knowledge breach

I often mention the frankly awe-inspiring ability of people to compartmentalize, because even now I think it's not always appreciated enough. They can separate their views of reality into compartments, consciously or not, neatly or not, and then they can treat their compartments much differently. Part of the reason I emphasize this is to explain that I wasn't totally irrational when I followed supernatural beliefs, and that's also true of a lot of people who still do. Thanks to compartmentalization, they may live in ways that mostly seem sensible, or they may hold a variety of opinions that mostly seem sensible, yet they assert that once upon a time a god was human.

At the same time, as I've previously described, compartmentalization gradually quit working for me. That's why I ended up discarding the beliefs I had followed. There was a breach. It wasn't a data breach but a knowledge breach. My knowledge about reality kept invading the supposed "knowledge" provided by my former beliefs. It poured in faster and faster until it swept away the counterfeits. 

I had grown thoroughly convinced of the fundamental principle that an idea is real to the extent that its predicted impacts are confirmed by actions, observations, and reasoning. Furthermore, the very definition of realness is this principle. The breach happened as I questioned why I had been raised to have a compartment that was exempt from this superb principle—and then I realized that the need for the compartment was due to the failure of the beliefs inside it to meet the standard. In retrospect, of course the least credible beliefs were the ones accompanied by the loudest appeals to faith. 

But that was my experience. Lately I've been noticing that knowledge breaches occur in the other direction too. Rather than a breach that exposes unverified knowledge to attack, there are breaches that expose the verified sort. The principle behind these is simply the distorted mirror image of the other principle. I'd characterize it as a lengthy ramble: "Knowledge gained through human senses and reason is fallible and unimpressive. Impartial and systematic investigation is an impossible myth. It mocks the all-important contributions made by what we feel to be right and what we've been taught through time-honored tradition and communication with the divine. Everybody lies all the time and prizes their goals more than objective truth. Their goals might be profit, political power, or flat-out hatred of goodness. Anyone who says they can demonstrate the accuracy of their ideas deserves no more consideration than someone who uses their common-sense to rant. Plus, as long as it's possible to cite a different poorly-run 'study', an anecdote on a website, or someone who's an expert in an entirely unrelated field, then that means there's equal proof for the conclusions I'm comfortable with. Confirmation bias is something I need to watch out for? Whatever, I've never heard of it. Every idea that's contrary to my wishes or deeply-held intuitions is being spread by evil widespread conspiracies, and the goal of those conspiracies is to destroy everything I care about. Experts and organizations made up of experts are wholly devoted to these conspiracies, no matter what they may say. Naturally, everyone who says they're similar to me but has good reasons to disagree with me is a traitor and a fraud. Trust is based solely on whether someone grew up in the correct culture and whether they're committed to the correct groups, causes, and figureheads. There are more of us than them, which implies that they only win through deception. Anything they claim, we'll automatically accept the opposite. Our scriptures literally use sheep as a metaphor for us, and that's a good thing."

That ramble was intended as an exaggerated extreme...but sad to say it's not that far off from the mindset of some people. The point is the knowledge breach that it can cause. Like I did, they probably have compartments in which they selectively do or don't define an idea's realness by its confirmed impacts. The difference is the path they're going down. I wondered why I was allowing the reality of some of my beliefs to be defined under laxer philosophical rules. In their minds they're wondering why they're allowing the reality of some of their beliefs to be defined under the illegitimate rules of the culture they consider themselves at war with. 

Perhaps truths in the supernatural domain are completely decided by the irrefutable sayings and writings of one's culture, or by the dictatorial authorities within that culture, or by the truths someone feels, or by judging the degree that something is in subjective harmony with one's preexisting assumptions and aims. If these are the methods for absolute truth in the domain that controls everything they think and do, then they may be easily convinced to reapply these faulty methods in other compartments as well. At that point the original dividing line is blurred and the high-quality knowledge they did have is exposed to the breach. Falsehoods masquerading as truths move in. The lack of skepticism spreads. It metastasizes like cancer.

Unfortunately, the risk of this is plain to see. This knowledge breach is like a keypad lock programmed with the numbers 1-2-3-4. Anyone who uses the relevant combination of inputs could use the breach to cynically push "knowledge" in for their own purposes. I hate to see it happen. When the consequences are worse health, wasting money, acting against someone's own interest, feeling fear and anger toward others or even toward imaginary foes, paying all attention to short-term effects, and on and on, discussions about the definition of realness start to not seem so trivial after all.