One of my favorite quotes, which I've used
in my writing, comes from the former publisher
of The New York Times who said, "I'd like
to keep an open mind, but not so open that
my brains fall out."
And that's the key point.
We have to skeptically assess the information
we receive, we can't be gullible because when
we get a lot of information it's absolutely
certain that some of that information is wrong
and so we have to always filter what we get
and we have to ask ourselves the following
question: how open does my brain have to be
to accept that information?
Does it have to fall out?
And by that I mean, when someone tells you
something you have to ask: is this consistent
with my experience?
Is it consistent with the experience of other
people around me?
And if it isn't then probably there's a good
reason to be skeptical about it—it's probably
wrong.
If it makes predictions that also appear to
be in disagreement with things that you observe
around you, you should question it.
And so we should never take anything on faith.
That's really the mantra of science, if you
want, that faith is the enemy of science.
We often talk about a loss of faith in the
world today; you don't lose anything by losing
faith.
What you gain is reality.
And so skepticism plays a key role in science
simply because we also are hardwired to want
to believe, we're hardwired to want to find
reasons for things.
In the savanna in Africa, the trees could
be rustling and you could choose to say, 'Well
there's no reason for that,' or, 'Maybe it's
due to a lion.'
And those individuals who thought there might
be no reason never lived long enough to survive
to procreate, and so it's not too surprising
we want to find explanations for everything
and we create them if we need to, to satisfy
ourselves, because we need to make sense of
the world around us.
And what we have to understand is, what makes
sense to the universe is not the same as what
makes sense to us and we can't impose our
beliefs on the universe.
And the way we get around that inherent bias
is by constantly questioning both ourselves
and all the information we receive from others.
That's what we do in science and it works
beautifully in the real world as well.
When you're presented with questions or answers
about any problem there are a few questions
you can ask yourself, that you should ask
yourself right away.
First of all, you can ask yourself, 'Do I
like this answer?'
And if you do you should be suspicious because
you're much more likely to accept something
that appeals to you whether it's right or
not.
So if you inherently like something in some
sense that's a reason to be almost more suspicious
of it, if you're a scientist.
But then you can ask the question, when you're
presented with information, is that information
consistent with what I know already based
on data I've taken about the world around
me?
And by data, it's not just scientists.
If you're a child—all children do this—you
put your hand in a flame, okay, the second
time you know not to because you have the
data that it hurt the first time.
And if someone that tells you, 'That flame
isn't going to hurt,' you have the data to
assess that that's probably wrong.
So you want to ask yourself: is that information
consistent with what I know to be true already?
And the other thing to do, especially if you
get information from a source you don't know,
is to look at many different sources and compare
them and see if they all agree.
If they all agree it doesn't guarantee it's
right but if there's vast disagreement between
the different sources then it's highly likely
that you can't at least rely on that information
to be true.
It's the same way science works: science doesn't
prove what's absolutely true, what it does
is prove what's absolutely false.
What doesn't satisfy the test or experiment
we throw out.
What remains may not be true but we shrink
it down, as Sherlock Holmes would say, and
what remains after all of that is done is
likely to be true.
So many sources, question what you see and
whether it's consistent with what you already
know, and be suspicious of your own likes
and dislikes when you accept information.
That's probably the reason we shouldn't, when
we turn it to the Internet, go to echo chambers
and just read the sources that we like.
Now having said that, if you look at many
sources you could also quickly decide which
ones are not reliable and throw them out.
If they're not reliable in one case then you
should be highly suspicious of them in the
future.
So we all turn to different sources that we
think are more or less reliable based on our
past experience.
Try that and I think it's one great way to
filter out a lot of the nonsense on the Internet.When
I talk about being skeptical it is important
to recognize that you could be surprised and
something that you don't think is sensible
can end up being a sensible.
That's the way we learn things in physics.
So when someone presents you with an idea
that may seem strange it's reasonable to be
skeptical of it, but it's worth pursuing long
enough to see if it might make sense and to
listen to arguments that might be convincing
that might cause you to change your mind.
In fact there's a great school of pedagogy
that says: the only way we actually learn
anything is by confronting our own misconceptions.
So once again, while it's reasonable to be
skeptical of external information, if you're
always skeptical of your response to information
and what your misconceptions are and what
your prejudices are, then you will both guide
yourself not to accept nonsense but also you
will be willing to realize that sometimes
what you think is skepticism is really myopia.
