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Thinking 101

Entry 856, on 2008-09-23 at 20:11:48 (Rating 3, Philosophy)

This little rant is for the benefit of several people I have been debating with recently, and others who think in a similar way. Yes, if you follow my blog at all you will know I often debate with annoying people like creationists, global warming deniers, conspiracy theorists, and various other people with "fringe" beliefs.

In every case I can identify one major mistake they make which stops them arriving at the truth (or at least the closest thing to the truth we currently have) and that is that they don't think about the subject logically. Some people will say that my way of thinking has a built-in scientific bias but I contend that I'm really just using common sense. Follow the instructions below (Thinking 101, an introduction to how to arrive at the truth) and see if you disagree.

OK, the first thing to decide is whether you really want to know the truth or would prefer to believe something which has other benefits (apart from being truthful). I'm serious about this because the truth isn't always nice. To some people beliefs which are more pleasant, or easier to understand, or fit in with tradition, are more acceptable. If this is the case then fine, you don't need to think so you can drop out of this class. Goodbye.

OK, so if you really want to find out what's true then what's the next step? First you have to accept that fundamentally we can never prove or disprove anything 100%. So when I say the truth I mean something which is in some ways interim, because it might change in the future. The "big" truths don't tend to change much: they might be modified but not really replaced. The classic example is Newtonian mechanics which is less accurate than relativity but is still "true" enough that it can be used for almost every task it was originally used for. So we should accept truths even if the evidence is not 100% conclusive but we should be prepared to re-examine beliefs if new evidence becomes available. If you demand absolute proof or if you think all beliefs are equal because they all have less than 100% support (even if one has 1% and one 99%) then you won't get any further here, so goodbye.

So now we know we want to discover the truth and we know that it isn't absolute but we should accept the best evidence. But how should we gather this evidence? Because nothing is ever 100% proven you will always find evidence for and against any idea or theory. Its important to make sure that you look at all the evidence equally instead of picking and choosing the parts with fit in with your pre-conceived ideas. This is the one area where people make their biggest mistake: they already know what they want to be true so they go out looking for supporting evidence and conveniently ignore the rest. If you do this then you can prove anything is true (an I mean anything, even something ridiculous like a flat Earth). So if you are not prepared to look at all the information without rejecting the stuff which doesn't fit your beliefs then you fail. Goodbye.

OK, so we are prepared to look at all the evidence but it will be contradictory and confusing so how should we sort through it and decide which to believe and which not to? One way would be to take the majority view - if most people believe something we could say its true. But this clearly won't work in some cases although its surprisingly accurate for many (the wisdom of crowds). Another would be to accept what the majority of experts agree on. This would be even more accurate but still fail in some cases. We could modify this by rejecting groups with a bias or who we have good reason to think of as unreliable (with a financial or political bias for example). Finally we could look at how the person or group got their information and accept or reject it based on that. The important thing is to have a fair way of evaluating stuff. If you don't, goodbye!

So what is the best way to discover new information? Ideally we would make the discovery ourself but that is rarely possible so we have to rely on others. Since everyone has a bias its important that they use discovery techniques which minimise or negate this. Reading something in an old book clearly isn't a good way to make discoveries because how do we decide which book to read? And where did that information some from? We could look at available evidence and see if it fits our theory but that often results in a post hoc rationalisation, in other words we subtly (and sometimes subconsciously) change the evidence or the theory to make the two fit. Obviously the best option is to design an experiment where we predict a specific outcome (preferably a quantitative one) and see if that's the result after the experiment is done. Theories with predictive power of this sort are a mainstay of science and if you're not prepared to admit their relevance then you fail. Goodbye.

If you have made it this far you are probably going to have a pretty good handle on reality. Let's have a look at a common false (or at least almost certainly false because nothing is ever 100%) belief. Of course, I must choose creationism. Which of the above steps do creationists not follow properly?

First, I don't think they really want to know the truth. They keep using word like "truth" but that's not what they really want. They want to accept whatever fits in with their core religious beliefs. So they fail there.

Second they don't really follow the partial or interim truth idea very well. Religious myths are treated as if they are absolute and can never be challenged. On the other hand scientific theories are criticised if there is the tiniest problem with them. They are held to the highest standards of scrutiny and the slightest weakness is seen as proof they aren't true. That's no way to establish the truth. Another fail.

What about their methods of gathering data? Creationist ultimately take all their beliefs from an old book which has no objective support. They reject the scientific methods which have lead to all our great theories if they don't suit what they want to believe. That's not intellectually honest. Another failure.

Creationists aren't good at establishing what are reliable sources. They accuse scientists of being involved in vast conspiracies and reject information from relatively neutral sources. Yet they expect the rest of us to believe stuff on creationist web sites and in religious books. This is a sure way to establish what isn't true. Fail!

Creationist information tends to be sourced from material which just states information without supporting evidence. For example, the Bible says the world was created in 6 days but there is no real reason to believe that. Science tells us the universe is almost 14 billion years old but this is backed up with evidence that anyone can check. Again creationism fails.

You might think I made the rules to make science look good and superstition, paranormal beliefs and pseudoscience look bad, but that's not really true. I think the rules are just good common sense - that's really what science is all about!

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