One day, back when I was relatively young and naïve, I was watching an episode of 60 minutes. I’m sure you have probably seen this show at least once, but in case you haven’t it is a news program that does relatively in depth stories on various topics. I used to watch these kinds of shows all the time so I could be smart and informed about the world. This particular episode was discussing some topic about medicine. I had deep knowledge of the topic since I was in medical school at the time and I was excited to learn more.
As the segment progressed I was horrified at just how different the information was presented than what I had learned in school. With what I knew, the story was misleading and biased at best, and outright wrong at worst. I was outraged and confused. This was a topic I knew something about and could filter out the bias and half-truths, but what about all the stories that were on topics where my knowledge is limited? How would I know when I was being fed misleading information? I completely lost trust in this form of journalism and all but stopped watching these types of programs after this experience.
As time went on though, my position became a little more nuanced. What if my knowledge was incomplete or biased or inaccurate? Maybe they were right and I was wrong. Probably not, but it was within the realm of possibility. Perhaps they has access to better information, and the ‘experts’ at my medical school were the ones being misleading and biased.
Stepping back
Think about all of the big things in your life you have a strong opinion on and just know you are “right” about. I imagine everyone has opinions about the following topics and feels their world view is correct based on everything they know.
- The existence of God and which religion is correct
- How much freedom individuals should have
- Which political party is better
- Which tax policy is most fair
- What to do about climate change
- Sexual morality
- What the proper punishment is for certain crimes
- The best form of government
- When a fetus becomes a person
- Which government policies are destroying our country and which are essential
- How much avocado to put on toast
I could go on forever. But let’s say for the sake of argument there are a hundred things you ‘know to be true’. You have researched them, read all of the philosophical, moral, and economic arguments and came to the best conclusion.
What are the odds that you are correct about all hundred? After all, there are people that hold opposite views to whatever you believe and are 100% convinced that you are wrong and they are right. How do you know your view is the correct one? Are you or I enlightened to a degree that the rest of us are not? Are you or I smarter or better informed than everyone else?
Remember when leaches were the mainstay of medical treatment? Or the earth was flat? How about when low fat diets were considered healthy?
I will make the bold statement that there is a zero percent chance that you are correct about even a small number of the things you know to be true, yet if you are like most people, you spend an inordinate amount of time and energy defending your beliefs and convincing other people that you are right.
This is our brain trying to protect itself against the very disturbing position of cognitive dissonance. When we entertain contradictory ideas or beliefs, our brain does not like it, so it chooses one set of beliefs and discards the others. Sometimes this is with factual information, but oftentimes we believe what feels best emotionally and fits with our worldview (or our tribe: ever wonder why most democrats and republicans agree with each other on unrelated topics?). We choose what we want to be true, and then we find facts and reality to support that position.
Remember, we are not designed to see truth. We are not rational (even though our mind convinces us we are) We can’t see true reality with our limited senses and cognition. Instead we have filters that make reasonable predictions and allow us to survive until we replicate. Fitting into our tribe allows us to survive. Once you view the world through this lens, human behavior starts to make sense.
As I meander through life I’m leaning that letting go of certainty about what I believe to be true is liberating. Most people do the opposite. As they age they double down on their beliefs and become more opinionated. They are less open to change. There is a certain comfort in this prison, but it is not true freedom.
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Very insightful. I’m reading more on stoicism recently and this plays into it. There is no right or wrong, there is no good or bad, there is simply the way we perceive things and our reactions to them.
I often wonder, if I’m completely convinced of this… and someone else is completely convinced of the opposite, how can we both be right? The truth lies somewhere in the middle. It always does….
“There is no right or wrong, there is no good or bad…”
I think you’re wrong here. Just kidding!! 🙂
Either that or there is no truth 😉
Wait. Are you saying I’m not always right? Lol. It’s true. What you hold to be true is only because you have been presented with one side only.
I recently went to see Wicked (highly recommended if you haven’t) and it basically flipped the script on one of my childhood favorite classics the wizard of oz.
I love a good musical now and then 🙂
Love it! Really love it, probably because this post reinforces my own biases. My truth! Ha! 🙂
I used to combative and abrasive. If someone would say something that I “knew” not to be true, I’d go on the attack, trying to convince them why their position was wrong and I was right. I learned that my actions only pushed them harder into their corner. By trying to make them see my “truth,” I was really doing the opposite.
I still enjoy debate, but now I do it with an open mind and a steady, unconfrontational voice. And I also keep my mouth shut more than I ever did.
One interesting outcome of all of this is that I think I’m a happier person. The shift in mindset has made me less judgmental which has allowed me to enjoy the company of others more than I ever did. And our relationships are what life is all about, right? 🙂
My default is to argue, but often I can catch myself and just listen instead. It’s a great way to learn something new.
“I still enjoy debate, but now I do it with an open mind and a steady, unconfrontational voice. And I also keep my mouth shut more than I ever did.”
Haha, I’ve learned this over the last few years as well. Especially keeping my mouth shut until I’ve first listened and thought about what was said. I -like- hearing a conflicting viewpoint and realizing I might have been wrong about it. That’s the key to growth, not standing your ground against the “attacks”. I wish people (including myself at times) would be more open to proving themselves wrong. There’s power in seeing both sides, FROM their sides, and then deciding which is best. But most of us are solidly standing stationary unwilling to budge, sword in one hand and shield in the other.
Regarding how wrong we’ll someday discover we all are: I like saying that “Science is today’s best guess”. Science is good, because it is indeed today’s best. But we can’t ignore what tomorrow brings us.
This post reminds me of the quote,”It ain’t what you know that kills you, it’s what you know for sure that ain’t true. “
Truth is becoming more subjective the older I get.
yet if you are like most people, you spend an inordinate amount of time and energy defending your beliefs and convincing other people that you are right.
You meant to say “if you are like most you spend all your time on the internet calling people Nazi’s and insulting people in all caps”
Or at least that’s what most of social media has turned into, as well as comment sections of major online publications.
Great post. Perhaps low-fat diets are indeed bad for you, So I’m trying to learn from the most recent studies and trying keto now – perhaps they’ll declare that horrible one day too. I’m just trying it to see how it makes me feel and perform on my bike. I realize humans and science are always learning, and fixing past mistakes. So when I hear people say “there is no debate – you’re a science denier!!” I just laugh and feel sorry for the person.
Most scientific articles are based on very weak evidence and draw conclusions that are incomplete or outright wrong. Many medical studies are contradictory, published with inherent selection bias (negative studies are not interesting enough to publish) or are funded by companies which benefit from their publication. We will look back on what we thought was true today with horror 100 years from now.
I had the EXACT same experience/revelation while in medical school watching a news show about something medically related.
Hahaha, maybe it was the same episode!
Looks like someone was listening to Weird Al’s song ‘everything you know is wrong’
I love Weird Al
I look at life as myself being the N of 1. I only really need to see something work for myself and my loved ones. Plus when something clearly isn’t working, we are much quicker to embrace change.
I have minimal dogma. In fact, many times the events that would sink us came out of nowhere. We didn’t even know to be afraid since we never saw it coming.
That’s likely why I invest as conservatively as I do.
If we could see our blind spots they wouldn’t be called blind spots 🙂
“I imagine everyone has opinions about the following topics and feels their world view is correct based on everything they know.”
That’s a pretty bold claim. I guess you’re not technically wrong, if you truly do imagine that.
It is bold indeed.
The correct amount to put on toast is half of an avacado. I have researched it thoroughly and I am 100% correct.
I have to agree with you here, although this may be confirmation bias.
Hello
Thank you for your interesting post, as always it is a pleasure to read your insights. In this occasion I might have misunderstood you, because it seems to me that you are advocating some sort of impossibility to reach any sort of truth, that we are always biased and unable to see sense. This idea has a long and fecund tradition starting with Socrates. Most of the dialogues ended in a state of Aporia or paradox in which all the arguments were not good enough to reach a consistent truth. However I must disagree with you in the sense that there are truths and there are wrongs. No matter how biased each one of us can be it is in the discussion of ideas where we are confronted with other people and other arguments which might be better than ours. In any case Nature is the ultimate decider of who is right or wrong, if asked correctly. That is why science has been so successful, despite all the flaws of its individual practitioners. .
Cheers.
Thanks for the comment Roberto. There are fundamental laws that govern the way the universe operates (like gravity, thermodynamics etc.), but if there are ‘truths’ in the world we are are not designed to be able to see them. All of us have a great deal of bias we can’t even recognize. Our brain is simply designed to develop models that help us predict future events, and survive long enough to pass our genetic material to the next generation. When I use this mental model the world makes a lot more sense to me. In my younger years the world, and peoples actions and beliefs confused me.
Is gravity truth? Probably. I’m not sure what it is or how it works, but it is a pretty darn good predictive model. It has never failed me. Is religion true? I’m not sure about this either, but it is a very poor predictive model. Various religions have predicted 1000 of the last 0 apocalypses.
Would a more liberal/conservative/libertarian/socialist policy on *insert topic here* make the world a better place 100 years from now? I have no idea, and neither does anyone else, although people on both sides on any argument usually have reams of data to back their position.
I’m not saying we should ignore everything, nor should we not use science or common sense. We should wash our hands and vaccinate ourselves against deadly diseases (thanks science!). We should not dump toxic chemicals into lakes. We should lock up serial killers and human slave traffickers. I think scientific experimentation is the best tool we have for creating better models and predictions, but much of what we ‘know’ to be true today is probably not.
“The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence.”
-Charles Bukowski
I agree with the spirit of your last comment: truth exists in the world, but we aren’t great at getting at it. That doesn’t mean we should stop trying. Sometimes you have to pretend to be more confident than you are to accomplish anything, especially in politics. No one knows with 100% certainty the exact set of policies that will make the world better (even if we all agreed on what “better” meant), but we still have to make policy decisions and convince others they are the right decisions.
This is why I lean libertarian/voluntaryist. Although I don’t believe the non-aggression principle nor natural rights – I do like those ideas though. But basically, I don’t know everything and the things I know are more likely than not to be wrong. And our leaders have these same human fallibilities. So, why should we impose our beliefs on one another. Live and let live is what I think we ought to do, as long as we are not directly harming one another. This is all a bit mucky still since what is considered “direct” harm? It can be expanded out quite a bit. A messy world but I think if we stop hurting each other by trying to impose our beliefs through violence or the threat thereof the world would be a vastly better place. Granted, I could be completely wrong about this idea too. A person doesn’t recognize that they are wrong until they realize they had an incorrect idea, and even then, we don’t know if the idea we believe to be incorrect is actually correct and that we are wrong again :-).
I see the appeal of this idea, but I think it’s misguided. Who’s to say live and let live would be better than every other possible set up? If we applied the same thinking to scientific inquiry, wouldn’t we throw our hands up and give up? We don’t know, so why bother trying? I think if policy-making should be approached as a science. Try something, gather evidence, adjust where necessary and try again. This still leaves open the question of what the best society would look like, but I think there is enough general agreement about what is bad and what is good that we can still give it a go. Maybe I am wrong about that last one though. Or maybe I’m wrong about everything! It’s quite possible.
@buynothing2018, Yeah, we all live in a society. So, there would definitely still be societal norms that you can’t get away from and some societies would consider some things to be wrong and others would consider it perfectly OK. So, things wouldn’t be perfect by any means. As far as I understand societies that have more of a free market will have more personal freedoms and high quality of life and the poor are richer than societies with less of a free market. So, I think there is some backing to these ideas beyond just ideas. There is also economic theory that points to certain modern day practices that may be counter productive to what people say they really want for society and themselves. The Economic Freedom Index is a nice reference to how much freedom people are given in different countries. I always think it is fascinating how people point to other “socialist” nations as being wonderful but you look at their economic freedom index and they actually score pretty high.
I think there would be market failures. I would consider government a market failure itself. Among many other things. But, like I said, I could be wrong about it all. But I think that is what makes it so important they people have the freedom to try new ideas and see how they work out. But when you have an organization that monopolizes the solutions from a top down position you no longer have that capability, or, at the very least, new ideas are much more difficult to come about.
Shout-out to Accidental Fire for mentioning this blog post. Happy Philosopher thank-you for your post and reminding us to reflect on our own knowledge base and beliefs, to question ourselves and to be mindful enough to listen to others.
This post fits in nicely with a little experiment I’m doing right now. I write down every wrong conclusion I make, to show myself that my thoughts are not always the truth.
For example, a few weeks ago I was waiting on the bus. I checked when it was supposed to arrive, which I thought was 02:19. At 02:24 I got angry at the bus driver for being late. I checked again, and then I remembered my mom had told me that morning that the summer-schedule had started, so the bus was supposed to arrive at 02:30. It still came 5 minutes late, but that was a big eye opener for me. It wasn’t the bus driver that had made me angry, it were my thoughts.
Anyway, through this experiment I hope to increase my intellectual honesty and humility.
Another thing is this; I’ve been reading books by Geert Crevits called the Morya Wisdom series (among others). And he says in Morya Wisdom 3 that it’s not so much the question about whether it’s true or not, but what kind of ‘energy’ is behind the words.
For example, it’s been very hot here in the Netherlands but I still wore my sweatvest. People could say “Isn’t it hot in that sweatvest?” Sort of like “Why aren’t you wearing clothes like me or any other people I approve of?”. Or they can say it out of genuine unselfish concern; Isn’t it hot in that sweatvest?”.
I know it’s difficult to discerning the energy in online text, but in real life the tone of voice and the feeling behind what they’re saying or with what intent, is in my experience much more important than just what idea (or whatever) they’re trying to convey.
Mostly I feel what the Buddha said was true, more important than a thousand hollow words is one that brings peace.
Because the truth, for me, is usually peaceful.
Another great article!
I still remember my introduction to how wrong the news can be. I was in elementary school and had participated in the regional Spelling Bee. After the contest, I was interviewed by a journalist for the local newspaper. A few days later, when I read the published article, I was surprised by how it got some facts wrong and kind of misrepresented what I’d said.
Around 4th grade I must have started to get a big head, thinking that I was starting to know a lot or something, because I remember my Dad putting me in my place by introducing me to the 4 levels of knowing and assigning me to the worst level by informing me: “…and right now, Joel, you don’t know what you don’t know.” (And that probably remains true to this day. : ) )
Not long after that, my childhood research into the Loch Ness Monster and Bigfoot led me to conclude that they were likely hoaxes. What were the odds that *every* one of the dozens of alleged pictures of the Loch Ness Monster would be so blurry and inconclusive? Not very likely, I conceded.
Throughout school, the dominos of supposed truth just kept falling of course. And, like you wrote in the article, I learned that history painted a somewhat bleak picture of our ability to get things right. It was hope-inspiring to learn that science at least tries to find contradictory evidence and adjust theory accordingly. But I shouldn’t have been surprised to later learn that we still manage to regularly thwart even the scientific method and that there would be a crisis in the reproducibility of research results.
Eventually I learned about the myriad cognitive biases plaguing our thinking (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases) and our struggles seemed more explainable.
I was hopeful that cataloging and knowing each of our “bugs” would enable us to debug ourselves. Curiously, my own personal experience proved otherwise as I kept noticing myself falling for them (e.g. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Well_travelled_road_effect ) even after I was thoroughly aware of them. As I reflected on my sorry self-improvement performance one day, the words of G.I. Joe rang eternal in my mind: “…and now you know, and knowing is half the battle!” “Bullshit!” I thought to myself, “It’s so much less than half the battle, at least for me.” Then I Googled “G.I. Joe knowing is half the battle is a fallacy” and was shocked to learn that some psychologists had recently dubbed the granddaddy of all meta cognitive biases “The G.I. Joe Fallacy” – https://www.edge.org/response-detail/25436 . And, of course, for complete dismality, The G.I. Joe Fallacy applies to the G.I. Joe Fallacy — i.e. knowing that knowing is much less than half the battle actually does little to prevent us from *still thinking* that knowing the bugs in our thinking will go a long way toward removing those bugs from our thinking.
As fate would have it, I married a psychologist that same year. And so my education continues. : )
And, yes, I’m learning that you are right; there’s even more that I’m wrong about. : )
So as to end on a positive note (I really am a generally happy person, despite the fact that I’m cognitively incorrigible), I’ve recently found a reason to feel more appreciation for our condition. The more I contemplate A.I., the easier it is for me to imagine that we could have brains that function in much the same way that they do — making the same decisions, taking the same actions, etc. — but *without us having an internal experience of any of it* (consciousness). And this experiencing is the only thing that gives life any meaning. Literally, without it, nothing would matter. We could be living exact the same lives as “psychological zombies”, so to speak, and it would all be inert and meaningless. And even though we might be more “Passengers” (to steal from the apt title of the last episode of “Westworld” season 2) in this experience and less in control than we like to believe, the fact that we get to experience at all — that gives me a deep feeling of both wonder and appreciation.