind science denial. Black-and-white and all-or-none thinking, is a factor in depression, anxiety, aggression and, especially, borderline personality disorder.
In this type of erroneous cognition, a spectrum of possibilities is divided only into two parts, with a blurring of distinctions within those categories. Shades of gray are missed; everything is considered either black or white. Dichotomous thinking is not always wrong, but it is a poor tool for understanding complicated realities because these usually involve spectrums of possibilities, not binaries!
Spectrums are sometimes split in very asymmetric ways, with one-half of the binary much larger than the other. For example, perfectionists categorize their work as either perfect or unsatisfactory; good and very good outcomes are lumped together with poor ones in the unsatisfactory category. For example people with borderline personality disorder perceive people they interact with as either all good or all bad, so one behavior that may be offensive catapults the relationship from the good to the bad category. It’s like a pass/fail grading system in which 100 percent correct earns a P and everything else gets an F.
Reality is just not like that.
Science deniers engage in dichotomous thinking about truth claims.
In evaluating the evidence for a hypothesis or theory, they divide the spectrum of possibilities into two unequal parts: perfect certainty and inconclusive controversy.
Any bit of data that does not support a theory is misunderstood to mean
that the formulation is fundamentally in doubt,
regardless of the amount of abundant supportive evidence.
Logic determines the relative truth of a thing. There can never actually be an absolute.
And this is why this kind of thinking is erroneous.
Similarly, deniers perceive the spectrum of scientific agreement as divided into two unequal parts: perfect consensus and no consensus at all. Any departure from 100 percent agreement is categorized as a lack of agreement, which is misinterpreted as indicating fundamental controversy in the field.
Proof exists in mathematics, but not in science.
Research builds knowledge in progressive increments.
As empirical evidence accumulates, there are more and more accurate approximations of ultimate truth but is no final end point to the process.
Deniers exploit the distinction between proof and compelling evidence by categorizing empirically well-supported ideas as “unproven.” Such statements are technically correct but extremely misleading, because there are no proven ideas in science, and evidence-based ideas are the best guides for action we have. I am always amazed at the need these folks express for 100% proof in scientific matters when the vast majority of them believe in superstitions wholly ( or holy?) which have no evidence whatsoever of being so. Selective cognition?
I have observed deniers use a three-step strategy to mislead the scientifically unsophisticated. First, they cite areas of uncertainty or controversy, no matter how minor, within the body of research that invalidates their desired course of action.
Second, they categorize the overall scientific status of that body of research as uncertain and controversial.
Finally, deniers advocate proceeding as if the research did not exist.
For example, climate change skeptics jump from the realization that we do not completely understand all climate-related variables to the inference that we have no reliable knowledge at all.
Similarly, they give equal weight to the 97 percent of climate scientists who believe in human-caused global warming and the 3 percent who do not, (even though most of the latter are paid by the fossil fuels industry.)
This same type of thinking can be seen among creationists.
They misinterpret any limitation or flux in evolutionary theory to mean that the validity of this body of research is fundamentally in doubt. For example, the biologist James Shapiro discovered a cellular mechanism of genomic change that Darwin did not know about. Shapiro views his research as adding to evolutionary theory, not upending it. Nonetheless, his discovery and others like it, refracted through the lens of dichotomous thinking, result in articles with titles like, “Scientists Confirm: Darwinism Is Broken” by Paul Nelson and David Klinghoffer of the Discovery Institute, which promotes the theory of “intelligent design.” Shapiro insists that his research provides no support for intelligent design, but proponents of this pseudoscience repeatedly cite his work as if it does.
For his part, Trump engages in dichotomous thinking about the possibility of a link between childhood vaccinations and autism. Despite exhaustive research and the consensus of all major medical organizations that no link exists, Trump has often cited a link between vaccines and autism and he advocates changing the standard vaccination protocol to protect against this nonexistent danger.
There is a vast gulf between perfect knowledge and total ignorance,
We live our lives in this gulf.
Informed decision-making in the real world will never be perfectly informed,
but responding to the inevitable uncertainties by ignoring the best available evidence is frankly, ultimately a form of self genocide.
Informed decision-making in the real world will never be perfectly informed,
but responding to the inevitable uncertainties by ignoring the best available evidence is frankly, ultimately a form of self genocide.
Believing things that have no basis in reality to be true is a form of self eradication.
This Post-Truth World is one in which public figures cherry pick from available data to make untrue claims sound true, thereby devaluing the very nature of truth. (Remember Stephen Colbert's running joke "truthiness?...that was the mere start of this sad journey into idiocy)
It’s a world in which oil companies use the same deceitful tactics to “disprove” global warming that the tobacco industry used to “disprove” the link between smoking and lung cancer. It’s a world in which anti-vaccine activists still cite studies that are very well known to be discredited, and 9/11 (or Benghazi) “truthers” or so-called “birthers” entirely discount all the evidence against their tinfoil hat theories because "the data is all lies anyway."
The Post-Truth World is why we need skepticism.
It’s why we need skeptics.
Part of it is a problem with rhetoric.
As philosophy has debated forever, the concept of truth is a slippery one, because scientists don’t deal in truth. They deal in hypothesis and evaluation, in theory and consensus.
Off the record, a climate scientists will tell you, 97.2% of the time, that humans are the cause of the very real climate change that is taking place on Earth. Though on the record, they will only tell you that it is “very likely” the case, and that the data fit the hypothesis better than any other currently-proposed explanation.
But Ted Cruz will tell you that “the last 15 years, there has been no recorded warming. Contrary to all the theories that – that they are expounding, there should have been warming over the last 15 years. It hasn’t happened.” He is certain (also: wrong), but worse than that, he’s certain in public. And on the record.
Another part of it is a problem with authority.
The post truthers don’t view scientists as authorities anymore.
They don't respect the views espoused by the experts, the scientists themselves.
When it comes to some of the most important issues of our time, many people are just as likely to believe a politician as a scientist about global warming being caused by humans (yes, 54% of Americans is a serious improvement, but that’s still only about half when the scientific consensus is 97%). Some people even believe celebrities over scientists.
Skepticism isn’t (as climate change deniers might have one believe) just going against the prevailing consensus. When Ted Cruz uses the word “skeptic” to describe his views on climate change, and then compares himself to Galileo for going against the mainstream views, he’s fundamentally misunderstanding what skepticism means.
Skepticism is withholding judgement until provided with a preponderance of evidence. It’s also changing one’s opinion when presented with verifiable data that contradict one’s views.
It’s as much about agreeing with the consensus when the data supports it as disagreeing with it when the data does not.
Galileo had data that showed a geocentric universe to be false; Ted Cruz has only his own completely uninformed opinion.
Skepticism is the application of the scientific method on one's worldview.
You can do it even if you’re not a scientist: I’m a musician for crying out loud.
Skepticism just entails personal integrity, a bit of research,
patience, and, especially, an understanding
that experts know more about their field of study than you do.
The Post-Truth World treats all expertise as equal, and a skeptic knows that’s not the case.
Skepticism is frankly mankind's only hope of emerging from the post truth malaise.
“Give me the storm and tempest of thought and action, rather than the dead calm of ignorance and faith! Banish me from Eden when you will; but first let me eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge!”
― Robert G. Ingersoll
