Fact blindness

[Spoiler alert!  This post contains spoilers for the most recent Doctor Who episode, "Lucky Day."  If you're planning on watching it and would prefer not to know about the episode's plot, watch it first -- but don't forget to come back and read this.]

In his book The Magician's Nephew, C. S. Lewis writes the trenchant line, "The trouble with trying to make yourself stupider than you actually are is that you usually succeed."

In one sentence, this sums up the problem I have with cynics.  Cynicism is often glorified, and considered a sign of intelligence -- cynics, so the argument goes, have "seen through" the stuff that has the rest of us hoodwinked.  It's a spectrum, they say, with gullibility (really dumb) on one end and cynicism (by analogy, really smart) on the other.

In reality, of course, cynicism is no better than gullibility.  I wouldn't go so far as to call either one "dumb" -- there are a lot of reasons people fall into both traps -- but they're both equally lazy.  It's just as bad to disbelieve and dismiss everything without thought as it is to believe and accept everything without thought.

The difficulty is that skepticism -- careful consideration of the facts before either believing or disbelieving a claim -- is hard work, so both gullibility and cynicism can easily become habits.  In my experience, though, cynicism is the more dangerous, because in this culture it's become attractive.  It's considered edgy, clever, tough, a sign of intelligence, of being a hard-edged maverick who isn't going to get taken advantage of.  How often do you hear people say things like "the media is one hundred percent lies" and "all government officials are corrupt" and even "I hate all people," as if these were stances to be proud of?

I called them "traps" earlier, because once you have landed in that jaundiced place of not trusting anything or anyone, it's damn hard to get out of.  After that, even being presented with facts may not help; as the old saw goes, "You can't logic your way out of a position you didn't logic your way into."  Which brings us to the most recent episode of Doctor Who -- the deeply disturbing "Lucky Day."

The episode revolves around the character of Conrad Clark (played to the hilt by Jonah Hauer-King), a podcast host who has become obsessed with the Doctor and with UNIT, the agency tasked with managing the ongoing alien incursions on Earth.  Conrad's laser focus on UNIT, it turns out -- in a twist I did not see coming -- isn't because he is supportive of what they do, but because he disbelieves it.

To Conrad, it's all lies.  There are no aliens, no spaceships, no extraterrestrial technology, and most critically, no threat.  It's all been made up to siphon off tax money to enrich the ones who are in on the con.  And he is willing to do anything -- betray the kindness and trust of Ruby, who was the Doctor's confidant; threaten UNIT members who stand in his way; even attempt to murder his friend and helper Jordan who allowed him to infiltrate UNIT headquarters -- in order to prove all that to the world.

It's a sharp-edged indictment of today's click-hungry podcasters and talk show celebrities, like Joe Rogan, Alex Jones, and Tucker Carlson, who promote conspiracies with little apparent regard for whom it harms -- and how hard it can be to tell if they themselves are True Believers or are just cold, calculating, and in it for the fame and money.  (And it's wryly funny that in the story, it's the people who disbelieve in aliens who are the delusional conspiracy theorists.)

The part that struck me the most was at the climax of the story, when Conrad has forced his way into UNIT's Command Central, and has UNIT's redoubtable leader, Kate Lethbridge-Stewart, held at gunpoint.  Kate releases an alien monster not only to prove to Conrad she and the others have been telling the truth all along, but to force his hand -- to make him "fish or cut bait," as my dad used to say -- and finally, finally, when the monster has Conrad pinned to the floor and is about to bite his face off, he admits he was wrong.  Ruby tases the monster (and, to Conrad's reluctant "thank you," tells him to go to hell -- go Ruby!).

But then, as he stands up and dusts himself off, he looks down at the monster and sneeringly says, "Well, at least your props and costumes are getting better."  And the monster suddenly lurches up and bites his arm off.

That's the problem, isn't it?  Once you've decided to form your beliefs irrespective of facts and logic, no facts or logic can ever make you budge from that position.

The world is a strange, chaotic place, filled with a vast range of good and bad, truth and lies, hard facts and fantasy, and everything in between.  If we want to truly understand just about anything we can't start out from a standpoint either of gullible belief or cynical disbelief.  Yes, teasing apart what's real from what's not can be exhausting, especially in human affairs, where motives of greed, power, and bigotry can so often twist matters into knots.  But if, as I hope, your intent is to arrive at the truth and not at some satisfying falsehood that lines up with what you already believed, it's really the only option.

I'm reminded of another passage from Lewis, this one from the end of his novel The Last Battle.  In it, the main characters and a group of Dwarves, led by one Diggle, have been taken captive and held in a dark, filthy stable.  All around them, the world is coming to an end; the stable finally collapses to reveal that they've all been transported to a paradisiacal land, and that the dire danger is, miraculously, over.  But the Dwarves, who had decided that everyone -- both the Good Guys and the Bad Guys -- were lying to them, still can't believe it, to the extent that they're certain they're still imprisoned:

"Are you blind?" said Tirian.

"Ain't we all blind in the dark?" said Diggle.

"But it isn't dark!" said Lucy.  "Can't you see?  Look up!  Look round!  Can't you see the sky and the tree and the flowers?  Can't you see me?"

"How in the name of all humbug can I see what ain't there?  And how can I see you any more than you can see me in this pitch darkness?"

Further attempts to prove it to them meet with zero success.  They've become so cynical even the evidence of their own eyes and ears doesn't help.  At that point, they are -- literally, in the context of the story -- fact blind.  Finally Diggle snarls:

"How can you go on talking all that rot?  Your wonderful Lion didn't come and help you, did he?  Thought not.  And now -- even now -- when you've been beaten and shoved into this black hole, just the same as the rest of us, you're still at your old game.  Starting a new lie.  Trying to make us believe we're none of us shut up, and it ain't dark, and heaven knows what."

Ultimately Lucy and Tirian and the others have to give up; nothing they can say or do has any effect.  Aslan (the lion referenced in the above passage) sums it up as follows:

"They will not let us help them.  They have chosen cunning instead of understanding.  Their prison is only in their own minds, yet, they are in that prison; and so afraid of being taken in that they can not be taken out."

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The problem with cynics

A man I know is one of the most cynical people I've ever met.

He said to me on more than one occasion, "I hate people."  Despite the fact that the designation "people" includes his wife, children, the person he was talking to at the time (me)... and himself.  He distrusts just about everyone, badmouths them incessantly behind their backs, and in his business micromanages everything to a fare-thee-well.  As a result, he's lost customers, his staff might as well be processed through a revolving door, and has developed a well-deserved reputation in the industry as someone to be avoided both by potential clients and by employees.

His cynicism has, in fact, become his reality.

[Image credit: Andy Lendzion]

It's an awfully common phenomenon.  My own mom was a fearful, suspicious person who thought the world was a deeply dangerous place, full of people waiting to take advantage of you, or even hurt you or kill you.  While watching television she gravitated toward "true crime" shows -- Cops and CSI, that sort of thing -- which of course show you the seediest, most violent slices of humanity.  This further reinforced her opinion about the horrible risks of stepping outside your own front door.  I'll never forget the last phone call between us before I left on a month-long walking tour of the north of England, my first-ever trip overseas, when I was about thirty years old.  I was ridiculously excited about it, but she was full of cautions about all the terrible things that could, and probably would, happen to me.

Her final words to me before we hung up were, "Remember, don't trust anyone."

In England.  I mean, for cryin' in the sink, it wasn't like I was going to Turkmenistan or North Korea or something.

And, of course, I had a perfectly lovely time, met some wonderful people (several of whom are still friends, three decades later), and told her so when I got back.  Didn't change her outlook; her attitude seems to have been that I'd simply gotten lucky, and don't count on it happening ever again.

It's not that I'm immune to this sort of thinking myself.  I've written Skeptophilia for over twelve years, and the focus is frequently on pseudoscience.  I've had to be on guard to stop my attitude going from "this person believes this particular piece of pseudoscientific rubbish" to "wow, everyone is really dumb."  It's why I try to split my posts between pseudoscience and actual science; to say "look at the amazing things the human mind can achieve" at least as often as I say "look at where we've stumbled."

I used to tell my Critical Thinking students something that I still believe to this day is an essential truth: cynicism is as inaccurate as, and as lazy as, gullibility.  We laugh at gullible people, call them fools, stooges, suckers, chumps, and a variety of other unflattering names.  But there's nothing inherently smarter about disbelieving everything.  Both gullibility and cynicism are excuses to stop thinking, to avoid doing the hard work of evaluating the facts and evidence and coming to a justified conclusion.

And yet, cynics have acquired an undeserved air of erudition and wisdom, as if they're the only ones smart enough to have "seen through" everyone.  People are stupid and/or evil, the world sucks, everyone is dishonest, the government is hopelessly and thoroughly corrupt.  End of story.  No need to think about it any further than that.

The problem is, the actual facts and evidence don't support that conclusion at all.

The topic comes up because I'm currently reading Jamil Zaki's wonderful book Hope for Cynics: The Surprising Science of Human Goodness, which I heard about through the amazing podcast Hidden Brain a few weeks ago, and which should be required reading.  Zaki's point, which he supports with tons of data from his own studies and those of other psychologists, is that not only is the default condition of humanity to be cooperative, kind, and compassionate, but that trusting others usually generates trust in return.  Companies where the bosses trust their employees to work hard, be creative, and collaborate are not only happier places, they're far more productive than autocratic, micromanaged, competitive, factory-model sweatshops.  Just like the examples I started with, of the nasty-tempered cynical business owner and my own frightened, suspicious mom, you create the reality you live in.  If you look for ugliness, you're sure to find it.

What we often ignore, though, is the deeper truth that if you look for goodness, you'll find that, too.  What we choose to cultivate in ourselves is what we ultimately find ourselves surrounded with.

Understand that I'm not recommending adopting a Panglossian attitude of "everything's for the best in the best of all possible worlds."  There is injustice, dishonesty, exploitation, bigotry, and true evil out there.  It's just that defaulting to "everything sucks" is not only incorrect, it's lazy -- and it gives us a convenient excuse not to work toward fixing what is wrong about our society.  Part of the problem, of course, is media; we're fed a continuous diet of bad news because it keeps our attention.  (There's a reason it's called "doomscrolling.")  As just one of many examples in Zaki's book, how many of you have accepted without question that violent crime in the United States is escalating?  It's a major talking point, especially by one particular political party, and we accept it because it fits our mental model that everything is going to hell.

In fact, violent crime in the United States has fallen drastically in the last five years, with overall totals declining in 54 of the 69 largest cities, and rates for certain categories of crime going down between twelve and twenty percent.

But that fits neither with the political agenda -- "you're in danger" drives people to the polls, so they can vote for the person who says they can fix what they just now made you scared of -- nor with our self-congratulatory sense that maybe some people are stupid enough to get fooled by pollyanna-ish optimists, but at least we are smart and well-informed and admit the harsh reality.

Zaki points out, and I wholeheartedly agree, that the best approach is to split the difference between cynicism and gullibility.  Neither trust everyone immediately nor reject everyone out of hand; base your opinions, and your actions, on facts.  (And, it must be said, don't determine your "facts" with a three-minute Google search to locate a couple of websites that agree with what you already believed.)  It's better to default to trust than to suspicion -- and, significantly, you're no more likely to be wrong if you do so.  One of the more surprising studies in Zaki's book is about whether cynical people are better at recognizing when they're being lied to.  Since they're inherently suspicious, you'd think so, wouldn't you?  It turns out that both cynical and gullible people are bad at discerning liars from truth-tellers.  It's the skeptics -- the ones who base their answers on careful consideration of what the person actually said -- who score the best.

All in all, cynicism not only poisons your own joy, it feeds you an inaccurate view of the world.  And, like the people I started with, it creates a small, mean, toxic world in reality, which reinforces the cynic that they were right all along.  It's like the quote by Ken Keyes: "A loving person lives in a loving world.  A hostile person lives in a hostile world.  Everyone you meet is your mirror."

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