The Power Of Sincerity
Coming up later today is a post about the misuse of skepticism (and, yes, I know this is the American spelling but it’s one of the words I’ve compromised on despite the fact I get a red wiggly underline every time I type it) and this is a good opportunity to highlight one of the many traps for the critical thinker.
I find that when someone genuinely believes something to be true, regardless of how illogical it is, I have a strong in-built urge to believe them. It’s almost like we have bullshit detectors that are heavily biased toward genuineness over prior experience or reasonable explanation. I suspect it’s probably somehow tied to the way in which our mirror neurons work.
When a magician performs a trick with a wink and a nod we don’t feel too tempted to believe that he really used magic to make the card appear but when the magician (or conjurer or faith healer or neurotic FBI target or wild-eyed prophet) genuinely believes in what they are saying I personally find that it takes a lot more effort to apply logic to the situation. Perhaps this is because I not only have to come up with a reasonable explanation for their claims but also a reasonable explanation for why they believe their claims. And I have a bullshit detector which has a default setting of “impassioned claims are true”.
Tags: sincerity, Skepticism
While many believers in homeopathy, miracles, etc. are quite sincere, some most certainly are not. These charlatans have the ability to make us think that they believe, to make us feel their sincerity when it is quite calculated and not at all genuine. That means that at the root of some percentage of beliefs by sincere believers (wouldn’t it be interesting to know just what percent!) are the beliefs imparted by calculating charlatans.
That said, I agree with you. I think we have a strong predisposition to believe what we think others believe, and I think the disposition is necessary and for the most part, beneficial. It’s at the root of how we learn from our parents, and then later how we learn from our colleagues. It’s how we can gain knowledge over generations as a species. The extreme alternative would be that each person would have to discover first-hand everything he knows.
Yes, we probably wouldn’t have made it this far if infants were born skeptics! I have to say, though, that children are very capable of developing a good, skeptical mind over time and will often question things that we take for granted. I’ve often thought that the best way for a society to dig its way out of wrong-headed thinking is to simply teach children how to question.