High school English class universally dictates that the first sentence of any essay should be something to grab the readers’ attention. While the difference between the words “there, their, and they’re” is knowledge largely lost to time, English teachers are otherwise instinctively pre-disposed to emphasizing the importance of that initial attention getter in formal writing. I suppose the idea is that if something is worth writing, then surely it must be worth reading as well, yes? We are all entitled to our own analysis of our observations and making our own conclusions about the world around us. If something should strike us as profound enough to merit being written down, then absolutely others should be able to appreciate the profoundness themselves. After all, scientia potentia est – as Sir Francis Bacon so eloquently proclaimed… or was it Thomas Hobbes? I suppose only some people can really be sure.
Per my graduate school educated analysis of the Wikipedia page regarding what we call “certainty”, skeptical evaluation of “truthiness” can be traced back to the ancient Greek philosophers. Plato perhaps initiated this debate in his discussion of personal distrust of the senses and their ability to perceive the “higher realm”, or truth of existence. Although the Stoics can also be awarded such an honor related to their discussion of acatalepsy and katalepsis; concepts that were widely philosophized by the initial skeptics as “unknowing” versus “knowing”, at the most rudimentary level. Stoics believed in katalepsis – or definite ability to comprehend, while the skeptics and Pyrrhonists endorsed the belief in acatalepsy – or impossibility to completely comprehend. To the former, certainty was achievable through our perceptions, whereas the latter believed certainty to be basically impossible.
Over 2000 years later, these concepts have somehow evolved to be simultaneously endorsed by many individuals that believe they have something profound to write down, and equally worthy of being read.
With all that being said, my certainty regarding the historicity and definitive accuracy of the above cliff notes lecture on the origins of certainty as a concept to be discussed is admittedly minimal. I’m no philosophy scholar, and I can only defer to those with more understanding on the subject to correct me. I am, however, a medical professional, and as of May 8th, 2020, the world is under siege by an almost certain medical crisis. Despite this, certainty is in short supply for even people like myself regarding the exact pathophysiology of the novel coronavirus. I would not dare attempt to insinuate otherwise. Unfortunately, those that have decided to devote themselves to a belief in simultaneous acatalepsy and katalepsis would like to convince us otherwise. They seem to have something especially profound to write down, record, or otherwise share with the public so that we can all be so certain with them, while also mentally masturbating over how skeptical we really are.
The butchering of such eloquent classical concepts aside, we have a clear issue regarding misinformation in this increasingly connected world of ours. “Fake news!” has practically become the subtitle for the 2010s (and its sequel). How two single syllable words could hold such power and variety of meaning to so many people is an incredible testament to where we are as a society in the current year. It’s a meme, a rallying cry, an excuse, and a significant platform basis all bundled together in a beautifully wrapped gift, with a tag reading “gotcha!”. It’s also a surprisingly comprehensive study on the twenty-five hundred year old debate regarding the absolute.
In the more abstract and straightforward definition, however, it is the summary of increasing distrust in sources that we rely on to get us closer to certainty. It is exactly as it’s written: news that is fake.
Unfortunately, we can’t just spend all of our time yelling at each other about who’s really lying to us all. Time will continue to forge on, and global pandemics will continue to do the same, regardless of our taking a moment to try and separate fact from fiction. Sure, let’s keep shouting I guess, but make sure to keep both eyes on the road at the same time – and roll the damn windows up too, for Christ’s sake.
Our hyperconnected state has allowed us to have what is essentially the sum of all human knowledge at our finger tips. It’s a cold plausibility of the world, however, that not everybody is equipped to comprehend every piece of that knowledge as an individual. They must rely on others to bridge the gaps for them, and with trust becoming such an increasingly scant resource, we’re able to abuse words like “skepticism” to the point of rendering them incomprehensible next to the photographs of what they used to be. We are all slaves to the unstoppable forging on of existence, and at some point decisions must be made to mitigate casualties as it tramples over us.
Skepticism is distinctly different from abject denial or cynicism, and while we are all free to voice our objections and profess our personal understanding of things that we might not truly understand, there is a limit to the profoundness of our individual thoughts and feelings. Sadly, the only limit that appears to exist these days is allegiance. We pride ourselves on our objections and being less naive than our neighbor. Not for the sake of actual truth, but for the sake of agenda. Contemporary social discourse holds reason and logic in such high regard as a concept, but when the devotion to those tools comes from a visceral emotional need to be right then one has already failed the things they hold to be so sacred.
Here is the takeaway from my disjointed ramblings: decisions that affect us are going to be made despite everything we might think we know. I, for one, would rather those decisions be made by people that have dedicated themselves to honing the tools necessary to comprehend what I am unable to. The alternative is for the decisions to be made by people with confirmation bias. Despite my clinical knowledge, I cannot claim to know what did or didn’t happen in some lab in another country. I can’t pretend to comprehend every aspect of the statistics and algorithms associated with epidemiology.
In a situation that has presented us with such polar options – to shelter or not; to mitigate damage to the economy or human life – I can’t, personally, comprehend how anybody could possess so much hubris as to fall back on their own preconceived views of the world rather than allowing those with more knowledge than themselves to determine the most plausible conclusion. Sincere apologies for the run on sentences, but it’s awe inspiring. We can have so much knowledge, so many experts, and yet still be so fragile that we are unable to allow those resources to crack us at all. We are so unbelievably allergic to being wrong about anything, that we grasp at straws and cherry-pick whatever validating input we can find to feed our addiction to being correct.
I’ve used mycobacteria as an analogy for how this selfishness spreads and presents itself in the world. Little did I know that I only needed to wait a few months for microbiology to show me precisely how strong its talent for irony could be. It’s so “cringey” to compare people and their actions to a viral pandemic, but we were truly already so plagued by the pathology of misinformation and childish fragility before COVID-19 reared its ugly head. We were predisposed to being utterly ravaged by a pandemic, not for immunological reasons, but because of a deep rooted sociological illness that we already had. Truly, these things contributed to each other in much the same way that pneumonia or a simple UTI can lead to sepsis.
As I find myself so frequently saying these days… Alas, I have no solution to the problem. Just futile analysis and statements made in hindsight.
Scientia potentia est. Knowledge is power. If history has taught us anything about power it’s that it corrupts. It twists, poisons, and destroys indiscriminately. It is the purest agent of destruction that exists. We wouldn’t dare put the atomic bomb into the hands of anybody with a high speed internet connection, and yet knowledge is accessible and freely possessed. Open to interpretation by all.
Karl Popper stated: “Our knowledge can only be finite, while our ignorance must necessarily be infinite.” Bearing this in mind, the destructive power associated with knowledge must be reliant on its relationship with ignorance. I feel that we’ve reached critical mass with that relationship. Everybody is able to know everything now, but as self-described skeptics, they must also know nothing at all. The power behind knowledge becomes a destructive agent when people that believe they know how to wield it, in fact, do not.
These statements are obvious perhaps, but also quite the attention grabbers, one must admit. Almost as obvious as “We’re all going to fucking die.”, but perhaps not quite as demanding of your attention. Although if any statement could possibly claim to possess immense power in the wrong hands, a proclamation that everybody is going to cease to be is a potent one, to be sure. The thing is, it’s true, and not even with any sort of qualifier. We will all die, eventually. That we can claim to know with near absolute certainty.
Perhaps we should start critically assessing these certainties we share rather than the alleged possibilities that we desire.
agirlhasnoname. 