Strategic Gullibility Pt. 1: Real and perceived security through conscious self-deception

Summary: My life is so completely cushy that I can afford to visit distressing thoughts and scenarios. I can watch a movie like Slumdog Millionaire and feel empathy from my safe vantage point. I can even find the ending a little hokey. I'm betting that it wouldn't be so easy if I were suffering more. People with stressful lives would tend to find the beginning more painful and the ending more compelling. When grieving the end of my marriage, I suddenly lost my appetite for bravely honest movies about divorce. I was getting enough of a reality check from reality, thank you. For some folks the grief and stress never ends. I am also keenly interested in the scientific pursuit of ever more accurate stories about how things work. I don’t think I would have nearly the appetite for accuracy if I needed to counter a more miserable existence with more comforting, reassuring, affirming stories. The lure of wishful thinking is, in part a function of what you’re up against. The more pain you’re in, the more wishful thinking you’ll naturally want and need. For those of us with relatively cushy lives then, it’s no good telling those with difficult lives that they ought to face reality. In this often cruel and always unfair world everyone deserves to tell whatever stories give them comfort enough to get by. We could call it The Right to Believe. It’s also no good to have wishful thinking imposed on the scientific pursuit of accurate stories. We could call it The Need to Know. People should be free to believe whatever wishful stories get them through the night, but science should be free to pursue whatever accurate stories will get us through the crises. Climate change, extinctions, epidemics, cancer—the conflict between the right to believe and the need to know isn’t some intellectual debate, it’s a hot war, so let me word it more directly: From science to belief: We honor your right to believe whatever comforts you, but get it the hell out of the way of science, because even unimpeded, science can hardly keep up, and only if it keeps up will it save our children, even your children, oh wishful thinker. From belief to science: You scientists caused most of those crises in the first place and how dare you say your method gets at truth better than other methods? Why are you qualified to make that claim? Because you’ve decided you’re right? Do you know how many wishful thinkers say exactly the same thing? What makes you think science is so special that we all have to get out of your way? As pretentious as it sounds, science can make special claims. The universe either complies with or defies our beliefs. Reality pushes back. As Aldous Huxley said, “facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.” The universe simply complies more with scientific accounts. Imagine parallel annual reports from two human ventures, one for science and one for, say, religion. Or imagine centennial or millennial reports. No matter what period you measure, science’s report would be vastly thicker. No matter what opinions we might hold on the subject, our intuitions recognize that science is winning the accuracy game. So no, it’s not just like any other way of believing. Even the people who claim that science and wishful thinking are indistinguishable intuit this. Their argument undermines itself and reveals deference to science. They are trying to make a compelling objective case that there is no way to make a compelling objective case. This backhanded, reluctant deference to science is understandable. We may grumble about sciences’ pretentiousness, especially when science disappoints our wishful thinking, but at least tacit deference to science is all-pervasive and not arbitrary. When religious fundamentalists need results, they rely on doctors and engineers rather than faith healers or prayers.