I Am Really Convinced About Being a Skeptic
Two months ago, I sketched an article about how I used to be into conspiracy theories and how I became a skeptic after that. I had most of my ideas laid out when I started questioning myself, pondering such an article’s usefulness. I was skeptical about my story of how I embraced Skepticism #verymeta. I settled that conspiracy theories drain energy they do not deserve and that it was better to focus on why it is better to have Healthy Skepticism. Not only concerning UFO’s but on our daily lives in general. I was trying to give a more positive angle to it — something I have been trying to do for each of my posts since my rant about movie adaptations.
If you are interested in my opinion about the topic, here is a TL;DR:
Conspiracy theories are fantasies that try to over-simplify complicated subjects to achieve a feeling of control via understanding. They often have distorted reflections of genuine issues that get neglected in pursuit of the fantasies mentioned above. In other words, the real “mainstream” version of our reality is more complex and scary than any conspiracy theory.
As always, let’s start defining this thing:
skep·ti·cism
Wikipedia defines it as “a questioning attitude or doubt towards one or more putative instances of knowledge which are asserted to be mere belief or dogma.” For some people, this might sound like an insufferable attitude, which might be true if you take it as “let’s doubt of everything that is presented as a fact.” If you do, you might fall into the radical branches of philosophical Skepticism, which holds that there is no way to achieve certainty about anything. That is ok if that is your thing, though. That is why I use the adjective “Healthy” along with Skepticism; to distance myself from the rabbit hole of philosophy.
When I was a kid, Skepticism was somewhat of a dirty word. After all, I grew up in a country that did not confirm its secularity until I was 10-years-old. The skeptic label meant that somebody is trying to ruin everyone else’s party with questions that nobody is asking. What was born out of curiosity, was understood as an impertinence.
I like to believe that my shameful period reading conspiracies and pseudo-scientific crap online was mostly out of that curiosity. I loved the myths and stories behind some of them. After all, I was into popular science since I was a kid, and I have always loved astronomy (thanks for everything, Carl Sagan). However — like my dark lapsus exemplifies — natural curiosity might be a significant factor in the path of critical thinking, but it is not enough by itself.
It is literally my job
I am no scientist — very far from it — but I need to adopt a doubting stance in my everyday work. I am an Experience Designer, and I need to assume that everything I propose might be mistaken. If I do not have evidence to back up an idea, I should be prepared to see it fail.
This “business skepticism” is also useful to doubt the intentions of my clients and users. Yes, I should not believe the words of the people bringing the money. I should not take what they say at face value. Mainly because what they think they want might not be what they need. It can sound unfair from an outsider’s perspective, but it has been a critical innovation concept for decades.
A famous and apocryphal quote by business-genius and well-known anti-Semitic asshole, Henry Ford, says: “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” That is why we are two decades into the 21st century, and we do not have flying cars yet; we might think we want them, but in reality, we need safer and more efficient vehicles — which might include taking the wheel away from humans at some point.
But most importantly, I must regularly check on myself. We humans, are solipsistic by nature. We often believe some things are ok because it makes sense for us. Still, when we reach other consciousness outside our heads, we recognize that other people might see things differently. Since I was a little kid, I have been using computers, but I did not have an internet connection at home until my last year of school. My experience is not shared by everyone. What I think is easy and straightforward might be challenging and confusing for other people.
And on top of that, we also have biases. Meaning that even in our road to be impartial, we might be skewed in our decisions without noticing it. And that is when you trust in the people around you for support.
Moreover, like most things in the real world, there are no absolute truths and several ways to measure how “correct” you are. We keep on learning because we want to understand things better and deliver a better outcome, not for the sake of knowledge (and because they are paying us for it).
It has always been
As you can see, this type of learning-based Skepticism — even when it is practiced outside of the corporate world — is miles away from the “acktually” meme. That person that does not want to miss an opportunity to let you know how wrong you are. The mansplaining type of person that will bury you with facts and logic. Actually, that is not right.
On the contrary, the purpose of being a skeptic is to suspend judgement. As we stated before, Skepticism — on its original philosophical definition — quite literally means that you aim to not affirm anything.
However, Skepticism is not about doubting all things. We are not Greek philosophers that can spend their entire lives dedicated to doing that. Skepticism, well… modern Healthy Skepticism, is about learning and understanding the things surrounding you, which might influence your life. It is about having a significant amount of the puzzle pieces to interpret the picture. This, while understanding that the puzzle has no borders and that you can always find more parts that can change your interpretation of the image.
You probably are content enough with the current understanding of how soaps work, or how shoes are important, even to the point of making assertions (shoes are good but do not wear them inside your home, that’s my hot take). And some things might be out of your control to even care, like Dark matter or if cricket players are using performance-enhancing drugs. I understand why people might be concerned about those two subjects. Still, I want to save brainpower to figure out different things.
Kids are dumb
We all go through our lives, doing stupid things and learning from them. There is a moment in our lives when we believe we know everything, and that is our teenage years. That is why each person on planet Earth knows and understands that teenagers are stupid. Is just the reality of things.
We grow when we learn. We usually do not search for that knowledge. It comes in the form of a fork inside an electrical outlet or paying for a time-share. When we assume that the puzzle is complete, that we understand the whole lot; that is when we stop learning. Curiosity dies, and we do not grow.
Learning is tiresome, as it means having an open mind and considering all the different points of view. Nobody wants to keep challenging themselves over soap and shoes all of their lives. Yet, we love to stick to our opinion about these significant and meaningful ideas. Like we like to forget about school calculus just because we already got our grade, and it was hard, and we do not want to go through that all over again, ever [please use another topic if you actually kept using calculus through your adult life, thanks].
When we do not want to think about these significant and meaningful ideas, they are propagated as dogma. It regularly happens with politics. People making decisions that might impact us in different and radical ways; that sounds like something you need to pay notice all the time! However, the complexity and obscurity of how these issues are often handled make it really hard for the lay-person to sustain a learning stance. We just select a friendly face and decide that we agree on everything that the friendly face’s team decides.
I often see that protests are a perfect example of this apathy for thinking. Protests are disruptive and political by nature. People hate disruption and to (really) think about politics. That is why protesters are often demonized. However, when the protests are far from home, the optic switches, and they become freedom fighters. They do not test our patience, and we usually do not have stakes on the situation, so we are open to what they have to say at the surface level. The protestors overseas are a simple idea. The protestors in our backyard are a complicated circumstance. Therefore, to avoid thinking beyond, we make our judgement right away:
Protestors are wrong, no matter what they are protesting for. If they were fighting for something fair, they could do it without protest. We will not consider the issue any further.
Case closed. We learned nothing about the situation. We are not smarter.
Politics is the last thing on earth we should approach with apathy. And considering the scope of political decisions, politics demands us to think about other human beings’ experience. When was the last time you changed your mind on something you considered was correct, or you realized you made a false judgement? Maybe you found out that the issue was way more complicated than you assumed and affected people differently. Now, consider that the same thing might happen to something you perceive to be a truth.
Or maybe you have never been mistaken, or you were before but not anymore, making you a genius. Call me a skeptic, but I have another hypothesis.
Adults are dumb too!
This post started with how conspiracy theories are foolish and misguided. But now I am saying that it is dutiful to listen to all perspectives. Does that include crazy folks?
The fact is that many points of view are poppycock, created by the same ignorant point of view that refuses to learn — an infinite loop of ignorance. A conspiracy theory is shifting from believing in a mainstream idea to believe in an obscure dogma. There is no critical thinking associated. That is why, on top of being open to learning, you need to learn to smell and avoid the BS. This is why curiosity is not enough! If somebody claims something extraordinary, some extraordinary evidence is required (thanks again, Sagan). In the spirit of other posts in my blog, if you want to learn how to learn, a good starting point is identifying logical fallacies. Nonetheless, you should not ignore an issue just because the person trying to persuade you that it is important does not know how to build an argument.
Flat-earthers and anti-vaxxers are plain wrong, and they do not deserve your energy. However, learning how wrong they are, might help you better understand how our world works. Although the basics about the earth’s shape should be in the same category as soap and shoes in this day and age. And it might be tempting to debate people about these stupid topics, but you should always remember Brandolini’s law.
The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it.
Yes, debating. Most times, the learning process is not just to listen but to ask questions and challenge ideas. Sometimes, this method does not give you more information but confirms that the previous pieces of the puzzle were in the right place. You might also comprehend your ideas are weak, and your puzzle is still full of holes — without making the opposite right. That is the nature of a healthy debate and exchange of information. Yet, and this is important, never debate somebody if you do not care about them and their opinions.
If you really care about the person you are arguing with, you will attempt to understand their perspective. And if you want to change their minds, you will make an effort to evaluate how they process information. Changing minds requires empathy, and empathy requires understanding what others experience. That is why your super smart arguments on Facebook go nowhere. Information requires context to make sense, or it will be rejected. They need to be served with some fat so the body can absorb it. You might be correct in your arguments, and you might be approaching a conversation with an open mind, but if you do not figure out how they see the world, you will not find how to alter their view of the world.
Unless they are Nazis or something. Fuck those people and their view of the world.
Still a dirty word
While writing this post, I read a book that urged people to find their own voice and write. Overall, it was a good book, and I found it inspiring (which I rarely do).
Sadly, in the end, the writer went on a rant about Skepticism. She says:
I read in Harper’s Magazine a few years ago an article by a highly educated man wherein he told with what conscientious pains he had brought up all his children to be skeptical of everything, never to believe anything in life or religion or their own feelings without submitting it to many rational doubts, to have a persistent, thoroughly skeptical, doubting attitude toward everything. In other words to weazen and kill in themselves all spontaneous love, passion, enthusiasm, all creative power. I think he might as well have taken them out in the backyard and killed them with an ax.
For her, critical thinking education equals filicide because skeptical people lose all of their creativity. That rubbed me the wrong way, for obvious reasons. Maybe I should have expected something like that when she painted Christopher Columbus as a role to follow because of his initiative. A man who was considered a monster even by his contemporaries and responsible for an enterprise that killed millions of native Americans.
She believes that our internal voice was sacred by nature and that we should follow it with passion and ignore any interrogation. That we should protect “our own truths” from internal and external inquest. It might be a nice perspective to have if you really want to finish the first draft of that vampire fan-fiction you have been trying to write, but that is all.
In reality, that internal voice is a result of our environment. It is healthy to understand what nurtures that inner voice. Go ahead with the vampire fan-fiction, but do not make that surprised Pikachu face when everybody finds it derivative.
As a whole, I find her advice horrible to give to anyone that operates inside a society. That is the tightest of echo-chambers, which feeds the unavoidable conclusion that the right answer for everything lies inside you and that you should disregard the opinion and experience of others. The idea of having “our own truths” is what ends up in things like denying the expert’s advice and having to deal with incontrollable pandemics. And if humans were not skeptics of the world they created and the religions they follow, we would still have legal slavery, male-only suffrage, and leech-based medicine.
Questions are the origin of creativity. New ideas are created every day because people doubted the effectiveness of the establishment.
