Against Skepticism
American kids are raised to be independent. Their teachers and parents take pride in showing them how to think for themselves. “Don’t believe everything you read,” they say, “go and find out for yourself.”
In some situations, this is great advice. For instance, you shouldn’t read about love or skateboarding or whether somebody is nice. Those things you should find out for yourself. But what about, say, my current soapbox issue, global warming? To find out about that, I’d need a lab, a serious science education, and a good chunk of uninterrupted research time.
You might ask why I’d need all that. Can’t I just pay attention to what’s going on around me, and use my common sense? It’s chilly today. I live on the coast, and my town hasn’t flooded. There’s probably nothing to worry about.
But common sense doesn’t really cut it here, because the world doesn’t obey the laws of common sense. For instance, lots of early-stage cancers are asymptomatic. That’s why people go to the doctor for checkups, even if they feel fine. If one of your tests came back positive, wouldn’t you pay attention?
Try as we might, we can’t find out everything in the world for ourselves. Our parents lied to us a little; there’s just too much stuff for us to know it all. All we can do is find out as much as we can, and then trust someone else for the rest. It’s difficult to choose who to trust. Louis Menand had an interesting article a few years ago about how we make those choices. He said we choose our leaders, not by their policies, but by certain signals they send us about the kind of people they’re likely to be. This doesn’t mean we’re stupid or simplistic. It just means we can’t all spend our lives on politics, so we develop an internal system for deciding between the various people who can. We use the system for other areas too, for medicine, for science, and even for religion. I would argue that we all use this system every day, without noticing it. And I’m not the first to say so.
That’s why I don’t believe in skepticism, at least not the kind that says, “I’ll find it all out for myself.” I don’t think this kind of skeptic is likely to make better decisions than the rest of us. If anything, the people who make the best choices will be the best trusters — the ones who consistently trust the right people. We’re all an expert on something, but greatness lies in the ability to tell who’s the expert on what.