Reasons to Believe
I visited my mother again last weekend, and, as always, we had an enlightening discussion. What was interesting about this discussion was that Magus was along for the ride this time, and my mother's claims directly touched on something we had been discussing on the ride over.
I had brought up something I've been thinking about and synthesizing for a while, sparked at least in part by some semi-recent comments on my old Hutchison Effect post by a crackpot named "shon" (here's the first). In addition to using the government gambit ("The government took his stuff! It must be legit!") he played the "you can't see air!" card, among other cliched, bullshit lines. What he said that really annoyed me, though, was the following:The B2 Stealth Bomber was in existance since the early 80's yet I am sure that "Sceptics" back then were just as fast to say that such a thing could never have existed (along with the US Government, we all know they can be trusted for thier word) and then in 1990 the whole world saw it.
To which I replied:No skeptic ever would have said that. Lacking evidence, a skeptic might have said, tentatively, "There is no evidence for such an aircraft, therefore I do not believe one exists." Changing your views when new evidence comes to light is not, as you seem to think, a bad thing. You demonstrate quite clearly here that you understand nothing about skepticism or the scientific method.
And his spirited rejoinder:"a skeptic might have said, tentatively, "There is no evidence for such an aircraft, therefore I do not believe one exists"
Argh! My head explodes, literally, when people miss the point this badly. It then reforms atop my neck and I have some water and take a nap. (You can't prove me wrong, now can you? Must be true.)
My point exactly. B
But it did.
So, back to last week.
Early on the trip over I had mentioned how fed up I was with woos or crackpots or people in general who believed X when there was no justification for it, but then gloat about being right if evidence is found for X. Dipshit and his B2 Bomber up there is a prime example.
A couple of hours later we found ourselves talking to my mother and, as is typical, she said something scientifically stupid. This time it was about how artificial sweeteners cause cancer (hint: they don't). I told her that there was absolutely no evidence to support that assertion, one she's been making for as long as I can remember. Her response was an anecdote about her time as a teaching assisstant in college when "I had a student who was just like you. I told the class that partially hydrogenated oils were terrible for you, and I had one student who sounded just like you and would always tell me I was full of shit, but I told him 'Just wait ten years and I'll be right!' And guess what? I was!"
It was right then that I realized a major difference between skeptics and woos, between those dedicated to using and promoting the scientific method and those whose ignorance, nihilism, and epistemological hedonism lead them to believe all kinds of total nonsense. We are interested in being justified in our beliefs and claims. They, on the other hand, just want to be right. They need to be right. They hunger and thirst to be right. They have an ideological mental framework that is immune to evidence and so perserves their rightness 'til the bitter end.
That's why they're so fucking insufferable when they are right.
But the problem is that it isn't about being right. This is the same mentality that so many psychics and prognosticators showcase on a daily basis: "If I say Y at time t0, then later on at time t5 Y is shown to be true, I was right."
No, you were not right. You made a lucky guess. If I hand-pick my lottery numbers and then happen to win, it does not mean I was right. It means I was extraordinarily lucky.
But that's beside the point. When somebody makes a claim like that, they don't want to hear that they weren't right and they won't listen to you when you say it. What you must ask them is "Who cares?"
Because seriously, who does? If your prediction or claim or opinion is not backed up by any evidence, it doesn't matter that you were "vindicated" by new studies at a later date. What matters is that you were not justified in holding your original opinion. What matters is that, though I may have doubted your claim at time t0, I was justified in my doubt. Now I'm more than happy to admit that I was wrong, but you think that somehow that means you "won."
What matters is that you base you opinions, claims, and beliefs on reason and evidence. Only then can you admit you are wrong when the evidence changes. If there is no evidence (or questionable evidence) for Y, I am justified in doubting it. When and if good, legitimate evidence surfaces, when I have a legitimate reason to believe, I will change my opinion. The woo, interested in being right above all, in "winning," will never change his opinion, only crow when science "vindicates" him, and spend the rest of the time decrying science and reason.
I have come to the realization that I am not nearly as interested in being right as woos (and my mother, but then she is included in the set of woos) probably think. I am far more interested in holding opinions that are backed up by reason and evidence, and if the evidence changes, or new evidence comes to light, I will gladly change my opinion and admit I was wrong.
This is unconscionable to the woo. Be wrong? That's a character weakness or something, isn't it? They can't be wrong. They have to be right, no matter what.
We, on the other hand, don't care if we're right or wrong so long as we can back our opinions up with evidence. That's what really matters, because what's backed up by evidence is more likely to be true.
So who cares if the B2 really existed in 1982 while people who had no evidence insisted it probably did not? Those people had no reason to believe the B2 existed and so their doubts were completely justified. Those who insisted on the existence of a super-secret new stealth bomber project in 1982, lacking any evidence, were essentially making stuff up. So what that they turned out to be "right?" They were not justified in their opinion. They were, to use technical speak, full of shit.
Science and skepticism are not a set of conclusions programmed into our minds at twelve by evil, mind-contolling science teachers and later supported by the evil likes of PZ Myers and Richard Dawkins. Science, and the skepticism that is necessary for its progress, are methods of generating information that is as close to the truth as we can reckon it. Sometimes things change, and the scientific body of knowledge changes with it, along with the opinions of everyone really dedicated to the method.
Being right is meaningless if your "rightness" is held up by nothing, and it is in general far less meaningful than being justified. When I am justified, I might be wrong, but I am not pulling things out of my ass without evidentiary support. It's never a bad thing to go where the available evidence takes you, even if that's to "I don't yet know."
Skeptics and woos, we come at these things from completely different directions. Woos take the top-down, teleological approach. They have conclusions to which they are heavily attached, and they must be right, even if that means rejecting contrary evidence or claiming it where there is none. Because of their attachment to their preconceived conclusions, they are interested in being right more than being justified in their opinions. Skeptics, on the other hand, take the bottom-up approach: we look at the evidence first, and derive conclusions therefrom. This is the only way it can be done if we are to hold justified beliefs and opinions, if we are to see reality as it is rather than as we want it to be, and if we are to consistently generate as much truth as possible. Sure, there may be some foibles and mistakes along the way, but they'll get fixed. When you're obsessed with being right, on the other hand, your mistakes will never go away.
But, to the bitter end, woos will insist that it is we, the scientific establishment, the closed-minded skeptics, who have an inherent need to be right. Sorry, folks. We're just insistent that your opinion (and ours) have evidence to back it up, that it be justified, that you give us reasons to believe. If you can find a Bigfoot or a UFO or something else silly like that, pretty much all of us would gladly change our opinions.
Of course, then you'd just try to have it both ways and say that we're wafflers who change our minds, as if that's an insult. You'd project your need to be right onto us, who are only interested in having opinions that are justified by evidence. We can admit we are wrong.
Being right just isn't that precious a commodity.
7 comments:
The other thing woos can't abide is "I don't know." But then I guess they already do. How else would they always be right?
I had this discussion in comments at my blog recently about herbalism (at a homeopathy post of all places) and it pretty much drives this attitude.
Basically, in the case of herbalists, I concluded that it is essentially laziness (or hubris, perhaps?) and opportunism that allows them to persist with this attitude.
Laziness/hubris: "We won't bother doing trials because we know that [e.g. echinacea] works [for e.g. cold and flu symptoms] and has no harmful side effects."
Opportunism: "I see that your trial showed that [e.g. St John's wort] works [for e.g. depression]. We've been telling you that for years."
Most woo merchants aren't any different, but for some, I'd add outright dishonesty to the above two. Take homeopathy for instance...
I think I'd do a bit of a rephrase, but this little rant will pretty much mirror the post:
The woos want to be right beforehand. To them, being right on a random guess is what matters. If they get lucky, they'll shout it from the mountaintops. If they don't get lucky, they'll denounce every tool we use to get the truth.
It's about ego: They have to put themselves up as prophets or it doesn't count. Changing their views means they have to do the inconceivable and *gasp* admit they were capable of being wrong! If they admit that they're fallible creatures, it's a sign of them not being super-duper special deities.
Scientists and skeptics are more interested in what's true and changing their view to be right after the evidence comes in. It doesn't matter what views we held before the evidence came in. We're fully capable of admitting we're wrong. It's in the nature of falsifiability: If we're wrong, we have a way to prove it. That way, we can change our stance to the correct one.
The way I like to put this is thusly:
Woos want to have been right in the beginning, while never changing their position. Skeptics want to be right in the end, however many times they have to change their position in the interim.
Notice the mangled tense in the woo position. They want reality to conform to their beliefs. Skeptics, on the other hand, want to conform their beliefs to reality.
I followed a link from holfordwatch to this page. Fantastic stuff. I know how you feel, but I think that you have articulated this much better than I could have done.
I have felt as you have felt, but disagree with your overall assessment.
I'm not knowledgeable of internet "skeptic terms", but I understand that a "woo" is more likely to embrace superstition, etc. However, I think it is advisable to abandon the false binary of "woo", "non-woo." We are all driven, some more frequently, by superstition, poor reasoning, etc. While your reasoning was coherent, it is ultimately dependent on a overly simplistic dichotomy.
I realize that I have not stated my case much at all. Still, I welcome disagreement with the hope that I will be able to elaborate very soon.
MKM:
I don't think that pointing out a dichotomy really constitutes disagreement. I also don't think I'm inherently claiming a dichotomy. First off, there are people who are wholly superstitious, whether religiously or otherwise. Secondly, the "non-woo" side of things, the "us," so to speak, is, being human, most definitely as open to irrationality as anyone. The differnce is that we actively pursue rationality and try to rid ourselves of biases. We try, to use the language of the post, to be justified as often as possible and if we're truly what we say we are, we reevaluate our conclusions when an honest challenge is mounted, when someone tells use we're using bad teleology, etc.
Moreover, the idea that a woo is obsessed with being right over being justified does not apply only to those so far gone on the spectrum that they have given themselves 100% over to non-critical thought patterns and anti-intellectualism. People, as you rightly point out, can be "woo" about some things and not other things. My mother, for example, has great critical thinking skills when it comes to 9/11 conspiracy theories. Where religion and altmed are concerned, however, she is wholly superstitious and an out-and-out woo, and on the subjects where she is a woo, she needs to be right more than she needs to be justified by reason and evidence.
The point is that, I suppose, it would be more accurate to apply the attitude I have expressed to woo beliefs: people who believe in woo will, concerning their woo, tend to desire to be right more than to be justified. I believe that, in that way, my post was correct, and no dichotomy is really involved: it allows people to be superstitious about some things and not others, and gives them a spectrum of "right vs. justified" on which to claim a point.
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