Everyone’s a Believer
While surfing the interwebs today I stumbled across a Scientific American blog post titled, How Do You ID a Dead Osama? which caught my attention, but not just for the subject, which I had found myself pondering previously. (Say those last two words five times fast.) The question the author leads with, “But how do they know it’s him?” got me to thinking about conversations I’ve had in the past on the concept of proof.
As a skeptic, who was previously a fundamentalist Christian, the idea of proof has come up frequently. What I’ve noticed is that we all have our own opinion of what “enough” evidence is in order to qualify as “proof” of something. If you’re smart, you’ll hitch your opinion to something strong like Science so that you don’t have to carry the weight of argument all on your own. But even then, variation abounds. (And you can lessen the weight even by hitching to things not so strong, as long as there are enough others that share it who you can fall back on.) Depending on whether you want to believe something or not, your required level of proof will increase or decrease. I would argue that this is directly a result of confirmation bias. So, the question to me seemed to be “is there an objective level of proof that is really proof?”
Lets say I believe a tree that I’m looking at has orange leaves. I look at it, the leaves look orange, so it seems like a no brainer. So I don’t think of it in terms of my believing that the leaves are red, it’s just a fact. Then you come along, and because you can never leaf me alone you tell me that you’re sure the leaves are green. After wondering if you’re on crack, I tell you that you’re wrong. You start giving me reasons to back up your position. You tell me that most trees have green leaves. You tell me that it’s the middle of June and that Fall hasn’t started yet. All good logical arguments that would seem to back up your position. If you’re convincing enough, I may start to doubt my initial observation in favor of the weight of your arguments. You may at some point “prove” to me that you’re right. So where is the objectivity regarding proof? It could go the other way, given my charm, and I may convince you the leaves are really green. We both feel that it would take enough proof from the other in order to change our minds.
If proof is an arbitrary measurement of reality, I’m not so sure we should be so hung up on proving things to each other. At the end of the day, it would seem to come down to belief. For everything that requires our brain to sign off on an opinion, we each have an equation that helps us get through the moment. Some things provide better (or more voluminous) proof by gathering more consistent details, but if they fail to convince everyone who learns of them can they be called proof?
This was also likely called to mind because I’m in the middle of reading The Ego Tunnel: The Science of the mind and the myth of the self by Thomas Metzinger. One section of which jumped out at me…
The world is not inhabited by colored objects at all. It is just as your physics teacher in high school told you: Out there, in front of your eyes, there is just an ocean of electromagnetic radiation, a wild and raging mixture of different wavelengths. Most of them are invisible to you and can never become part of your conscious model of reality. What is really happening is that the visual system in your brain is drilling a tunnel through this inconceivably rich physical environment and in the process is painting the tunnel walls in various shades of color. Phenomenal color. Appearance. For your conscious eyes only.
So add on top of confirmation bias the problem of perception (being forever trapped behind a time-delayed interpretive model) and how can we ever truly know a dang thing?
Some people might consider this a reason to not worry about proof, and to just hold hands and accept any reality our neighbor claims is there. But not me, I’m stubborn. (And, as my two failed marriages lend evidence to, sometimes slow to learn.) In any case, I can’t help but continue to feel that it’s a question of understanding ourselves. And that the more we learn, the closer we can get to understanding Universe. (Multiverse, whatever.)
Oh, and since I brought it up, the evidence used to prove that we got the right Osama was a combination of a DNA test (99.9% percent confidence) and facial recognition software (about 95% certainty). Probably certain enough for most folks, though I won’t doubt in the least that there will be plenty who claim he’s still alive and out there somewhere ready to direct the next attack because the aforementioned evidence isn’t “enough” for various reasons.
While trying to consider a moral to this story I thought maybe I would say that it’s that we should be more tolerant of others beliefs. But that seems to much like the end of a South Park episode. I think my suggested take away here would be to encourage you to examine your own decisions on what constitutes proof, particularly in situations of debate.
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