George S. Bonn was a connoisseur of travel to exotic South Seas islands, dry sherry and macadamia nuts. My graduate school advisor was as “gabby” as Moses. One Saturday he confided his role as professor was to make his students “intelligent skeptics.” He chuckled when I responded that I welcomed greater intelligence, pointing out that “intelligent” was an adjective modifying skepticism contrasted with one who, relishing doubting for its own sake, seems proudly ignorant.
The first lesson in intelligent skepticism, George believed, was not accepting at face value everything one is presented, with “presented” meaning reading and hearing, sometimes even witnessing firsthand. An illustration, without political overtones, from recent experience is the recent mantra to “follow the science.” This hackneyed phrase by 2022 was losing its persuasive force for better or worse. When I heard the phrase for about the 10th time in 2000, I was struck that this word combination reminded me of a similar phrase employed by a witch, the Mayor of Munchkinland and his constituents. These folks repeatedly advised Dorothy to “follow the Yellow Brick Road,” a secure, evenly paved path to finding answers to Dorothy’s dilemmas. Dorothy discovered the path was hazardous and Oz didn’t have all the answers. Neither does the CDC and the FDA. Like other bureaucracies, their leaders made a few fundamental misjudgments during the pandemic. Their belief that the public would be more comfortable (or at least less panicked) if its members were handed prescriptions for group and individual behavior was mishandled. Bureaucrats understood too little about human psychology. They ignored that the scientific method implicates trial and error in testing various hypotheses, thus errors in scientific judgment were inevitable, which needed explaining. Instead of acknowledging responsibility and explaining when prescriptions were wrong, guidance was revised without mea culpas. It would have been palliative to say, “our hypothesis didn’t pan out, and although we understand as well as anyone that one solution doesn’t fit all conditions, we own our error in predicting this result. This viral infection sequence and its frequent mutations is as unprecedented to us as it is to all other thought leaders. Still, we’ll persist, attempting to give you the best medical and public health guidance we can. It’s our job, and we take it seriously.”
Well, enough of that, except to point out that there were, and are, a number of intelligent skeptics podcasting and writing op/eds taking issue with the advice of government scientists and physicians and other media-consulting talking heads. There were, and are, numbers of dummkopfs doing likewise. What to do in such times of ambiguity?
Pay attention! Start with these fundamental propositions: A claim is not credible merely by virtue of its being made in a public forum. The college professor, for instance, is typically quite bright, and knowledgeable about a great deal – they’re just not omniscient. A group of unsupported claims don’t take on greater credibility because they’re batched. That doesn’t change when they’re related by a so-called “credible source” – or multiple such sources. Some identify batching as “availability bias,” a readiness to embrace and repeat claims popular in one’s circle or realm. No human bias changes a basic fact: Now and then, a billion flies can be wrong!
Elites often are quite impressive to hear from, but they don’t know everything. Sometimes, they don’t know as much speaking from their positions of significance as persons curbside, living daily with serious issues of public concern. Thomas Sowell’s Intellectuals and Society makes this point as well as any source. Of course, a proudly ignorant person, megaphone or microphone before his face, isn’t omniscient despite having an audience. Nor does the size of their audience dictate superior insight. Noise isn’t a proxy for authority, certainly not for wisdom.
What to do? Here’s what I do, for what that’s worth. I listen to (and read the writings of) as many sources as I have the leisure and capacity to absorb; but I ascertain whether their claims are valid when I have capacity to do so. When it appears a grain of salt needs to be added to a recipe, I add one. And I ignore altogether those who insist on being attended to in their ignorance, egotism, and cynicism. I think that’s what George Bonn expected from me.
Before I’m too far down the hole, I need to tie this into Fishbein, Ascending. Readers are presented many claims by Matt Fishbein and Chago Díaz and, in a lesser magnitude, by Sylvaine, Colby, Moses and the boys’ parents. Which among their claims is true? Are the two narrators the most credible persons (sources) in the book? Which of the characters makes claims turning out somewhat or entirely unreliable? I introduced to the plot distractions on purpose. I wanted readers to assume falsely, when insufficient attention was paid to the narrative or the reader ignored her experience of how the world works. That’s my message – pay attention, friends!