People are psychologically wired to trust confidence. I was struck by this again as Donald Trump labeled himself more innocent than Mother Theresa (also a dubious claim) following his indictment, a comically defiant posture in the face of the obvious truth. Writer Steven Pressfield worried about the lack of intellectual shame people show in debates these days, but I would call it a lack of epistemic humility. That it can seem preferable to be confidently incorrect rather than admitting to our vast ignorance is a problem.
Nor is it a new one. The French revolution was watched in equal measures of horror and exultation from the conservative Tories and progressive Whigs (which quickly reversed into glee and disillusionment as the Terror gripped France). Conservative intellectuals worried for the civilizing force of the state, as outlined a century and a half earlier in Hobbes’ seminal Leviathan. Freshly booted from Paris, a French Jesuit called Augustine Barruel despised the “insatiable guillotine” of the revolutionaries, scornfully reminding them that “individuals pass and perish” and “the species alone survives, and is alone immortal.”
Meanwhile, a band of Christian intellectuals postulated an idea of human perfectibility, rooted in a concept of civilizational progress. We started, the story went, innocently in small tribes of blissful jejune - similar to the indigenous populations western colonialists were discovering all over the globe - before a painful fall into hierarchy and civilization. Certain there was more to progress than state-sponsored oppression, the revolutionists’ hopes for France were dashed as Napoleon’s military dictatorship took over.
During this cultural warring, a young philosopher called William Hazlitt saw no reason to side with either. The Tories and Whigs were turning into ideological positions, supported by parroting ideas in their service (“they count [their ideas] like rings on their fingers”). Philosophy had been cleaved from explorations of possibility into hardened doctrines of action. He urged everyone to show more humility. “Philosophers…should show a mystery,” he wrote.
If Hazlitt was complaining about the confident incorrectness dominating discourse at the turn of the 19th Century, he’d be disappointed to learn it has since ballooned. Worse, the rise of social media and proliferation of sheer opinion has buoyed half-truths and crooked mavens to the top of our cultural morass merely because they’re interesting. The speed and intransigence of information, combined with the algorithmic imperative for strong reactions has deadened mystery. Build a soapbox, then do whatever it takes to stay there because the soapbox, not the truth, is the point these days.
We have a name for what happens to us when we’re besotted by articulate, beautiful people; the Halo Effect. This, combined with a confident, compelling story that wraps the world up in a tight little bow is basically informational catnip for humans. Confidence is particularly good at fooling us. Research has showed how politicians are punished for expressing uncertainty; changing their minds or admitting the world is more complex than they thought is anathema to our popular idea of a true leader. Humans crave guidance, someone who can tell us things will be alright.
This wouldn’t be a problem if people like that actually existed. Sadly, such infallible people exist only in mythology as gods, prophets or apocryphal wise elders. Here on earth, we have to deal with limitations. One example of how we deal with our limitations is the scientific method, which circumvents our individual ignorance by relying on consensus and replication. To paraphrase a cinematic legend, we know nothing. Truth is always provisional, always fragile. Hazlitt’s humility was a rare, quiet exception during the revolutionary tumult - and since, as intelligent, morally certain people have been wrong time and time again.
Our palpable disillusionment with our institutions is in part due to this fact of fallibility. Faced with the chaos of uncertainty, it’s no surprise we latch on to a story that integrates our fears and smooths out any existential creases. But these wrinkles have a way of reforming. In an increasingly fragmented political landscape, when we fail to learn the underlying lesson Hazlitt crystallized two centuries ago, the epistemic humility that rocked the Tories and Whigs will rock us again in turn. We could all stand to be a little less certain, a little more conciliatory. Our final words come from an unlikely source, billionaire Mark Cuban. “Strong opinions, lightly held,” he said. We’ve plenty of the former; it’s the latter we need to take seriously.
You Should Read This
Jonathon Haidt is getting a lot of hot press at the moment about his recent polemic against social media for children, The Anxious Generation, I’m recommending his previous book here. The Coddling of the American Mind, with co-author Greg Lukianoff, was written after waves of protests on University campuses from around 2014 - a time which just so happened to coincide with social media finding its way onto our phones. Haidt and Lukianoff locate much of the modern intolerance for different viewpoints with the way my generation, milennials, were bought up in conjunction with how social media encourages us to behave at one another.
