No Exit
I’ve been thinking about consensus and complacency. I know of people who think that B&W has too much in the way of consensus and thereby risks smug complacency. That’s true enough, but I don’t quite know what can be done about it, or even if anything should be done about it (that’s what I’ve been thinking about). It seems to me that as soon as I try to figure out what (if anything) can be done about it, I immediately get into a regress, which engenders feelings of deep hopelessness and futility (along with hunger). It may be that from a moral point of view, feelings of hopelessness and futility (and hunger) are preferable to smug complacency; but from other points of view, I’m not sure they are.
Here’s why I get into the regress. It seems to me that B&W’s* only really basic commitment – and thus all it can really risk being complacent about – is to rational inquiry. To rational inquiry of whatever kind; to using whatever tools and methods are needed to investigate whatever particular question needs investigating – including whether or not B&W is smug and complacent, and whether consensus on the need for and value of rational inquiry necessarily leads to smug complacency. And right there, two seconds into the inquiry, we smack into the regress, and I don’t see how we can get out of it. How can we tell whether or not B&W is smugly complacent except by trying to find out? By trying to find out by inquiry? But if we do that we’re just displaying the consensus again, smugly and complacently. But what else can we do? What is there other than rational inquiry? Faith? Revelation? Authority? Intuition? Blind commitment? Hunch? Insight? Mystical experience? But those simply don’t seem the right (the most reliable, the most testable, the most likely to be accurate) way to find out the truth of the matter. No doubt it’s smug and complacent of me to say and to think that – I can see that in a way it is by definition – but I still don’t see any good alternative. To rely on faith or revelation would be credulous and reckless and fundamentally incompetent, in the sense of using the wrong tools for a particular job.
So I seem to be stuck. It seems to me that B&W is not (necessarily) smug and complacent, because the basic idea it is committed to is, to the best of its (my) knowledge, the only one that’s a valid option – so it’s a forced choice – so not really a source of smugness. We don’t really feel smug when we pick up a garlic press instead of a chainsaw when we have some garlic to squash. Not unless we’re terribly hard up for reasons to feel smug (in which case no one should begrudge us, because really, how sad, don’t you think?).
It’s as if someone said, ‘what colour is that shirt?’ You have two choices – you can guess, or you can look. You think you’re more likely to give an accurate answer if you look. Is it smug and complacent to think that?
The other issue is that in a world where lots of people guess, and not only guess but make a virtue of guessing, and chastise people who look instead of guessing – the result may well be that the people who look will feel superior to the guessers (and, as a matter of fact, the guessers will feel superior to the lookers). If that is the sense of smug and complacent that is meant, it’s true enough: no doubt that is a risk. But how can it be helped? What is to be done? Should we start arguing in favour of guessing in order to avoid feeling superior to guessers? (What of the risk then of feeling superior to lookers? Should we just alternate every few minutes? But then wouldn’t we get dizzy and start dropping things?) But is that a good reason to do that? If we think rational inquiry really is the best way to find out things (and we think finding out things is worth doing) then is it sensible to do the opposite simply to prevent ourselves from (possibly) feeling superior? Isn’t that doing a large bad in order to prevent a comparatively trivial bad?
And the logic of doing things we don’t actually believe in in order to avoid smugness is tricky – because anything can prompt such feelings – so at that rate we should never do anything. Never learn anything, acquire any skill, form any opinion – we should be so humble and self-abnegating that we don’t exist at all. Which seems safe, but a bit pointless.
*I keep saying B&W, which is a bit absurd, because B&W c’est moi, there isn’t anyone else here – so why don’t I just say ‘I’? It seems coy to say B&W if I mean me. But I don’t really mean me, I mean B&W, so that’s what I say. B&W seems like something bigger than mere me – which it is, actually, because a lot of other people write for it, and I assume they do that because of the nature of B&W, which is created partly by those very people who write for it, in a continuing expansive process. Okay that’s why I say B&W. Though it’s also because it was two people when it was founded, so I formed the habit of thinking of it and referring to it that way; it’s taken me a long time to break the habit of using the plural first-person pronoun.
If we were patting ourselves on the back for doing things sensibly like everyone else, yes, it would be pretty silly. But there is a real and enormous battle going on in the world in which not only is looking rather than guessing (or, rather, blindly following the Senior Guessers) under attack, even a lot of people who look think they still have to defer to the guessers in order not to offend them. Most of them probably don’t see it that way, but they’re letting themselves be shamed into not being forthright about the way they apprehend the world. I agree we don’t need smugness, but a lot of people on our side need more pride in their stand. If you hold a position contrary to that held by a religious believer or a post-modernist, you ought never to let yourself be cowed into not saying straight out that it’s because your intellect tells you they are wrong. Let no one do to us what Ruse tries to do to Dawkins, Dennett et al.
Yep. It’s just a rhetorical gambit by the Forces of Darkness to try to undermine your confidence. You must resist!
It is true that it is expected that you will defer to the respectable guessers; don’t tread on their toes, or you will be condemned as smugly complacent. Doesn’t matter to them if you really are smug, complacent, arrogant or whatever; it’s just rhetoric. Smile smugly at them, then let it go.
OB, assuming you don’t take anything stronger than coffee, drink less of it. Get more fresh air. And exercise. Maybe write another book.
But whatever you do, I don’t think you need to worry about being smug or complacent.
Perhaps you could vary your pattern a bit.
Monday could be rational inquiry day.
Tuesday you could try shaking bones around in a bowl and throwing them onto the ground, to see if it gives you any insight into auto mechanics.
Wednesday you could burn a cow in your backyard, and examine the remains.
Thursday you’d write your posts without a keyboard, through the power of faith.
And don’t forget “enlightenment through narcotics” Friday.
I’ll step up here and be counted as B&W’s resident tarot-card-reading poetry-writing crummy-Buddhist wingnut, if your commenters count as part of B&W. The existence of a resident TCRPWCBW is bound to count for something toward B&W’s diversity of opinion.
Plus, I can play a biofeedback video game so freakishly well that with the right software I might actually be able to write a simple blog post sans keyboard. I also have every plan to char cow parts in my backyard soon and examine the remains for deliciousness. Patrick’s challenge is tempting.
Yes, I really do read tarot cards from time to time. It’s a way of generating hunches that I can then evaluate more normally. (Also, pretty and entertaining.) In other words, a little bit of intuition or noise or guesswork prompts me to look in places that I probably would not otherwise have thought to consider while strictly following a chain of reasoning.
I’m certainly not going to tell you to argue in favor of guessing. But I do wonder if, in your regress-related feelings, you’re drawing a harder line here than you would on a more cheerful day. What’s your distinction between a hypothesis and a hunch? They seem pretty similar to me from here, except that people will keep glomming onto their untested hypotheses with a vigor that I find foolish, baffling, and sometimes dangerous.
Anyway, what I’m trying to demonstrate there, but forgot to say, is a big No, B&W is fine. Rational inquiry is a bigger tent than some critics appear to assume, and your readers are not all carbon copies of each other.
My sense of B&W is this: anyone committed to making some kind of sense is welcome here. That leaves a lot of room for polite, reasonable disagreement. And we’ve had it, too.
I agree with Juan. (Well, maybe not about the caffeine.) Fresh air, a bit of a walk, some flowers, a good dinner.
A week’s camping in the Lake District, nothing like it for perspective.
Why are people suddenly telling me to go out more, to drink less coffee, to get more exercise? Don’t be shy – tell me to get therapy, to go on meds, to go to detox, to check into rehab, to take up knitting, to get a lobotomy.
As a matter of fact I spent the whole afternoon on a walk by the lake, and very pretty it was too.
Was it the thing about deep hopelessness and futility? That was a joke, for Chrissake. This was a perfectly cheerful post (I even thought that was obvious); I enjoyed writing it, the subject interests me.
However – a week’s camping in the Lake District. Well that’s another matter. Except the camping part. But if anyone wants to treat me to a week in the Lake District staying in the very nicest hotels, do feel free. I’ll even buy my own plane ticket.
Anyway. “Let no one do to us what Ruse tries to do to Dawkins, Dennett et al.”
No – that will never happen. But the people I’m thinking of (all two of them) are people whose opinion I respect. I disagree with them, but they’re not silly, so that’s why it seems worth pondering what they say. But I think it’s true that rational inquiry is a big tent, and leaves plenty of room for disagreement and discussion and non-smugness. That’s one of the reasons I like B&W, actually: it seems to invite consideration of such a wide range of subjects. And, I suppose, that’s also why a lot of other people like B&W, including the people who write for it.
So, no; in truth I don’t think B&W is smug, or in much danger of becoming smug. But then I wouldn’t, would I. Self-deception is the most convincing kind. (Proust has a terrific bit on that, that I just read yesterday. Maybe I’ll type it out later…)
(I suppose I could start to make a point of being smug about how non-smug I am. Hey, everybody, get me: look how ‘umble I am. Good, eh?)
By the way, Cam, commenters certainly do count as part of B&W, especially commenters who play a crucial part in resurrecting the update.
Oh, it’s nothing personal — I recommend short walks, fresh air, good food, and something pretty to everybody at the drop of any hat. I also recommend naps, when I remember to. Occasionally I think a hat has dropped when it has not.
But knitting? I am shocked and horrified at the very suggestion, I tell you. Shocked. Horrified.
Well I’m a big fan of all those things (except naps), and award them to myself all the time. (Admittedly, that piece of lilac is wilting a good deal now, but nobody’s perfect.)
“Self-deception is the most convincing kind.”
Yes, and you linked to “We Underestimate Our Bias, Overestimate Theirs.” But all that is normal. If you end up being the only one to consciously overcompensate for the bias you know is there, you’ll be at a disadvantage. Writing things that make sense in a style recognisable enough to enable parody is a worthy achievement. Stick to your guns.
“I know of people who think that B&W has too much in the way of consensus and thereby risks smug complacency. ” Well sod you then.
Ophelia
Don’t worry – I’ve asked the I Ching, and it says you are not smug or complacent.
Ah, but surely Pat Robertson would think otherwise, wouldn’t he? And he’s a paragon of… well, it’s more polite not to say what he’s a paragon of.
True about the bias link, Stewart. I’m interested in that whole subject. In for instance the endeavour to figure out what assumptions of mine are so taken for granted and invisible that I can’t question them no matter how hard I try, because I can’t detect them as assumptions.
“If you end up being the only one to consciously overcompensate for the bias you know is there, you’ll be at a disadvantage.”
There’s a deeply ironic truth in that. Or perhaps I mean several deeply ironic truths.
“a style recognisable enough to enable parody”
Do I? Gee, I wish someone would parody me…That would be fun.
Thanks, Chris – that’s good enough for me!
For some reason your post here reminds me of a common question familiar to those who express skepticism of the paranormal, the supernatural, the mystical, etc. “Isn’t science just another kind of dogma? You ask what evidence would change my mind, and I say none — but what evidence would change YOUR mind that science is the best method to use when investigating (homeopathy/the Evil Eye/the existence of God/levitating shamens/etc etc)?” Science tries to say what’s right and wrong or true or false and that is just so … smug.
Bottom line, science is the method you use when you want to force yourself to seriously consider the possibility that you might be wrong. It’s designed to eliminate bias and test views as much as possible. It’s structured to force a change of mind.
If that is allowed to pass as just a “different kind of dogma,” then being *undogmatic* would mean refusing to consider the possibility you might be wrong, embracing your biases, and not testing your beliefs. Don’t change your mind. Stay firm. Otherwise, you might be in danger of the smugness of scientism.
Looks like we’ve got ourselves a contradiction on the meaning of the word “dogma.”
You’re not being complacent if you’re eager to debate, and listen to the other side when you do so. One of the things I’ve noticed about so many critics of “scientism” is that they do NOT want debate, argument, discussion, etc. They want affirmation. Or support. Or respect. “You believe in fairies. I don’t — but I honor that. Really I do.”
“If that is allowed to pass as just a “different kind of dogma,” then being *undogmatic* would mean refusing to consider the possibility you might be wrong”
Exactly. Which is why I can’t see any way out of the regress. I do see the potential for smugness, but I can’t see the advocacy of ‘faith’ or whatever else the opposite of rational inquiry would be as the right remedy for smugness.
“Gee, I wish someone would parody me…That would be fun.”
Actually, what I was remembering was the Skeptico first birthday offering about the chicken crossing the road, to which you linked back in February. Since some contributors, such as Sylvia Browne and David Icke, presumably would not have deigned to parody themselves for Skeptico’s benefit, I didn’t assume you’d necessarily penned the response presented in the name of B&W. So, was it you, or was your wish to be parodied granted?
Oh! I forgot that. (My memory is absolute crap. There’s a built-in smugness-reducer right there.) No no, it wasn’t me, that was parody. snicker – that was fun! Thanks for reminding me.