The Golden Rules of the Sceptic

[gelbes_gilatier]

Ever since my first forray into meta land, rareb and I had a very lively discourse on various of my meta topics (i.e. nationality as a privilege, the different way of discussing issues in American and European circles etc.) and a few days ago, rareb developed and wrote down her Rules of the Sceptic, a synopsis of various rules to discuss issues in a manner that doesn't exclude anyone and hopefully leads to a sensible discussion instead of degrading into various kinds of not so so nice ways to discuss things, based on her research on various authors she named in her sources section.

I asked her to translate them into English so I could also post them here, which I hereby did. I took the whole unadultered, unabridged text, so everything under the cut is by rareb and can also be read and commented on in her journal. If you feel compelled to comment (remember, comment, not flame) on it, you can do so both here and in rareb's journal, whichever way you want it. So here you go:

If I want to severely test my faith in humankind, I read the comments-section of online newspapers or follow forum discussions somewhere in the depths of the internet. All these people confidently defending their beliefs and convictions, without a shadow of a doubt don’t cease to amaze me. I’m often wondering how they can be so certain. Because I can’t. And I think they can’t, either. So, here is my personal draft of some basic golden rules of the skeptic. For all those who want to go beyond belief. 

 1. Everything can be questioned and you are allowed to question everything

 The first and most important rule alludes to fundamental freedom of thought. There’s no ban on thinking – and nothing is protected from doubt by default. Nothing is certain, only death (and we might even discuss that.)

 It is also important to know that rule #1 is just a starting point. Once we have collected evidence in favour or against something, we can eventually decide to adopt a point of view and build on it or reject it. But this is only temporary, by default, as everything that seems certain now can be questioned by new evidence or new theories.

 2. Autority is not an argument

 Even the most intelligent person can be wrong occasionally. (More often than not, if they’re wrong they tend to be spectacularly so.) Just because Einstein, Kant, the President or the Bible said something or is convinced of something, doesn’t mean it’s true. “Einstein said...”, consequently, is no proof for anything and doesn’t prove you right.

 Be aware that this doesn’t count if you’re citing serious scientific research by Einstein (or anyone else). It is a valid argument if you can point out that Einstein proved in his book x that y works like that. But if you do that, please be transparent and provide your reference, so we can retrace your argument.

 3. Majorities aren’t always an argument

 In medieval times, the vast majority of people were convinced that earth was at the centre of the universe, with the sun and the planets orbiting it. That didn’t make them right, though, as we now know. So, you don’t automatically win an argument e.g. by telling me that 99% of people on the Internet share your opinion.

 Majorities are a way to decide collectively which way or which rules to follow as a group, for example in politics, in areas where there “right” and “wrong” are a matter of opinion.

 I have experienced this first hand at school when I was a kid. We had to colour different drawings of flowers in the right colour. For that, we could use field guides for flowers. Soon, we were able to determine the colour of every flower on the sheet, except for one, which we didn’t find in the guide, because it was listed under another name. It was a drawing of an alpine soldanella. I had already seen them in nature and was convinced that they were lilac, but my teacher was equally convinced that they were yellow. In a desperate try to settle the matter, he let the class vote: the result was 19:1 for yellow. But as you can see... they’re still lilac.

 4. Personal experience is no argument

 Personal experience is a tricky thing. There are areas in which there is absolutely no “right” or “wrong”, but they are solely a matter of taste. And as we all know, ”de gustibus non est disputandum” (“there’s no disputing about tastes”). So, if our question is a matter of taste, you can happily quarrel forever and you’ll never settle the matter.

 But even if it’s not a matter of taste, what’s right for you might not be right for me. We’re all individuals, in different settings, different situations – and even if there are situations that are similar they never are exactly the same. So, just because you have lost 30 pounds with your new super diet plan, doesn’t mean it works the same way for me. Even if the method works in 80% of all cases, I might still be part of the other 20%. your personal experience might be an isolated case or you might attribute causes and effects wrongly.

 This is also the reason why scientific research doesn’t accept anecdotic evidence.

For many people, it’s tough to accept this rule. Personal experience is extremely important for all of us and it’s a great advantage for human society that we’re actually able to learn from experiences others have made. This doesn’t mean, however, that your experience proves anything or that it gives you the right to slight the experience of others. In social sciences, we often find out that the conclusions people draw from personal experience don’t correspond to the bigger picture. Media, for example, tend to cover stories that are out of the ordinary. Sometimes they cover a variety of similar very exceptional stories which might lead us believe they’re not exceptional, but ordinary (after all, we read about it in the papers every day!). Most people overestimate e.g. the number of yearly deaths due to shark attacks because of that or believe that women at the age between 40 and 50 are most at risk to suffer from breast cancer, when in fact, the risk of getting any sort of cancer increases with age.

5. The surroundings are important! (Be frame-vigilant)

Arguments that are presented to us – as well as those we present ourselves – are never out of context. They’re embedded in a frame, in a system, in our incredibly complex world. It’s worth considering the frame in which arguments are formulated. The most dangerous forms of power often don’t openly declare themselves, but remain hidden and clouded. So, if an argument strikes you as weird – or if someone wants to make you think that his or her argument is perfectly natural, no need to question anything – try looking closer. What goal is the person trying to reach? Who has an interest in that argument?

It’s particularly difficult to see the frame if you’re part of it yourself. Complex systems tend to auto-reproduce themselves, and everyone who is part of it unconsciously helps it.

6. I’m not infallible

This rule is extremely important. It means that rule #1 also applies to you. Nobody is infallible, even if they think so themselves. Everyone makes mistakes. Me too. And that’s okay. It’s a sign of greatness to admit that one was wrong. Personally, I’m convinced that we should make admitting mistakes a lot easier in our society. We often tend to believe that admitting mistakes is a sign of weakness and it only leads us to desperately cling to things we know are wrong. 

But this rule goes further. Everyone can be manipulated – and is manipulated. Me too. It’s a dangerous mistake to believe that you couldn’t fall victim to a destructive system, that you’re not naïve enough to let yourself be manipulated or exploited by others. You are. Everyone is. Paradoxically, the best protection against manipulation and mind control is to know that it could happen to you, too.  

7. Keep a time perspective 

What was right yesterday might be wrong tomorrow. What everyone believes to be true today might not be true tomorrow. It’s yet another restatement of rule #1. But it also warns you to be vigilant when suddenly everyone seems to agree on an argument, without discussion or evidence. Destructive systems often try to reduce time to the present, to cut you off from your past experiences and to create an illusion of a seemingly inevitable future. As long as you live, you have a past, present and future.  

8. Average information on a group doesn’t tell you anything about an individual member of the group 

In social sciences, this rule is called ecological fallacy and media fall prey to it daily, literally. A simple example: imagine a group of say 100 people. 80 of them have dark hair, 19 are blond and 1 is a red-head. If I have to predict the hair colour of one randomly selected member of the group, it’s a good guess to say “dark” – after all, I’m only wrong in 1 of 5 tries on average. But if I know that Anna is part of this group, I don’t know the colour of her hair. For all I know, she could be the one red head. Anna is not a randomly selected member of the group for whom I have to predict the hair colour - she’s a specific member of the group whose features are unknown to me. 

Statistics often give average information and probabilities. Another very telling example: Imagine two people are to compete in a race over 100m. You know that one contestant is a man and the other is a woman. That’s all we know. Based on that information, you might tend to give the man better chances to win, as men, on average, run 100m faster than women. But this doesn’t mean that every man on the planet would run faster than every woman imaginable. Maybe the man is 90 years old and can barely walk. 

So, statistical information given on a group is important to analyse the group, it’s not to be used to make predictions on a specific member or accuse him or her of something. Not even if you want to make a big headline on your newspaper or because people want to hear it. It’s comfortable, but it’s not valid. 

In addition to these “rules”, I have formulated some guidelines, which might be challenged, but help me keep my head together: 

a) Listen to your gut feeling (intuition) but don’t always trust it 

We often feel that something is off before we can put words to it.  Gut feeling or intuition is a very useful tool nature has provided us with. It helps us evaluate situations and information in split seconds, without our mind noticing it. So, if you have a bad feeling about something, it’s worth trying to find out why you have it. But, and that’s a huge but: intuition can be wrong and is easily manipulated. Its standards of evaluation are far from perfect, they’re made to work quickly and dirty – intuition is to be blamed for many hysterical or potentially fatal decisions. In some questions, intuition leads us astray with surprising accuracy. And there are a lot of power-hungry people out there who’ll try to manipulate your intuition, e.g. by purposefully creating irrational fears. 

It’s always better to use your rational mind, too. 

b) If someone defends an argument, act or situation with many words and emotions, look closer 

Paradoxically, the less convinced we are of something, the more fervently we need to justify it to ourselves. So, if someone defends an argument, act or situation etc. with many words and gets very emotional if you start doubting it, chances are he or she isn’t that convinced. We support dissonance badly – and the bigger the potential dissonance, the bigger the justification. 

The other possibility is that you might have touched a vital belief, one that could potentially question his or her whole representation of the world. In that case, it might also be advisable to be sensitive to it. 

c) If something is presented as natural fact, as so obvious it doesn’t need further justification, look closer 

This basically is another restatement of rules #1 and #5. Of course, this guideline applies especially when you feel that it might need justification. 

d) If something looks too good to be true, it probably isn’t 

Weird things happen, and with 7 Billion people in the world, even things that have a very low probability to happen to anyone might happen. But the probability is just that, low. So, before you believe that you’re incredibly lucky or unlucky – consider the possibility that someone is trying to hide some vital facts from you. 

e) There’s no such thing as a free lunch 

Even if you seemingly don’t pay anything for a product or service etc., somewhere, someone will. And chances are that they aren’t doing it out of pure philanthropy. More often than not, you’ll pay for it yourself, if not in money, then in another currency. 

f) Everything has advantages and disadvantages 

People don’t like it. In particular people who have been socialized in one of the monotheistic religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) like their clear oppositions. We tend to evaluate things like computers, in binary codes, good and bad, black and white, us and them etc. But reality is more complex than that. Because we don’t like that too much, we tend to create artificial clarity by overestimating the advantages and underestimating the disadvantages of one choice and the contrary for the other. In every choice we make, we have, in theory, always two sets of advantages and disadvantages to evaluate. The advantages and disadvantages of doing it and of not doing it. Most people tend to confuse it and think that the advantages of one decision are automatically the disadvantages of the other – but that’s not the case. 

If someone wants to make you believe that really, a decision is absolutely obvious, chances are he or she is omitting some uncomfortable arguments. 

Finally, some sentences that make my alarm go off automatically: 

- “It’s easy/obvious…” (Why?)

- „Trust me...“ (On what grounds?)

- “Scientific research shows… / studies show…” (As long as you don’t provide me with your sources and give me the opportunity to judge these sources by myself, I won’t believe you. In particular, if you’re trying to sell me a product)

- “An intelligent person like you (wouldn’t walk into a trap)…” (and other flattering compliments.) (Oh yes, I would, if I just believed you because you flatter me.)

- If someone provides a long list of testimonials and no accessible scientific research (See rule #4) 

So… why should you follow these rules? Why should you believe me? 

Well… you shouldn’t. That’s my point. 

These rules are the result of my thinking process and of my reading. They’re in the state they are today, in the present. I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s worth following them on issues that are important to me, they help me support insecurities and the unknown.  I remain a skeptic, and I remain critical towards my own beliefs as well. But thinking on your own, in your own little chamber only leads you so far… I put them up here to share them with you, to discuss them, to test their validity. 

We all have our blind spots, we can’t see them on our own – that’s why they’re called blind spots. So, please, help me improve these rules and tell me where I’m wrong in your opinion. Or right, if that’s the case. 

And finally, I should add another rule number 0: Don’t take yourself too serious.

(I should be reminded of that as well, once in a while.) 

Some sources of this essay:

Gardner, Dan (2008). Risk – The Science and Politics of Fear. London (Virgin Books). 

Gigerenzer, Gerd (2004). Das Einmaleins der Skepsis – Über den richtigen Umgang mit Zahlen und Risiken. Berlin (BvT). Im Original auf Englisch: Gigerenzer, Gerd (2002). Calculated Risks – How to know when numbers deceive you. New York (Simon & Schuster).

Hassan, Steven (1988). Combatting cult mind control. South Paris (Park Street Press). 

Tavris, Carol and Aronson Eliot (2007). Mistakes were made (but not by me) – why we justify foolish beliefs, bad decisions, and hurtful acts. Orlando (Harbour Books). 

Zimbardo Philip (2007). The Lucifer Effect – How good people turn evil. London – Sydney – Aukland – Johannesburg (Rider Books).  

And various ancient notes, scripts (in particular on Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn) and discussions at University, in particular “méthodes en science politique” with Prof. Y. Schemeil (I’m quite sure he’d wish he had failed me in his exam, should he ever stumble upon this.)

I'd like to thank gelbes_gilatier  and Elodie for their first reading of this essay. gelbes_gilatier  asked me to translate it to English for her to post it on her LJ. That's why it's in English here, as well.

Edit: I added Steven Hassan's book as another source. Also, I wanted to clarify that I don't take credit for any of these ideas. None of them is originally mine - they're the daily business of everyone who works in a slightly scientific environment , surely in another form and more complete. So, when I write that's the result of my thinking process, I don't mean I miraculously came up with these rules one day - but I that this is how much I think to have processed and understood at this point .