hunting for license

Followers of materialistic naturalism like myself have a reputation of scoffing at wishful thinking. We're pictured as having an unhealthy obsession on bare inhuman facts. Despite that, I'm well aware that one of my own ideals is closer to a wish than to a reality a lot of the time. I refer to the recommended path to accurate thoughts. It starts with collecting all available leads. After the hard work of collection comes the tricky task of dispassionately sorting and filtering the leads by trustworthiness. Once sorting and filtering are done, then the more trustworthy leads form the criteria for judging among candidate ideas. The sequence is akin to estimating a landmark's position after taking compass bearings from three separate locations, not after a single impromptu guess by eye.

If I'm reluctantly conceding that this advice isn't always put in practice, then why not? What are people doing in its place? We're all creatures who by nature avoid pain and loss, including the pain of alarming ideas and the loss of ideas that we hold. That's why many people substitute the less risky objective of seeking out the leads which would permit them to retain the ideas they cherish for reasons besides accuracy. They're after information and arguments to give them license to stay put. As commentators have remarked again and again, the longest-lasting fans of the topics or debates of religious apologetics (or the dissenting counter-apologetics) are intent on cheering their side—not on deciding to switch anytime soon.

Their word choices stand out. They ask whether they can believe X without losing respect, or whether they must believe Y. Moreover, they significantly don't ask which idea connects up to the leads with less effort than the others...or which idea introduces fewer shaky speculations than the others. The crux is that their darling idea isn't absurd and it also isn't manifestly contrary to one or more indisputable discoveries. They may still care a bit about its accuracy relative to competing ideas, but by comparison this quality is an afterthought. They're gratified as long as the idea's odds exceed a passable threshold. They can honestly envision that the idea could be valid in some sense. The metaphor isn't searching for a loophole but snatching up every usable shim to fix the loose fit of their idea within the niches that need filling. The undisguised haphazardness of it at least ensures that it's adaptable and versatile.

Of course, at root it's a product of compromise for people who are trying to navigate all the forces which push and pull at them. It soothes them about the lower priority they're consciously or unconsciously assigning to accuracy. By scraping together an adequate collection of leads to make an idea viable, they're informing everyone, including themselves, that their selection of the idea isn't unreasonable. If the pursuit of authenticity were a game, they'd be insisting that their idea isn't out of bounds.

Irritatingly, one strange outcome of their half-cured ignorance might be an overreaction of blind confidence. The brashest of them might be moved to declare that their idea is more than just allowable; it's a first-rate "alternative choice" that's as good or better than any other. By transforming it to a matter of equal preference, they can be shameless about indulging their preference.

In isolated cases it really could be. But the relevant point is that, successful or not, the strategy they used was backwards. They didn't go looking honestly for leads to the top idea. All they wanted was greater license to keep the idea they were already carrying with them while they looked. In effect, thinking in these terms motivates more than a mere bias toward noticing confirmations of their idea: they're sent on the hunt. Needless to say, they can't expect anybody else to be as enchanted by their hunt's predictable findings.

trading posts

From time to time I'm reminded that it's misguided to ask, "Why is it that faulty or unverified ideas not only survive but thrive?" In my opinion the opposite question is more appropriate: "What has prevented, or could prevent, faulty or unverified ideas from achieving even more dominance?" The latter recognizes the appalling history of errors which have seized entire populations in various eras. The errors sprout up in all the corners of culture. The sight of substandard ideas spreading like weeds isn't exceptional; it's ageless.

The explanations are ageless too. One of these is that the ideas could be sitting atop a heaping pile of spellbinding stories of dubious origin. After a story has drawn its audience toward an unreal idea, it doesn't vanish. Its audience reproduces it. It might mutate in the process. When it's packaged with similar stories, its effect multiplies. Circles of people go on to trade the stories eagerly, because when they do they're trading mutual reassurance that they're right. There's a balance at work. Possessing uncommon knowledge is thrilling, especially when it's said to be both highly valuable and "suppressed". But the impression that at least a few others subscribe to the same arcane knowledge shields each of them from the doubt that they're just fantasizing or committing an individual mistake.

As is typical, the internet intensifies this pattern of human behavior rather than creates it out of nothing. It's a newer medium, albeit with a tremendous gain in convenience and visibility compared to older forms. In the past, the feat of trading relatively obscure stories depended on printed material such as newsletters or pamphlets or rare books. Or it happened gradually through a crooked pipeline of conversations that probably distorted the "facts" more and more during the trip. Or it was on the agenda of meetings quietly organized by an interested group that had to already exist in the local area.

Or a story could be posted up somewhere for its intended audience. This method especially benefited from the internet's speed and wide availability. Obviously, a powerful computer (or huge data center full of computers) with a memorable internet address can provide a spectacular setting for modern electronic forms of these posted stories—which have ended up being called "posts". Numerous worldwide devices can connect to the published address to rapidly store and retrieve the posts. Whether the specific technology is a bulletin board system, a newsgroup, an online discussion forum, or a social media website, the result is comparable. Whole virtual communities coalesce around exchanging posts.

Undoubtedly, these innovations have had favorable uses. But these also have supplied potent petri dishes for hosting the buildup of the deceptive, apocryphal stories that boost awful ideas. So when people perform "internet research", they may trip over these. The endlessly depressing trend is for the story that's more irresistible, and/or more smoothly comprehended, to be duplicated and scattered farther. Unfortunately that story won't necessarily be the most factual one. After all, a story that isn't held back by accuracy and complex nuance is freer to take any enticing shape.

It might be finely-tuned in its own way, though. A false story that demands almost no mental effort from its audience might provoke disbelief at its easiness. It would have too close of a resemblance to a superficial guess. That's avoided by a false story that demands a nugget of sustained but not strenuous mental effort—or a touch of inspired cleverness. It more effectively gives its audience a chance of feeling smug that now they're part of the group who're smart and informed enough to know better.

I wish I knew a quick remedy for this disadvantage. I guess the superior ideas need to have superior stories, or a mass refusal to tolerate stores with sloppy substantiation needs to develop. Until then the unwary public will be as vulnerable as they've ever been to the zealous self-important traders of hollow stories and to the fictional "ideas" the stories promote.