Underwear and Dogmatism

Without looking, what underwear are you wearing today? Are you certain?

I believe that we are prone to overestimating how often we are right. By acknowledging the likelihood that we are wrong, we can protect ourselves from this irrational tendency.

As a thought experiment, consider if you were randomly asked about your underwear 1,000 times throughout your life. Let’s say you get it right 95 percent of the time. Assuming that were true, how certain were you when you answered at the beginning of the column? Wasn’t there a five percent chance you were wrong? The fact that you were (probably) right about your underwear does not mean that there was no uncertainty surrounding your answer.

You may understand uncertainty in the abstract, but the question is whether you have internalized that any of your memories, perceptions or beliefs, no matter how strongly you believe them, may well be wrong. There are very few statements you can make with 100 percent certainty. Though our own experience is the most vivid we can draw on, recognizing that our own perceptions are flawed and no more likely to be accurate than somebody else’s is challenging but critically important. At its most extreme, failure to acknowledge our own uncertainty can lead to dogmatism. This is especially true when we make decisions based on emotions.

The more we hear our own beliefs repeated -— “Democracy is good” -— “Oil corporations are bad” — “Processed food is unhealthy” — the more dogmatic we become about them. “Your belief on these topics is likely informed by regurgitating the perspectives of others, probably selected for holding similar beliefs as you, rather than your own detailed understanding of the topic. You should be aware of the distinct possibility you are wrong.

I am not advocating decision paralysis: we have to operate under beliefs even if we acknowledge that they may be wrong. Instead, I propose putting as much conscious, rational thought into decision making as possible while simultaneously being open to changing that position if new information presents itself. Though a disastrous accusation in politics, “flip-flopping” is a reflection of intelligence and critical awareness. In Emerson’s words, “foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.”

If you have a viscerally negative reaction to the idea that working in finance might be the best way to help the world’s poor, I suggest you take a step back and weigh the evidence. I could be missing some key insight into why “Earning to Give” (the idea of pursuing a high-earning career and giving a large amount of your earnings to the best charities you can find) is not as effective as I think it is. I could also be right. Either way, pre-judging the argument based on its convenience in your life is disastrously flawed. To truly weigh the argument, or any argument, it’s important that you sincerely question the beliefs that it calls into question. Many of the things we “know” are actually misinformed, vestigial beliefs that we have somehow failed to question. I’m as guilty of this as anybody.

If you have always had a dream of being a lawyer, going to law school without objectively evaluating the pros and cons of law versus other careers as best as you can is being dogmatic. The same goes with any career aspiration. You are almost definitely capable of thriving and finding happiness working in a different field.

If you are sure that processed food is bad and that the solution is eating as much local produce and other “real” food as possible, or that the U.S. government should have a strictly non-interventionist international policy, but do not have relevant expertise, you are also being dogmatic.

Deciding to buy from your local farmers market, protesting against war and going to law school are not irrational per-say, but the manner in which you make these decisions may be. Sure, many decisions are so trivial that they are not worth being rational about - for example, I’ve never read consumer reports on toothpaste - but letting your instinctual, emotional, dogmatic logic inform key life decisions can be extremely dangerous, especially if you are not good at acknowledging the likelihood that you are wrong.

Rejecting Earning to Give without thoughtfully weighing its merits because it does not fit one’s world view is misguided. Just because you have learned one method of achieving social good, community organizing for example, does not mean there are not better ways of achieving similar ends. Similarly, just because you are passionate about an issue, say the environment, does not mean it should be the issue you should commit your life to working on. If you want to help humanity as much as possible, you should be constantly reevaluating your stance on how to do so. You may decide you disagree with me, and you may be right. Please reach out to let me know why I’m wrong so I can learn from your insight.

We err not by being wrong, but by not doing everything we can to expose ourselves as wrong. Part of being virtuous, I believe, is recognizing our own fallibility.