Uncompromising Men

Or : How rational thinking won't stop you from being stupid

Uncompromising men are easy to admire. He has courage; so does a dog. But it is exactly the ability to compromise that makes a man noble.

It's unfortunate that this line is found in a) a Mel Gibson film and b) is said by a villain, because it's true. People naturally prefer clarity to uncertainty. We like to divide the world into black and white, right and wrong. This is the truth, that is just stupid. If you believe that, you must be an idiot.

That of course is why Braveheart is a popular film - and the same goes for Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings, etc. The goodies are goodies and the baddies are baddies, with all the moral ambiguity of a bowl of custard. And even though there are plenty of very successful stories with much greater moral complexity, the simplistic version never really loses its appeal.

But in the real world anyone with an ounce of sense knows, deep down, that it's much more complicated than that. Granny isn't an evil person because she's a little bit racist*. The high school physics teacher isn't certifiable because he sympathises with Moon landing conspiracy theorists*. And the local shopkeeper isn't a nutter because he thinks global warming is all some kind of hoax to raise taxes. There's a world of difference between holding an idiotic (or simply mistaken) belief and being an idiot.

* Personal examples. I also had a teacher who thought that things float in space because of "thin air" and another who thought that the stars shone by the reflected light of the Sun.

Deep down, we all know this to be true. But sometimes things get confusing.


Being Rational Is Not Enough

We all have an innate sense of curiosity, but critical thinking demands more than a simple desire to find things out. We have to constantly watch for our own biases, to check we're not believing something just because we want it to be true. It's not an easy skill, and unlike history or French or line dancing, it's not really something you can teach in a specific lesson. On the other hand, statistical thinking doesn't come naturally at all, but that definitely is something you can and should teach.

We tend to learn by induction - we see (or are told of) patterns and trends, and assume the're generally or always true in new situations. The classic example is that if we see a hundred white swans, we assume that all swans are white. Generally this is pretty sensible - after all, it's not practical for us to check every single swan on the planet - provided that if we do find a black swan we correct our opinion.

The difficulty with thinking statistically is that our own personal experiences are always true. When someone says something that's in flat contradiction to what we've seen with our own eyes, there is a certain logic in denying it. "You can't possibly have seen a black swan, you must be a very stupid person."The problem is that that's equally true from their perspective, but remembering this isn't easy - instinct takes over. It's even more difficult to realise that your experiences will have been influenced by a thousand different factors, and there's no reason to suppose that those will be the same everywhere.

Thinking in this way demands constant vigilance. Sometimes we can make those little personal exceptions : Granny might not be too fond of black people, but she's basically OK... that one swan was pink, yes, but - oh, wait, that was a flamingo. Whoops.

I AM NOT A SWAN.

Statistical Thinking Needs To Be Taught

When we find an anomaly, we don't automatically say, "All my previous observations were unusual, this new thing is normal." Instead we assume that it's the new thing that's the anomaly. If you don't see any birds other than swans your whole life, then one day when you're six your parents take you away from the swannery where you grew up to visit the zoo and you see a flamingo, you aren't going to say, "wow a new type of bird !" You're going to say, "What a funny-looking swan !" And then your parents are going to feel like right idiots for apparently forgetting to teach you anything much at all, and you may be well on your way to becoming a bit of a thickie.

Thinking about what sort of selection effects are at work does not come naturally, and it's difficult. Because we tend to say that anything unusual to us is unusual overall (rather than assuming we've been in an unusual position), things that don't fit the pattern don't necessarily challenge our ideologies. If we find more examples, we just say there are more exceptions, more mitigating factors. The whole thing becomes unwieldy and complex. We don't like it. It was all so much simpler before the "anomalies" cropped up. We know there are exceptions, but we don't even really believe those are evidence that our assumptions are wrong because there are special exemptions.


Simple Messages... For Simple People ?

Then along comes a voice full of sound and fury that cuts through all that like a scalpel. Should we tighten border security to prevent foreign terrorists from entering ? NO LET'S JUST SEAL THE BORDERS COMPLETELY ! In fact, let's drive the English out of Scootland forever ! Ach ! FREEEEDOM !!!!

Of course it bloody didn't. The UK is a democratic country, and has been for quite a while. Scotland is not under the rule of a tyrannical English king and hasn't been for centuries. It was monstrously, disingenuously simple to claim that everything would have just magically have gotten better by breaking the union that's worked pretty well* for the last 300 years. But damn it was an appealing message, if you didn't stop to think about it for five minutes.

* It conquered the largest empire the world has ever seen and managed to lose it without descending into anarchy, and I call that a success.

Complicated messages are difficult to sell. "This new tax policy slightly favours the rich, except for those who don't employ more than seventeen butlers and only if they've never been to Zimbabwe with a goose" is just not as appealing as, "THIS POLICY HURTS THE POOR !" But the reality is that things are rarely so simple - their are usually caveats to everything.

Simple messages have the virtue of getting to the heart of the matter, to what we're really thinking beneath all those layers of exceptions we've accumulated. It's especially potent when it shifts the blame to someone else. So, "it's because of constant Western support for dictators due to profits from selling them weapons" becomes, "it's because dey is Musilms, innit !"


Being Rational Won't Save You From Stupidity

Now, to anyone thinking statistically, the second line of reasoning is laughably absurd. Simply put, if being a Muslim were the cause of violent extremism, we'd all be dead by now. But that point of view is understandable if all you see in the media is jihadist after jihadist, as opposed to, say, stories like this or this. It's as natural a conclusion to draw as that all swans are white. I've come to conclusions in a similar way myself. My point is that anyone blaming Muslims may have an idiotic point of view, but that doesn't automatically make them an idiot. They're coming to their conclusion by a process of reasoning which is actually perfectly rational, but woefully incomplete.

When confronted with the the reality that actually things are a bit more complicated than that, there are essentially two ways to proceed. The first is to say, "Oh, sorry, I was wrong." The second is to say, "GET LOST YOU COMMIE BASTARD I MEANT EVERY WORD OF IT !".

Now, in a rational world, one would think that the first option would be more admirable. Being prepared to admit your error and face the wrath of your enemies for doing so should be seen as courageous, but when did you ever see the headline, "POLITICIAN GUILTY OF LEARNING !" ?You never did, partially because there's a fundamental misunderstanding that intelligence means knowing all the right answers. Perhaps that's even true to some degree when you're ten and you're marked in school questions as right or wrong. It is not true in the grown-up world where there may not even be an answer at all, let alone one that's right or wrong.

This, I take it, gentlemen, is the degree, and this the nature of my advantage over the rest of mankind, and if I were to claim to be wiser than my neighbour in any respect, it would be in this - that not possessing any real knowledge of what comes after death, I am also conscious that I do not possess it.

Being aware that you don't know the answer doesn't make you stupid... unless there actually is an answer and you refuse to accept it : "NO MUMMY THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS FLAMINGOS !". Actually, when an issue is genuinely not yet settled, being certain of the answer is a sign of stupidity. While ideally you shouldn't be certain of uncertain things to begin with, it's still far better to change your opinion when confronted with good evidence - even if it takes you a long time to do so.


The Virtue Of Being Wrong

This is something we leave it until far too late to teach people : that research only happens because we don't know the answer, that while we might have simple answers to many children's questions (no, the Earth is not flat), when it comes to cutting-edge research things are altogether different. We forget that we can't learn new things if we already know the truth - we can't better ourselves without first admitting our flaws. It is, after all, somewhat comforting to believe we're already perfect.

That's only part of it. Admitting our mistakes is seen as a weakness, but on the other end, standing by our beliefs is seen as a sign of strength. And it does take courage to say unpopular, perhaps unpleasant things, or at least things which will cause strong reactions. But it appears to me that while we admire the courage of convictions, we almost never acknowledge the courage to change those convictions - which would probably go a long way to making the world a nicer place.

Sticking to your guns despite evidence to the contrary might be a brave thing to do, but it isn't rational. Nevertheless, a skilled, charismatic individual can use this perceived bravery to deadly advantage. The outcries from their opponents are deemed to reveal their own irrational, biased views : those "bleeding heart" liberals again ! See how they hate our righteous cause, they must be desperate to say such stupid things ! They're bound to disagree with us !


Manipulation

Taken all elements together - a simple but rational (though incomplete) and blame-shifting message, the lack of respect for people who change their mind, the perceived courage of maintaining one's ground in the face of attack, and the ability to make the oppositions's attacks look like a sign of bias, and disagreement become basically impossible. The attacks become stronger and stronger signs that the opposition are acting out of hate, not reason. The more outrageous the statements and the greater the refusal to back down, the more attacks are made, and the worse anyone disagreeing looks. Uncompromising men are not only easy to admire, they can be difficult to stop admiring.

A cult of ignorance probably doesn't look like that to its followers. It probably looks like someone is finally being honest enough to say what they're really thinking (despite the fact that that is not a virtue), to have the courage to agree with their entirely rational but uninformed conclusions, to circumvent the apparently highly contrived excuses of an intellectual elite. It does not necessarily happen simply because people are stupid.

It should be obvious by now what the end result of all this is.

Trump himself has no ideologies at all as far as I can tell, but he inspires those ideologies in others.

How do we break this madness ? I'm not sure, though I offer some suggestions as to what works to change my mind at the end of this post. It's important to remember that while people aren't entirely rational creatures, they're not entirely irrational either. I suggest not to play Trump's game. Don't leap in screaming how Trump is a moron, it only makes you look biased. Instead, chip away at his arguments one by one, arguing first towards doubt, not the extreme opposing viewpoint.

What I'm more sure about is how we can stop such utter lunatics rising to prominence in the future. Tony Blair, for all his many faults, had the right of it : education, education, education.

• Statistics, statistics, statistics. We need this to be taught in primary schools - not the maths, but the methods : big-picture thinking, selection effects, etc. Statistics is also a good way to teach important aspects of critical thinking.
• Better humanities classes in schools. Two things I strongly recommend : analysing adverts to see how people are manipulating you, and debates in which everyone is forced to advocate positions against their own viewpoint. Look at controversial, hard-hitting issues from a young age.
• Compulsory study of Plato's Apology in early high school, maybe selected passages in primary school. There aren't many examples of martyrs to the right to question rather than the right to know, but this is one and it's absolutely magnificent.
• Make children aware that what they're learning is a simplification. For god's sake tell them that the Solar System model of the atom isn't the final answer, and more importantly, that we don't have a final answer on many questions, that certainty is seldom justified outside the classroom.
• Break up news corporations. No-one should have a monopoly on the truth. No individual should be able to control more than a single newspaper or television channel.
• Continuously remind children never to be afraid of ugly facts... but at the same time, leaping to conclusions because of a single fact is not usually a good idea.
• Make everyone watch more Doctor Who.

Persuasion : A User's Guide To Manipulating Rhys

I forget the original reference, but someone pointed out recently that while people like to extol the virtues of changing opinions and being open-minded, they seldom actually are. And I'll admit there are some issues about which it's likely I'll never change my mind. But I think it's only fair to keep a list of major issues about which I have done a volte-face, or at least sort of swivelled around and fallen over in an ungainly heap.

These are mostly very complicated topics. Here I'm just giving very brief overviews of why I changed my mind on each one, otherwise this post would be so long it would be classed as obscene. Some of them do have more detailed links, so if you want to discuss the issues in detail then please read those links first.

But that's not really the aim here. The goal is to look at persuasion and try to explore what works and what doesn't. Halfway through writing this, I realised I was being very selective in figuring out the reasons why I'd changed stance. So I forced myself to ask the question : what irrational factors were at work ? That turned it from a merely interesting exercise into something genuinely fascinating. It's not a perfect way to guarantee objectivity, but it was a rewarding process nonetheless and I encourage everyone to try it for themselves.


Nuclear Power

Until I started my degree, I believed more or less without question that nuclear power was a wholly bad thing. Obviously, Chernobyl is just proof enough, right ? Then I started researching Project Orion and I came across people who disagreed. I started learning about how numbers could be manipulated to mean whatever you wanted them to mean, particularly with regards to risk. I learned about how different reactor designs are so vastly different to Chernobyl that the comparison just doesn't make any sense. I also found that many numbers presented by the greens and the pro-nuclears were simply at odds, making it very difficult for me as a non-expert to judge who was right.

It took a long time and a lot of reading but I eventually switched from being staunchly anti-nuclear to moderately pro-nuclear. I still reserve the right that better power generation techniques might obviate the need for nuclear energy, but I am not convinced that time has yet come. There wasn't any one factor that persuaded me in this case, it was more a steady attrition. E.g., France doesn't seem to have had any major problems yet it relies on nuclear power, the actual number of casualties from Chernobyl seems to be way lower than is commonly popularised, nuclear is a reliable low-carbon energy source, it is indefinitely renewable with breeder reactors, the waste is a problem but the actual amount of waste generated is very low and can be re-used in some reactor designs, noted uber-environmentalist James Lovelock supports nuclear power, etc.

I must also admit to having a certain anti-Greenpeace bias. Not because I don't think their hearts are in the right place, but because their self-assured certainty irritates me. I see their affirmative action tactics (shutting down power plants, burning genetically modified crops) as pandering to fear and a sign of extreme arrogance, not a sensible way to behave in a democracy. They were dealing with complex issues with unwarranted decisiveness, in my view - choosing to act on everyone's behalf without first asking if that was what everyone actually wanted. And so because the tree-hugging arrogant loony hippies don't like nuclear power, that probably made me more willing to hear the nuclear cause, not less.

I agree with Greenpeace on whaling, mind you.

And I also have to state that I justified my change of stance by reasoning that while I'd been rejecting nuclear power out of an irrational, unwarranted fear, I'd now become more rational. Whether you agree with this or not is unimportant. The point is that while I'd been at fault before, at least I could claim an improvement. While I'd like to think that a willingness to admit mistakes was important, I tended to brush that bit under the carpet and focused on the notion that I was improving my own position.


Global Warming

An issue on which I will admit to an amount of flip-flopping. I grew up believing that global warming was real, definitely human induced, and a very dangerous thing indeed - mostly because that was the only point of view I heard in the media. Then at some point towards the end of high school I listened to a lecture in Cardiff University which explained how collecting the data was far more complex than what the news reports suggested. I remained much more skeptical for many years. I have to admit that Greenpeace probably played a role in this as well, as with nuclear power - in precisely the opposite way to what they were trying to achieve.

I must also confess that there are still many aspects about which I'm very uncertain. I am not at all convinced that we're all doomed or that we have anything like a full enough understanding of the climate. I do sense a certain media bias towards promoting the overly-simplistic case that we definitely know everything that's going on. On the other hand, having experienced life in academia, I now completely reject notions of a conspiracy (that's one of my more under-rated articles in my opinion) or false consensus on the part of climate scientists. Knowing how the scientific method works leads me to trust the major result - we should reduce carbon emissions soon - but I'm very wary of doom-mongering, no matter who's selling it.

In this case, I wasn't so emotionally wedded to the notion of humans causing climate change as I was that nuclear power was bad. So rather than saying, "I was wrong before, but I'm improving myself by changing my view", it was more of a focus on, "I was misinformed before, so I couldn't have believed anything else." In other words it let me off the emotional hook by blaming everyone else. In fairness I was really simply too young and too inexperienced to think statistically about every issue.


Religion

I've always been an agnostic but there was a time when I had stronger sympathies for the atheist movement. It seemed to me that religion was a very effective means of controlling stupid people, and that it didn't permit questioning in the same way that science does. Organized religion, if not personal faith, struck me as a means of simply enforcing dogma. Which didn't stop me from being friends with several religious people, though I'm not sure I could manage that with a Six-Day Creationist.

While I do still think that organized religion has a lot to answer for, I am now fully convinced that religion is not the root of all the world's problems, or more specifically that a belief in supernatural deities does not makes people evil. It seems to me that the worst sort of atheists (if you want to discuss this issue then I insist you read that link in its entirety first) are happy to pick out examples of religious people doing bad things and say, "they did this because of religion" whilst refusing to acknowledge that religion can make people do good things as well - or, if it does, "they could have done this without religion" which is an argument which is frankly just silly. You can't have it both ways.

Three major factors persuaded me out of my anti-religious beliefs : 1) Richard Dawkins behaves as the High Priest of atheism, rather than truly lacking belief he seems to fervently believe that God doesn't exist and wants to convert people; 2) Dawkins and other antitheists continually act like utter jerks, and behaving with hatred doesn't help the idea that lacking religion will make you better; 3) Continual life experience of those who are religious (including fellow scientists) for whom religion doesn't seem to affect their rational judgement in the slightest. In my view, people behaving more or less irrationally must be due to more complex factors than their belief or otherwise in a deity, and I suspect extremist loonies would always find something to believe in.

I'm struggling to say whether I changed my opinions for rational reasons or not. I certainly saw evidence against the antitheist position, but the fact is, I like that evidence. There is an emotional appeal in blaming people. Maybe I'm making Dawkins into the very same scapegoat I think he makes of religious people*. I don't know. Honestly I've become so convinced of my current position (which is rather complex, again I urge readers not to respond without consulting the links) that it would probably be very difficult to shift my stance on this one.

* The similarity to Greenpeace is fairly obvious : I see them as so biased against anything humans do I can't take them seriously, and similarly for Dawkins and religion.

EDIT : Only several years after I first posted this did I realise that the most obvious irrational factor of all had been staring me in the face, and I'd very unfairly omitted it from the discussion. It's true that I don't like hardline atheist extremists, and these "New Atheists" have unfairly controlled much of the dialogue in recent years. But I also don't like atheism in general. Conscious of this being an irrational viewpoint on my part, I don't accept that the world is necessarily purely materialistic. To me, that just feels wrong, even nonsensical. Of course it might actually be purely materialistic, I just don't accept that this is unavoidable.

Now I am fully aware that this judgement explicitly derives largely from wishy-washy, woo-woo feelings, and while I suspect I could produce some rational justification for it, I'd hold this opinion even so. As this excellent atheist video recognises, you can't simply tell people what to believe and what not to believe and expect them to do it. Telling me I'm being irrational won't make any difference, because I already know that. As a scientist, I'm entirely comfortable with the notion that the Universe isn't fundamentally rational - indeed it seems infinitely better for all of us if we recognise the unprovable assumptions behind our beliefs, and I hold that rationality is one such assumption. So in that sense I'm presuming my belief to me the most rational one, thereby (ironically) "rationally" justifying my own acknowledged irrationality, if that makes sense.


Dark Matter

Years ago I did think that dark matter was the modern equivalent of the aether, a placeholder statement that we'd eventually find a better explanation for. All it seemed to be good for was making galaxies spin faster, and that felt very suspicious to me.

Having studied this issue in detail, professionally, for nearly ten years, I'm still not certain it exists, but I do think it's the best, simplest explanation. I won't dwell on this one since you can read about this in exhausting detail here, here, here and here, and of course also here. What's persuaded me on this one was a mixture of a lot of small pieces of evidence, a gradual accumulation of possible solutions to problems with the dark matter model... and, unfortunately, that anti-dark matter theorists seem far more biased against it than the evidence warrants (they seem to think it's just a daft idea, for no good reason that I can tell). That may not be a rational justification but I'd be lying if I said it didn't play a part.

This is probably the issue on which I'm behaving most rationally. I don't have a vested interest in proving dark matter - my Master's thesis was all about examining the case against dark matter, and I was keen to show that it was valid. That would have been much more exciting than the actual result, which was that my simulations found that dark matter was more important than I'd supposed. My PhD, on the other hand, was all about looking for dark matter galaxies - and I didn't find any.


Military Policy

I am naturally disinclined towards the use of military force. It always seemed to me that the doctrine, "If you want peace you must prepare for war" was completely wrong-headed. Were I given the choice, I'd far rather spent the money on spaceships than aircraft carriers and submarines. And I'm on record as stating that I think Britain's military policy is totally wrong.

Unusually, in this case the reason I've changed my mind can be largely attributed to a single cause : the sudden political changes of the Arab Spring and Ukraine crisis. In a few months, countries which had seemed to be previously stable erupted in revolt - and the cause of this can be at least partially traced to an attempt at peaceful revolution. As to more specific cases (were we right to invade Iraq, should we bomb Syria) I make no comment, I only note here that I think reducing our military power would, at the current time, be a mistake.

The irony is that I'd read enough history books that I should have realised how fluid and uncertain the world is. With hindsight I don't know what I was thinking. A desire for a stable, peaceful world, certainly. But simply having military power in case you need to use it is very different to going around clobbering people all the time. It's complicated, which is why my stance hasn't really changed as dramatically as it might superficially appear.

I still want to eliminate the military forces of every nation on Earth, I just think that unilateral action is a mistake right now. See also my article on the nuclear deterrent. Still, it would be wrong of me to say that fear of other countries hasn't played an role in changing my mind. The old quote about controlling people by telling them they're being attacked is true. It's just that it looks to me that the threats are all too real*, which makes the point about control somewhat null and void.

* This is in stark contrast to my stance on terrorism, which by itself poses not the slightest threat to societies, whereas nation-nation conflicts are different by many orders of magnitude.


The Need for Employment

I confess to experiencing a certain level of indignation on first reading this famous Buckminster Fuller quote. Surely people who can work should work, right ? Why should anyone get to be lazy ?

I changed my mind on this quite gradually. However, I did have an existing sympathy for the other point of view. It's always seemed to me that the point of labour-saving devices should be to save labour : to stop people from doing things they don't want to do. That is manifestly not the case in modern society. I have no idea what the numbers are, but it seems to be that the majority of people are doing work for the sake of making money to stay alive, not because they want to. I am fortunate enough to enjoy my job but even then I have very serious issues with it as a career choice.

The more I read about the idea of a universal basic income - the state providing everyone's most basic needs - and the ever-increasing ability of technology to replace menial labour, the more it seems to me that a jobless economy may be simply inevitable. What this will mean in the long term I don't know, though I offer some speculation here and here. Fortunately, in the short term there appears to be some really excellent evidence that it just works. That's what really persuaded me - evidence.

If I had an irrational bias to this point of view, it probably comes from years of watching too much Star Trek, and reading The Time Machine at a young age (9 or 10 I think). What you think of the future scenarios proposed in those works of fiction is immaterial - the point is that works of fiction caused an emotional bias in favour of a real proposal.


The Supernatural

... and also lake monsters, ghosts, flying saucers, bigfoot, etc. I read about this stuff extensively. There wasn't any one thing that really convinced me that none of it's true, though I did have a predisposition against magic - it's always seemed to me that that's just not how the world works. Which I suppose is an irrational justification to disbelieve in the irrational. The irony is not lost on me.

As to the rest, the more I read the less sure I was about apparently credible evidence. I came across too many hoaxes, too many cases where it would have been far easier to fake the whole thing, and precisely zero cases where there was really good photographic evidence (especially aliens - plenty of flying saucers, but no occupants). There was often the claim that 95% of most reports are bogus, but that does not imply that some fraction, however small, must be anything extraordinary. As for aliens in particular, I just don't find it credible that any species would devote so much energy to getting here and then spend all their time conducting anal probing, mutilating cows, and revealing the secrets of the Universe to drunken farmers or posting them on websites written in bold blue comic sans - no matter how different their thinking is from ours.

I don't actually have a problem with people continuing to research this stuff, just in case something does turn up. But it's not for me, thanks.

Strictly speaking observational evidence is far more important than I how I think the world works, so it's irrational of me to say that these things definitely don't happen. In this case it's a matter of convenience, since it seems to me that so many cases of purported extraordinary events are just fabrications or based on highly dubious information. So now I actively believe these things aren't true, rather than lacking belief that they are true, though I will accept spaceship-on-the-lawn proof.


Democracy

When I first started to read about the ancient Greeks, I, like most people, was rather taken with the notion of pure, direct democracy : rule by the people. Herodotus seemed thoroughly impressed with it, and if Plato was not keen on the execution of Socrates, well, that could plausibly be attributed to the flawed legal system as much as the government. Mob rule ? A rather strong conclusion, certainly something worth considering, but surely not actually what happened. Of course it would be foolish for everyone to vote on everything, but I was very surprised to hear Americans speaking out against the proposition systems. Surely, up to a point, more democracy is inherently good ?

It is of course true that Brexit has taken a hammer to that opinion rather than slowly chipping it away. And, undeniably, my opinion has been swayed by several votes I don't like the result of - but that is self-evident. If I thought it worked perfectly, then obviously I'd still be waving the "DEMOCRACY RULES !!!" flag* - but most of the time I've been willing to accept results I don't like as an unfortunate but absolutely necessary part of the system. Indeed, though I'm massively on the left of the political scale, I'm normally more than happy to defend the balance of the left and right in our political system. With some exceptions of ideas I simply cannot tolerate - like sacrificing kittens to Cthulhu - I'm normally more than happy to consider ideas I don't like; if you voted Tory that won't stop me buying you a beer. And as this very post attests to, I've been known to change my mind on many occasions. The worst part about Brexit for me personally is the way it has stretched my patience and tolerance levels far beyond breaking point. I do not like what the continual torrent of bullshit, lies and bigotry is doing to me**, yet rational argument feels like trying to stop a hurricane by mooning it. It has made me wholly incapable of responding to irrational arguments with anything other than anger. I am, in short, not happy.

* Still, I don't think I can properly address the "most irrational reason" clause for this one yet, though I will try to address this in a few months when, perhaps, the blood has cooled and the dust has settled.
** And not just on Brexit, but elsewhere on the internet the tide of pseudoscientific junk appears to be as unstoppable as entropy. It's a purely anecdotal observation, but I can't ignore it. The two factors are not necessarily uncorrelated, since of course people will make less rational decisions if they've been taught that rational thought is somehow "elitist".

But I digress. Brexit wasn't the only factor anyway. I was already aware that historically some of the worst groups had at least partially risen to power through democracy, but I thought that these days we had a better-informed, more responsible electorate. The continuing, somewhat baffling success of the Daily Mail and Donald Drumpf shows that that is not true, some people can do nothing so outrageous that it can bring them down. And I've already written about ways we can prevent this (see same link and references therein). Additionally, the un-election of George Dubya Bush had me wondering if something more serious was wrong, as did the victory of Hamas. Outside the political sphere, twitter mobs and (irony of ironies) mostly left-wing attempts to suppress dissent (albeit - and this is tremendously important - largely as a response to the bigotry of the hard right) have further demonstrated that people are willing to jump to decisions without bothering to check the facts.

But far more damage was done back at home. The decision to devolve powers from Westminster seems now, to me, to have done more to stoke the fires of nationalism than actually in any way improving things for anyone, while in the Alternative Vote referendum it was widely perceived that many people were voting to give Nick Clegg a bloody nose rather than to actually change the electoral system. We might not be able to prove this is what happened, but even just the prospect was worrying. The hung parliament demonstrated a pretty serious flaw in our democratic system and yet proportional representation is not, in my opinion, all that brilliant an idea. Democracy is in no way a magic bullet.

And then Brexit took all this to a whole other level. A narrow majority is deemed (by some at least) to be sufficient to condemn us to accept that decision for decades despite the blatant, unequivocal, one-sided lying that permeated the campaign, and the non-binding nature of the poll. Many voters - perhaps enough to change the outcome, it's not yet clear - have changed their minds, thus making it potentially a thing of transient whimsy rather than a rational, informed choice - and it's pretty clear that many voters were indeed woefully ill-informed. Maybe ballot papers should include a short quiz of basic questions.

This is no way to run a country. If we had a rational, properly informed, responsible electorate, and a media that didn't pander to populist easy answers and sales figures, then perhaps we could indeed have more referendums and a stronger society. Alas, right now we have none of these things. I don't want to sign up to Plato's "let only the experts rule" Republic, but we cannot take the democratic process for granted. I used to think that it always gave you the decision you deserved, even if that was not an objectively good choice - but I was wrong. Although voter irresponsibility is partially a factor, you don't deserve to suffer because you've been lied to. I am still a democrat, but in our current situation I can no longer accept direct democracy as a sensible method of government.


Conclusions

Nope. That is at best a vast oversimplification. It might be true some of the time, but it certainly isn't true all of the time. Nevertheless, from an open-mindedness point of view, there's good news and bad. The good :

• I've changed my mind on issues to which I was strongly opposed, especially nuclear power
• I've mostly done so at least partly because of evidence
• When I've changed my mind, I haven't become absolutely and fervently convinced of my new position, so being "converted" hasn't made me more closed-minded than before

The bad :

• I haven't really changed my mind on anything to which I have a fundamentally opposed ideology
• Emotional influence and irrational thinking has played at least as important a role in changing my mind as evidence, especially on religion and the military
• There are many other issues not mentioned here on which it's near certain that I'll never change my mind about

The speed of change varies. I was pretty quick to change my opinion on global warming based on a single lecture, whereas it took years to alter my opinion on nuclear power. Yet I'd been subject to equal levels of indoctrination by the media on both issues. There are several possible reasons for this:

- The lecturer argued for uncertainty, rather than the extreme opposing viewpoint as the pro-nuclear campaigners did

- The lecturer was a qualified expert, not the proverbial someone from the internet

- The lecturer never used emotional rhetoric, just evidence

It's also possible of course that my natural wish that humans aren't causing global warming made me more predisposed to hear the alternatives.

One lesson I think it's safe to draw is that changing someone's ideology is damn near impossible, but changing their opinion on specific issues is easier. I don't want nuclear weapons or even a military, but I accept the need for both right now. Another is that although it can often seem like you're not getting through to someone (and I probably said some very stupid anti-nuclear things), you may be having more of an effect that you realised. Just don't expect to win them over in one argument. The trick is not be so insistent that you force people on the defensive.

"Argument" is another important word. I've often found that I stop listening when people start shouting angrily, and feel an intrinsic need to justify (and therefore solidify) my own existing belief. Anger may be a good way to inspire the troops, but it's perhaps not the best way to persuade others and may even be counter-productive. I'm not sure the black and white approach favoured by so many political activists is really the best one.

I've often noticed that both in and outside of academia, my opinion tends to change more readily if I'm given time to think about something by myself, even if I initially react badly to something. But that's been my style of learning in general : listen first, think later. I find that time is a very effective way at cooling off emotions if I don't like what someone has said, but it still requires a conscious effort on my part to avoid reinforcing my own existing conceptions.

People and personalities have played a role in changing my opinion. I noted that James Lovelock's opinion mattered to me about nuclear power. Was I guilty of using the "argument from authority" fallacy here ? I have to admit that is a distinct possibility. I certainly gave his opinion far more weight than that of any random scientist I'd never heard of, and though I did also listen to his actual arguments (and not just say, "he's an expert, he must be right") it's fair to say there was a degree of "appeal to celebrity" involved. It was, however, just one small part of a long process of persuasion. But the most interesting lesson from this instance is that he presented the pro-nuclear case in a way that was fully compatible with my existing, "save the planet" ideology, partly just by his established status.

Then again, Richard Dawkins (and various other celebrity scientists) have acted to persuade me against what they were arguing for (as have Greenpeace). Although I was persuaded that the supernatural is just not true, there were occasions when I saw scientists acting in way that I did not think was justified by the evidence - even if I thought their evidence was compelling. One notable example, "I hope she grows out of it" regarding a young Russian lady's claim to be able to see internal injuries. Yes, you just came up with a very good case that she's wrong, but then you shot yourself in the foot with the patronizing remark. Of course, just because someone's a jerk doesn't mean they're wrong, but it doesn't help their case. It makes me doubt that they are logical and objective, so I see them as biased even when their conclusion is objectively correct.

(This ties in quite nicely with what I've been saying repeatedly about why scientists are sometimes perceived as dogmatic despite mountains of evidence to the contrary. Keep presenting a load of bollocks as though it was valid and you give scientists no choice but to keep shooting it down. It might be OK if this was just an occasional thing, but when you have to keep doing this, I can see why it may be hard to remain entirely civil. )

But, while this is just a self-examination and therefore massively biased, I do think that evidence has been an important persuasive tool. While there have certainly been times when I have not found the evidence convincing, I'm not sure there have been any cases where I've been convinced without any evidence at all. So, evidence is necessary but not sufficient. You have to have it, but it's not a guarantee.

Anyway, this was a very interesting exercise for me. For, as a certain renaissance thinker said :

This post may or may not have been interesting for everyone (or anyone) else, but it was useful for me to try and work out what my own biases were. Of course, I cannot possibly have got them all right, because I'm not a robot. But that's OK. The point is that it's worth making the attempt to try and look at why we believe what we believe, as honestly as we can, and why we used to think differently. We are none of us truly objective, but we can always try to be as objective as possible.

For me then, the methods of persuasion which worked were :

• Evidence. Although I certainly do reject evidence, and sometimes for reasons of my own underlying bias, you can't form a sensible argument without evidence.
• An incremental approach. Trying to tackle specific points, one at a time, has been far more successful at changing my mind that going for an entire issue at once.
• Compatibility with ideology. Don't like violence ? Then argue that the military prevents violence rather than causing it.
• Arguing towards a state of uncertainty rather than straight to the exact opposite of my existing position. I often revert to being defensive in the latter case.
• Using emotions. I must admit that the fear of uncertainty has played a part in changing my opinions on military policy. And yet...
• Being emotionless. I find people far more persuasive when they stay calm and sound rational. So maybe the killer combination is to present an argument which provokes emotions in others of their own accord, whilst you remain seemingly aloof and dispassionate.
• Being an expert. Not exactly the same as an appeal to authority - the expert must exploit their knowledge (which they have, that's why they're called experts) to its full potential.
• Being present personally. Being a dude on the internet lacks credibility. 
• Time. Repeating the argument doesn't make any difference, I need time in which you just shut up and I go away and think. That's the best way for me to shut out the emotional aspect - but I am making a conscious effort to do this.
• Give me an excuse. Once I could see changing my point of view as being an improvement, rather than an admission of stupidity, it became much easier. This is particularly difficult in modern politics, where admitting you made a mistake is basically to declare, "I am now going to bathe in the blood of a virgin and then swim with the piranhas."
• Get me completely and utterly wasted. That usually works.

And what has not worked :

• Not presenting evidence, or in a counter-argument, not presenting an argument that directly refutes what has been stated. This just annoys me.
• Being diametrically opposed from the word go.
• Being a loud angry shouty person making overly-DRAMATIC !!!! claims. This method only works if you're Brian Blessed. No-one else should ever try this.
• Insults. If you have to resort to this, it doesn't really matter if you're right or wrong any more.
• A bad attitude. Even if you're correct, it doesn't help to behave as though you've already won and only an idiot could disagree with you. It just makes me think you think I'm an idiot.
• Humour. More accurately, inappropriate mockery - jokes need to contain a good argument. "Hah, aliens ! You've been watching too many movies" doesn't work. But, "Hah, as if aliens would come all this way to probe your sorry ass !" does.
• Excessive insistence. Maybe you're right, but I need time to digest what you've said. I rarely change my mind on anything instantly - if nothing else, fact-checking is important, especially in the internet age.

In short, explanations do matter. If you're convinced you're right, then fight the good fight, stay the course, present your evidence well and maybe you'll win. But also consider - just consider - the possibility that you're wrong. And remember your Sun-Tzu : fight the battles you can win. If you have good evidence that dark matter doesn't exist, you might win that one. If you want to persuade me that eating live kittens is a good idea, you'll be better off getting into a fist fight with a glacier.

Postscript

While all of the above conclusions still stand on a personal, individual level, recent events compel me to stress that this is not always true. This morning I witnessed on national television one politician proclaiming, with gleeful sincerity, that Britain was heading for the "sunny uplands" of Brexit, and another, with a straight face, that we was setting his personal ambitions aside in his bid to rule the country. This at a time when the economy is being clobbered, we look like a laughing stock even to our closest allies, and hate crime is rising. We have a still-wealthy, relatively powerful country and an extremely disenfranchised populace who seem to think that a xenophobic bigot is better than any mainstream politician. This is an extremely dangerous position, yet some people would still be singing and dancing even if they knowingly walked off the edge of a cliff.

Maybe Brexit is something I'm wrong about. Maybe Britain will somehow enter a magical golden age of pixies and leprechauns . It won't, but nothing would please me more than to be proved wrong about this and add it to the list. Whether or not rational thought will ultimately prevail, or my conclusions have to be significantly updated to account for bullshitting (or maybe the conclusions still hold true for me but aren't generally applicable), is something that only time will tell.

Ask An Astronomer Anything At All About Astronomy (XI)

For some reason last week's post got a lot of attention, so this became a busy week. Find the complete list on the Q&A page.

1) Were there larger stars in the distant past ?
Yes.

2) Were there larger planets in the distant past ?
No.

3) Have we detected aliens ?
No.

4) Why shouldn't we assume mysterious signals are aliens ?
Because we don't know what alien signals would look like.

5) Why are we assuming aliens would communicate using technologies we can detect ?
The clue is in the question.

6) How come I can see Polaris all year round ?
Geometry.

7) Is the expansion of the Universe really like a balloon ?
Ish.

8) Do gravitational waves cause winds in space ?
No.

9) Will the collision of the Milky Way and Andromeda cause dangerous gravitational waves ?
No.

10) Was Praxis, the Klingon moon, destroyed by a gravitational wave ?
No.

11) Why do different planets move at different speeds ?
A wizard did it.

The Value Of Nothing

Or, What's The Point Of Knowing Useless Things ?

It's not the greatest movie ever made, but there is at least one valuable scene in Kingdom of Heaven :

We might, perhaps, say the same about knowledge. Not knowledge of any particular topic, but knowledge in general - and more than that, understanding and wisdom.

There are some who claim a monopoly on truth - that their theory trumps that of mainstream science and that conventional research is nothing but a waste. They utterly fail to understand that progress without disagreement, without permitting and encouraging the exploration of the other point of view, is impossible. Worse, they insist that anyone who disagrees with them must be a closed-minded fool, and fail to appreciate the massive irony of the situation since their own theory has produced no tangible consequences whatsoever. That their precious idea might be dismissed by so many people because it is simply wrong never enters their darkest dreams.

I have dealt with such notions at great length here, here, here, here, here and also here. This post is a bit different. I'm not going to look at why people are wrong to assume science is dogmatic. Instead I'm going to look at a particular and very widespread type of dogmatic thinking and its consequences.

There are those who believe that we should concentrate only on researching specific topics : tackling climate change, curing cancer, superconductivity... things with obvious, immediate and above all practical benefits. Who cares about some distant galaxy ? What possible use is knowledge of the mating habits of flamingos ? One of my grandmothers couldn't see the point in spending so much money on the Cassini mission. Even my own mother, who in most other respects I will proudly defend as one of the wisest individuals you could ever hope to meet, doesn't think we should bother with space colonization "until we've solved the problems on this planet".

Well mum, I hope you're reading.


Spin-offs

Technologies which do have direct social benefits are by far the easiest way of selling the value of pure, blue-skies research. Unexpected developments certainly do happen, and the consequences can be literally unimaginable until they actually occur. You're reading this thanks to the internet, partially developed during research into particle physics. Twenty years ago the net was mediocre at best. Today, it's probably impossible to calculate its contribution to the global economy, let alone the societal changes it's brought about. Think about that next time you want to say, "this research can't possibly produce anything useful". You're not psychic, you twerp.

Sometimes, science does not so much improve the economy (though it certainly does do that) as it does transform it out of all recognition. Can you imagine the world without modern medicine, electricity, fertilizers, disinfectants, mass transit, or telecommunications ? It would be, in that famous phrase, nasty brutish and short.

And yet in part because people fail to think statistically and take the long view, there is a belief that "chemicals" are bad for you, that anything "natural" is more beneficial... a damn stupid idea that takes all of three seconds to disprove.

Snake therapy : because acupuncture is too mainstream.

But I digress. Sorry. Anyway, while it's true that not all major technological breakthroughs have occurred as spin-offs from pure research, many have. Many that have occurred through more deliberate projects have still relied on theory developed through pure research. Even the value of spin-off discoveries from scientific endeavours is impossible to calculate - yes, even from the space program we should apparently ignore until we've solved everything down here.

It is true that for poor counties, developing a space program should hardly be their first priority - just as it might not have been sensible for them to have developed programs of world exploration back in the Middle Ages. But for those who can afford it, the riches up for grabs are almost literally beyond imagining.

Leaving aside the highly dubious issue of whether we can or will ever solve all the social problems here on Earth, space exploration is a means to improving life here on Earth - not an excuse to avoid its difficulties.


No, don't do that research ! Do this research instead !

OK, maybe the method of spin-offs isn't the most efficient method possible of making those practical technologies. This is very hard to prove. We already have - indeed have always had - a mixture of public and private research, sometimes focused on practical goals and sometimes on blue skies projects. But because of the interplay between the theoretical development (which is largely the province of pure research) and the practical development (which is often done by companies) it's extremely hard to judge if things could be made more efficient or not.

The problem with the idea that we should only focus on  "important, practical" research is that I have neither the interest nor the ability to solve medical problems. Non-scientists sometimes seem to think that "science" is some generic discipline, and that if you can do one sort of science you can do another. This is like saying that if you can row a boat, you can drive a Formula One racing car - or that you'd want to drive a Formula One racing car.

Medical problems bore me. Chemical reactions are incredibly tedious. Atmospheric physics leaves me cold. And to be honest, there are even huge sections of astronomy that leave me yawning. I'm just not interested in them, and I'm not going to become interested in them just because someone else thinks they're important. They are important, but that doesn't mean I want to research them any more than it means I want to become a pilot, an ambulance driver, a fireman or a policeman or any of the other very important professions available. We all have the right to pursue happiness.

(And while we're at it, how often do you see astronomers saying, "You mid-level accountants should stop being accountants and concentrate on fighting cancer ?")

So if all you're interested in is the economics, you can stop reading. Science's contribution to the economy cannot be overestimated. Prioritising specific areas of research is an incredibly arrogant approach, because you cannot possibly know which area will generate an unpredictable spin-off or discovery that might be important elsewhere. And sometimes those spin-offs, like the internet, are quite literally invaluable.

But while the technological benefits of science are innumerable, there are other reasons for pure research which are harder to sell but, perhaps, even more important. The great Arabic philosopher Al-Biruni summarised it thus :

"The stubborn critic would say : 'What is the benefit of these sciences ?' He does not know the virtue that distinguishes mankind from all the animals : it is knowledge, in general, which is pursued solely by man, and which is pursued for the sake of knowledge itself, because its acquisition is truly delightful, and is unlike the pleasures desirable from other pursuits. For the good cannot be brought forth, and evil cannot be avoided, except by knowledge. What benefit then is more vivid ? What use is more abundant ?”

Humility

If there's one inescapable lesson from astronomy, it's that we are small. No, not small. Pathetic.

Or rather, astronomy should be a humbling and character-building

experience. I, for one, can't stand character-building experiences.

Not just in space, but in time. Not only is our pale blue dot nothing more than a speck of dust, but we've inhabited it for only the briefest moment. To think - or rather, to be certain - that we are the pinnacle of creation or that the Universe was created especially and only for us is an act of monumental, breathtaking arrogance. To the Universe, were are nothing.

And yet while our total insignificance in the face of this vast, cool and unsympathetic cosmos demands our humility, and probably also means we shouldn't take life too seriously, it doesn't mean we have to cow down in fear or be stupefied into inaction.

So what's the value of astronomy ? Nothing ! Everything. If you don't think humility is an important lesson, then I can't help you.

So should we stop there ? We already know the Universe is unimaginably big and incomprehensibly old, what's the point of studying the boring details ? Well, we also know that most of the Universe is (most likely) made of a material about which we know almost nothing, we know an unknown force is driving its expansion, there are places in the Universe where time stands still, where mountains can't grow a millimetre high because the gravity is so strong, planets where it rains sulphuric acid and moons that tear themselves inside-out, we suspect that ours is not the only Universe and there might, just might, be connections between other realities, and we have absolutely no clue if we're alone in all this or if there are hordes of other intelligences waiting to be discovered. So, should be stop there ? Or shall we keep going, and find out how deep the rabbit hole goes ?

All we are is a kilo or so of warm blood-soaked goop sitting inside a skull. It is entirely possible that the true nature of the Universe is forever beyond our comprehension. But if we'd given up trying because the magnitude of the problem seemed too vast, we'd still be swinging through the trees.

To slightly modify an earlier quote of mine :

The thing is though, the real universe is full of giraffes, exploding stars, Scarlet Johannson, worlds covered in methane, pandas, stars so dense they slow down time, and cabbage. We can only survive in a minuscule region of space barely five miles thick, on top of a rock hurtling around an almost 100,000 mile-wide ball of plasma, and we think this is normal. Anyone who thinks astronomy is nothing but escapism should have their head shoved into a telescope until they realise just how dreadfully, pitiably small the so-called "real world" is.

Although teaching everyone to be humble, to step back and remember that they're just another stupid ape, is something an awful lot of people would do well to remember, there is perhaps another aspect of knowledge which is even more important. To really understand the value of knowledge, you must first be aware of the price of ignorance. But there is one final pragmatic concern I need to address first.


Won't someone please think of the children !

Specifically, the starving children. How, one might ask, can we afford to spend money on space probes when there are people dying of starvation in the world ? Is our "humility" really worth that much ? It's a legitimate question. I've already hinted at the answer, but just in case it isn't clear, let me spell it out more clearly.

First, research has produced the farming techniques which are so essential to modern life : fertilizers, pesticides, harvesting technologies, etc. Second, food production has been growing over time, and yet there are still starving people in the world. That alone proves that it isn't about prioritizing the wrong research or that money is being spent on the wrong areas - the problem of starvation is political. Science is responsible for generating greater food production, better medical care, and longer lifespans - bringing those benefits to everyone is the mandate of politicians, not that of researchers. Scientists are in no more a position to affect political change than anyone else.

And again, how many astronomers do you see saying, "You mid-level accountants are just a waste of resources and we should give all your money to starving children" ?

Thirdly, the specific charge that money is being "wasted" on frivolous research like geological and space exploration. Yes, in principle, you could stop spending money on rockets and spend it on food instead. But it makes no sense to pick on astronomers or geologists. Neither are particularly well-paid (except possibly privately-funded geologists who discover oil or valuable minerals). And the cost of the space program, even in America, is utterly dwarfed by other costs :

America spends less than $20 billion on NASA annually, but over $600 billion on defence. What's more sensible - scrapping NASA completely, or "slashing" the defence budget by 3% ? Privately, Americans spend more on tobacco, alcohol, illegal drugs, treatment for all those drugs, gambling, and even pizza than they do on space - and this is by far the largest space program in the world. Anyone who's genuinely concerned to solve social problems would do far better to cut down on junk food, booze and drugs than scrap the technology-generating space program. That, at a stroke, would simultaneously prevent a lot of health problems and free up money for the needy.

So pure research with little or no obvious practical benefits costs very little, doesn't prevent us from solving more urgent problems, and in fact offers solutions to such problems provided we have the wit to use its unintended breakthroughs correctly. And it teaches us humility, cautions us against arrogance, and warns us that our most deeply-held views could be overturned at any moment. Perhaps most importantly of all, we should remember what happens in a world without such free-thinking inquiry.


The Demon-Haunted World

There are some mistaken beliefs about the medieval world that refuse to die - they never believed the Earth was flat, for example. They did think it was the centre of the Universe, but not because they believed it was the most important place. Actually it was partly tradition and partly a curious way of emphasising human mediocrity : neither close to heaven or hell, or as Terry Pratchett put it, "the place where the falling angel meets the rising ape."

Yet they did have some truly weird ideas. They didn't believe in parabolic trajectories : they thought that arrows kept going in a straight line until they ran out of energy. They thought the equator was uncrossable because of a ring of fire around the world. And they also believed in evil spirits, witches, and demons.

Science is the means by which we exorcise this demon-haunted world, as Carl Sagan so eloquently put it. We have no fear of crossing the equator any more, or that lonely old women might turn us into frogs or eat our children. We aren't afraid of fairies or goblins or werewolves or dragons. We don't throw human faeces into the street and we don't try and bleed people when they're unwell, or drill holes in their heads, or give them something to bite on while we saw their legs off. And we don't enslave people on the grounds that they are sub-human.

It's a shame about the dragons though.

That is the price of ignorance, and it's a high one : a world of magic and miracles, rituals and superstition. When knowledge is not required, there is no check or limit on stupidity. Even in modern times, there is no limit on how stupid even very intelligent people can become - but the safeguard is that we no longer have a handful of intellectuals trying to solve problems, we've got thousands.

When you insist that something isn't worth knowing, you allow truth to be replaced with doctrine. "No, of course the other side of the world isn't inhabited, how could anyone have crossed the ring of fire at the equator ?" You don't know what the world is really like unless you check. The ancient Greeks didn't believe in atoms because the space between them would be a vacuum, which "obviously" couldn't exist. The truth is that there is absolutely no compunction for the Universe to be what a blood-soaked lump of goop thinks it should be.

You could say to the Universe, this is not fair. And the Universe would say, "Oh, isn't it ? Sorry." - Terry Pratchett, Interesting Times

If you think some piece of research is "obviously" wrong or useless without having studied it, you are a moron. You are here at the behest of the Universe, not the other way around. You do not know the truth because your intuition tells you it. You have the right to your opinion, but fortunately for the rest of us your opinion doesn't count for turnips unless you produce actual evidence.

Even when knowledge doesn't produce direct, tangible results, it can still bring great benefits. Knowing that earthquakes are natural phenomena hasn't helped us predict them yet, but we no longer fear them as the will of the gods. We aren't sacrificing people any more whenever catastrophes threaten. Sometimes, knowing what doesn't work is at least as valuable as knowing what does.

This, then, is the value of knowledge for knowledge's sake : preventing ignorance and all its terrible consequences. Knowledge isn't a an impenetrable shield against fear, because humans are irrational, but it's is a pretty effective one nonetheless - and a damn sight better than the alternative.


Clarity Without Certainty

"Knowledge" is a loaded term. Actually what it's really all about is not knowing facts, but thinking. Simply thinking. "I think this is true" rather than, "I know this is true". Knowing facts is only the beginning - being able to derive Maxwell's equations in your sleep won't help you one bit to be compassionate. But it is a vital first step. Facts lead to models about how the Universe works, allowing you to make predictions and therefore the really interesting part : choices.

I recently attempted to explain to someone that science doesn't claim a monopoly on truth, that it simply tries to get the best information available at the current time. They were quite unable to understand that science does not - almost all of the time - deal in certainties. It only deals with the most likely explanations given the available evidence. Emphasis on "most". Science can't tell you what the correct decision to make is, but it can help you (and only help you) make the best decision possible at the time.

Certainty can even be dangerous. Frank Herbert once wrote that, "Knowledge is the most perfect barrier against learning." Actually, it's certain knowledge. What science provides is not unchangeable knowledge, it's information. Without evidence to disprove it it's as unyielding as stone. With firm evidence against it melts away like... umm... butter ? Yeah. Slowly, and it's quite sticky, and some people would rather it didn't go at all, but ultimately it's gone.

There have been many martyrs who believed in the certainty of their cause. One of my long-standing heroes is Socrates, the philosopher who died not for knowledge but for the right to think, to question, to admit ignorance where it exists and not proclaim false certainty, in short - to doubt. Doubt, in moderation, is not a weakness - it is the most potent weapon available in the arsenal of human intelligence. It is the force that has taken us from an era in which we were certain that we should bleed people who were half-dead into one in which the only certainty is that we can create better and better treatments. It is the means by which we improve ourselves and the world around us.

And so I ask again : what is the value of learning useless information ? What worth is there in learning for the sake of learning ?

Because I Said So

No-one is immune to being irrational. From time to time, everyone - without exception - commits logical errors. Some of these are trickier to understand than others, and one of them made little real sense to me until yesterday. In the hope that this will help anyone else who's confused about it, here's my short interpretation of the "appeal to authority" fallacy.

Asking for an expert opinion is not a fallacy in and of itself, but there are several ways in which it can become a fallacy :

1) They're not really an expert
Asking an expert for their opinion about something well outside their specialist field (sciolism). Stephen Hawking isn't especially qualified to talk about global warming, Richard Dawkins doesn't know jack about theology, and generally speaking engineers know nothing about flower arranging. You can certainly feel free to ask their opinion anyway, but there's not really any good reason to give Hawking's opinion on genetic engineering any more weight than that of Boris Johnson. It's an easy mistake to make, and possibly the most common form of the fallacy.

2) They're not an authority
If you want to build an aircraft, you hire an engineer, not a florist. When someone has a proven track record of successfully building aircraft, it makes sense to consider them to be both an expert and an authority on their subject. Engineers might not be correct 100% of the time, but they are vastly more reliable in their knowledge of what works and what doesn't than a team of a thousand florists.

But there's a difference between expertise and authority, especially when it comes to active research. Aircraft design is an incredibly well-tested and proven field. Meteorologists, on the other hand, make mistakes about tomorrow's weather all the time - there are no authority figures in meteorology. Of course, there are experts, and their opinions still count for more than those of pigeon fanciers. It's just that you can't use the opinion of a meteorologist to be certain of tomorrow's weather in the same way you can use an engineer's opinion as to whether a plane will be able to fly. An engineer can give you something close enough to certainty, a meteorologist deals in probabilities.

3) Because I said so
This seems to be the way the fallacy is most often stated but also explained the most badly. If you ask an expert for an opinion and they say, "well, I'm an expert, so I must be right", then they have committed a serious error. Their expertise doesn't by itself guarantee that they are correct. What their expertise should be able to do is allow them to rigorously justify their assertion - it does not entitle them to make sweeping claims based solely on their expert status and have everyone else kowtow to their infinite wisdom.

EDIT : Long after I originally posted this, I encountered a curious phenomena which may explain why people make the above error. It seems they sometimes confuse being asked (in good faith) for a demonstration of their expertise with having their expertise questioned. Of course no-one is obligated to participate in all debates, but when they choose to do so they should be careful to try and understand if someone is just trying to learn something or is using this as a veil for an attack.

Sometimes the experts themselves do this, worst of all when it's from one expert to another. Sometimes it's laymen looking to justify their own argument. "Well, this astronomer told me that the Moon isn't made of cheese, so it can't be." If the explanation stops there, then technically this is a fallacy. It amounts to saying, "I know this isn't true, so it can't be true" (or even more succinctly, "I must be right") which is obviously circular and doesn't even admit the possibility of error.

If, on the other hand, the explanation continues : "They said they measured the spectrum of the Moon and found it was inconsistent with that of any known cheese and actually is pretty similar to rocks, and I think they mentioned something about some sample return mission thingy..." then no fallacy has been committed. The astronomer has used their expert knowledge to rule out the Lunar Cheese Hypothesis, not relied on their status as an expert to quash the discussion.


The Appeal To Stupidity

On the other extreme, I also see people claiming the exact opposite : "they're an expert, so they must be wrong." Well, almost. The "I'm not a scientist, but..." defence is the idea that non-expert opinion can trump that of an expert in their own specialist field. Reality check time : unless that expert is exceptionally biased or has made a terrible mistake, it can't. True, experts might be wrong, and make mistakes just like anyone else. But though not infallible, they are far more likely to be right than any non-expert. That is, after all, their job. It's why we have them. There are cases where it is absurd to give equal weight to non-expert opinions.

So I rather disagree with the above meme, provisionally. There are some areas in which not being an expert does automatically make your point invalid. So you think you can build a rocket, and your qualification is, what... a degree specialising in Mesopotamian art ? You literally can't do basic arithmetic ? Then nope, sorry, your opinion is invalid. Of course there are areas in which intelligent non-experts can make valuable contributions and sometimes outdo the specialists, but sometimes it really is appropriate to dismiss non-expert opinions. It depends heavily on the details of the situation.


Summary

The "appeal to authority" argument, then, is somewhat subtle. When a subject is so well-established that there are figures who can be considered authorities, it's not a fallacy... as long as they're speaking about their specialist area. If the subject is controversial, then you should still give more weight to expert opinion, but you can't rely on one expert to be correct. This is especially true when the expert refuses to explain their reasoning. Being an expert is supposed to enable you to reason, not entitle you to pronounce judgement.

The "appeal to the consensus" argument is only a fallacy when experts do it in their own discipline. This creates a false consensus : it must be right because everyone else agrees with it, whereas a true consensus should be everyone coming to the same conclusion independently. Assuming the consensus has been arrived at properly, it's not a fallacy for non-experts to place more weight in the expert consensus than the opinions of non-experts - but it is usually wrong to assume it's 100% certain.

The "appeal to stupidity" argument is however very much worse than appeals to authority or the consensus. That experts are fallible in no way means that non-experts are somehow magically able to skip years of hard work. This doesn't mean that experts can use the "because I said so" fallacy to avoid discussing why they've come to their conclusions. Nor does it mean that when they take the time to explain the details to an intelligent non-expert, they can dismiss their opinion out of hand. It only means that if it's a choice between the opinion of an expert and an uninformed non-expert, the latter really is an appeal to stupidity.