I don't know (and that's okay)
“I neither know nor think that I know.”
-Socrates (according to Plato, probably)
The problem of knowledge is a perplexing one: What do we know? What can we know? And how do we know that we know it?
Related is confidence: When should we be confident in something, whether we really know it to be true or not?
I don’t know for certain that the chair I’m about to sit in isn’t simply an illusion that I might fall through to the ground. And yet, I don’t check to be sure it’s real; I’m confident based on personal experience and no evidence to the contrary that it is in fact solid and will hold me.
Alas, I miss my time in college as a philosophy major, sitting in coffee shops for hours with classmates debating questions like these. It seemed awfully important at the time, and we felt awfully important for doing the hard work of deep thinking…
…and then we graduated.
Life quickly became much less about answering esoteric questions regarding the nature of knowledge and more about things like paying bills, grocery shopping, and building towards a secure future.
Reality has a way of making ideas in-and-of themselves seem irrelevant, or at least substantially unimportant. In the words of early 20th century philosopher Albert Camus,
“Galileo, who held a scientific truth of great importance, abjured it with the greatest ease as soon as it endangered his life. In a certain sense, he did right. That truth was not worth the stake. Whether the earth or the sun revolves around the other is a matter of profound indifference.”
I mean really, who cares, right?
Truth in the Information Age
There’s no denying it’s getting harder and more complicated to determine what’s true. News sources we used to trust have been demonstrably false, or at least wildly exaggerated, celebrities and politicians lie in the face of hard evidence to the contrary (something unthinkable just a few years ago), and anyone with rudimentary design skills can make their blog, video, or website look just as valid as anything else.
And even if you consider yourself an attentive, investigative sort of person, the amount of information coming at you on a minute-to-minute basis is completely overwhelming. If you tried to verify everything you read, see, and hear, you’d be paralyzed.
My guest on this week’s episode of the One New Person podcast is Matt Dillahunty. Matt has the rare distinction of being a public intellectual, a prominent skeptic & humanist who has shared the stage and gone toe-to-toe with many of today’s intellectual heavyweights, including Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and Jordan Peterson.
The problem of knowledge in the Information Age was summed up perfectly by Matt during our conversation:
“Once upon a time if I only knew 20 things, I might know them pretty well. But now if I know 700 things I might only barely know them. And if I don’t have the time to spend on each one of them, there are things that are gonna get in my brain, where not only the belief is false, but the process or heuristic that led me to that belief is problematic and is now making my thinking flawed in other areas.”
What’s the answer to a world with unlimited information, but limited time to check each claim?
Knowledge through Discourse
We may never be able to reach capital T truth, but I believe the ability to understand the thoughts and perspectives of others is the surest path to knowledge, or at least connection.
Near the end of our 70-minute conversation I asked Matt if he had any advice for having better conversations and debates in this increasingly divisive era. He gave me a more thorough answer than I could have ever hoped for.
Motivation
Why are you having this conversation or debate? Matt said,
“If my goal is to actually understand why someone believes something that I don’t, so that I can then explain why I don’t share that belief, or perhaps explain why I don’t think they should hold that belief, that to me is a good motivation. Because now it puts you in the position where you’re more likely to be a charitable listener, giving them more of the benefit-of-the-doubt.”
We often go into debates trying to change someone’s mind or prove how much more we know than they do. Ideally, your motivation should be to both teach new things and learn new things.
In other words, you need to genuinely care about the discussion, not about winning or proving, in order for it to be productive and worthwhile.
Clarity
“If I know what you mean, we’re okay. The danger then is beginning to assume that you both know what the other one means. And so every now and then, pause, and define your terms.”
Have you ever gotten to the end of a heated discussion only to discover you’d actually been agreeing the whole time?
Arguments are sometimes the result of fundamental disagreements, but much more often the result of little misunderstandings that snowball into huge problems. No matter how universal you think your terms are, take an extra few moments to be sure that everyone is using them in the same way. Otherwise, in Matt’s words, you’ll just be talking past each other.
Admit Your Ignorance
“If somebody says something in those conversations, and you don’t have an answer, good. Because “I don’t know” is almost always the right answer. You can say, “That’s an interesting point. Can we stick a pin in this conversation? Let me think about that, let me research it, and get back to you.”
Matt’s hitting an idea here that keeps coming up in my conversations with highly successful and intelligent folks on the podcast. Somewhere along the way we, as a culture, adopted the position it’s better to pretend to know than to admit you don’t know.
But pretending to know is so much worse than simply admitting you lack the research or evidence to state something with confidence. Try it out. You’ll be surprised how empowering it is, and how much more respect you’ll gain from others when you’re secure enough to admit your lack of knowledge in a particular area.
Keep Your Promises
Once you’ve admitted you don’t know something and asked for time to think about it deeper, what should you do next? Matt says emphatically:
“When they say ‘yes’, think about it, research it, and get back to them. Because you should do what you say you’re going to do.”
Authenticity is a much-lauded attribute in the digital landscape. But what we mean by authenticity is not sharing photos of what you had for breakfast or capturing your recent emotional breakdown on YouTube. What we really mean by authenticity is consistency: make promises and keep them.
One-Man Think Tank
The title of this week’s podcast episode featuring Matt Dillahunty is a playful nod to a great laugh we had in the middle of our conversation, at just how silly each of our job titles are, i.e. ‘thought leader,’ ‘public intellectual’.
As heavy as the ideas Matt and I discussed were, the tone of the conversation remained light and fun. If you’re even a little interested in ideas surrounding truth, knowledge, debate, and skepticism, you’ll absolutely love this episode.
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