Rejecting False Narratives: Pragmatic Uncertainty Approach
Resisting manipulation in the era of mass deception. Part 1.
Pragmatic Uncertainty Approach
Resisting manipulation in the era of mass deception. Part 1.
To read the full Disclaimer: Click here | Last Updated: 5/2/23
The pragmatist knows that doubt is an art which has to be acquired with difficulty.
Charles Sanders Peirce
Abstract
This is the first paper in the series: “Rejecting False Narratives”. The goal of those papers is to provide the readers with the simple yet effective methods that would decrease their vulnerability to being deceived by the unscrupulous manipulators from both sides of polarized political spectrum. In the current era of severe political polarization - the public forum is flooded with wild speculation, misinformation, propaganda and outright lies which are inter-mixed with rare genuinely true information. In the midst of such informational chaos, it is very hard to separate the wheat from the chaff. Two essential skills are needed to see through the fog of false narratives. Those skills are the ability to accept the uncertainty and to analyze information independently. This first paper in the series will discuss the importance of accepting and dealing with the reality that it is not always possible to obtain information that is absolutely certain.
Introduction
In today’s politically polarized world we are facing daily barrage of important and hard to answer questions. Those omnipresent dilemmas vary from very general ones like:
What political philosophy is the best for humanity? What economic system can provide prosperity while being fair and just for all - not merely as the neat theory on paper but workable and sustainable in real world?
To very specific ones such as:
Was a COVID-19 Pandemic a natural disaster or an artificial event planned by sinister forces? Is COVID-19 vaccine safe and effective prophylactic measure, or is it a dangerous and ineffective modality that is being pushed on unsuspected society by the greedy powers? Are Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin truly ineffective in treatment of COVID-19, or is their effectiveness being hidden by some shadowy forces? Is a concept of gender affirming care for minors - a scientifically proven beneficial treatment, or is it an ideology driven misguided approach that hurts children? Is human-induced climate change a well demonstrated phenomenon or is it a hoax perpetrated to gain control over the humanity? And many more similar challenges.
Members of the public sense the tremendous relevance of those queries and want to know the right answers to them. Moreover, in accordance with human nature, they want to be certain that they know the truth. Unfortunately, only very few have the ability to answer those crucial questions themselves. The advanced knowledge, long training, and access to the objective data are required to correctly solve those arduous puzzles. Hence, general public has no choice but to rely on experts - who claim that they possess those attributes. Sadly, many of such “authorities” are either utterly incompetent or they deliberately deceive the public in order to serve their nefarious agendas. Moreover, so much craved by humans certainty is frequently unattainable due to the complexity of the questions and the unpredictable nature of world.
One can argue that lack of ability to independently analyze information and craving of certainty are two features of general public that makes it vulnerable to exploitation. Unethical political leaders, greedy swindlers and attention seeking sociopaths have been taking a full advantage of those two vulnerabilities of general public. In result of such exploitation - many well meaning, intelligent and educated people are falling prey into the unscrupulous manipulators from both sides of the political spectrum. The goal of the series of articles “Rejecting False Narratives” is to provide the readers with the simple yet efficacious methods that would decrease their vulnerability to being deceived by the unscrupulous manipulators. Rapid and effortless enhancement of one’s ability to answer current complex questions is unrealistic. However, anyone can learn easily - how to use the described below Pragmatic Uncertainty Approach to diminish the chances of being caught in the web of manipulative deceptions. In addition, understanding of the importance of craving of certainty helps to explain puzzling cases of people who refuse to change their erroneous opinions - despite being presented with irrefutable evidence of error.
Truth Seeking in the Era of Narratives
Unprecedented political polarization and politicization of all aspects of life led to replacement of the objective reporting of facts with the political narratives. Political narratives are the manipulative methods of storytelling. They are designed to distort public’s perception of reality to elicit the strong emotional responses that would trigger the actions desired by the narrative creators.
Such weaponized narratives are used by both ruling party and the opposition to keep or regain power and to achieve other partisan goals. The ruling party may use the fear inducing narratives to assure public compliance with the most draconian regulations. In turn, the opposing party may deploy anxiety causing narratives to push public to resist vigorously any of the official mandates. The hatred laden narratives can incite the public to aggressive attacks on the political enemies of the narrative designers. Political internet influencers may use the clever narratives to enhance the profit they derive from monetization of the content they create on social media.
The usefulness of narratives extends beyond the pure politics. Deceptive narratives can sell very well - even the most substandard products or subpar services. Dishonest entrepreneurs can ride the coattails of the political movements using narratives to make sure that “a fool and his money are soon parted”.
In the view of the above it is not surprising that seeking the objective truth in the era of narratives becomes the insurmountable task. Public forum is flooded with wild speculation, misinformation, propaganda and outright lies which are inter-mixed with rare genuinely true information. It is very hard to separate the wheat from the chaff in the midst of such informational chaos caused by the over-abundance of competing narratives.
Two essential skills are needed to see through the fog of false narratives - to successfully parse the truth from fiction. Those are:
The ability to analyze information independently.
The willingness to accept the uncertainty.
Independent Information Analysis
One could assume that in 21st century most members of the general public should be able to understand with ease - virtually all scientific concepts related to biology, medicine, economy or climate science. Therefore, they should be able to personally judge the veracity of the various political narratives related to those subjects. However, this is not a case.
It is true that in the 21st century, members of general public have unprecedented access to scientific information. The internet allows anyone to access vast amounts of scientific resources. With just a few clicks, one can find scholarly articles and research studies on virtually any scientific topic. However, despite this increased access to information - scientific language, concepts and reasoning are still incredibly challenging to the laypeople and to the scientists specializing in a different areas of science. Public’s ability to judge the validity of scientific claims - contained in narratives - requires more than just an access to information. It requires at minimum - scientific literacy and numeracy in a given research field.
Scientific literacy involves broad understanding of the fundamental principles of science, including in-depth knowledge of the scientific method and full command of the esoteric scientific vocabulary. It also requires an understanding of the interplay between scientific evidence and scientific theories.
Scientific numeracy describes the ability to understand, interpret and use numerical and quantitative information in scientific contexts. It requires more than basic understanding of mathematics. It involves the ability to apply quantitative reasoning to scientific problems that allows to analyze and interpret numerical data and comprehend the statistical analyses of those data. That in turn, calls for familiarity with mathematical modeling, including the use of mathematical equations and computer simulations to represent and analyze scientific phenomena. Advanced scientific numeracy is an essential requirement for the assessment of validity of results and conclusion of research studies in biology, medicine, economics, and environmental science - because those branches of science rely heavily on quantitative analyses.
Only scientifically literate and numerate individuals are capable of rendering themselves a correct judgment about scientific claims - without reliance on experts. Unfortunately, the concerns about widespread scientific illiteracy and innumeracy of general public that are expressed by the scientists - remains valid for the last 20 years (Ref), (Ref). Sadly, this situation is understandable. There are many barriers that members of general public have to overcome to achieve the acceptable level of scientific literacy and numeracy. Such challenges include:
Complexity of science. Understanding of complex matters requires time, effort and commitment. Most members of the public are busy with daily work and family duties and simply cannot spend long hours mastering hermetic scientific jargon and mathematical language of science.
Counter-intuitiveness of certain scientific concept. The opinion expressed by some laypeople that scientists do not need to memorize things since one can “just figure all things out” is false and naive. Unfortunately, many scientific concepts are counterintuitive, challenging to visualize and impossible to deduct without memorizing large amount of basic information. For instance, ideas from quantum mechanics, general relativity or molecular biology can be difficult to grasp because - they go against our everyday experience and intuition.
Fast pace of scientific progress. Scientific knowledge is undergoing an exponential rate of advancement. Even specialized scientists have hard time to stay current in their specialized area. Frequently the theories that were true just yesterday are considered to be false today. Adjusting to the rapid changes in science can be particularly difficult to conservatives who by definition favor stability and constancy in life.
Politicization of Medicine and Political Power Asymmetry. Those phenomena that were discussed in details previously (Ref) can interfere with achieving the Scientific Literacy by the general public in a following ways:
On the Right side of Political Spectrum: academic institutions have been dominated by virtue signaling progressive scholars for many years (Ref), (Ref). Consequently, the conservative public has been exposed - to the politically biased opinions made by those progressive academicians. Those opinions were frequently contradictory to the most basic conservative tenets. Moreover, those opinions were expressed ex cathedra and with the arrogance and disdain towards any persons of conservative persuasion. In results many conservatives developed the reflexive distrust and hostility not only towards mainstream academia - but even against the science itself (Ref). This regrettable situation is naturally not conducive towards achieving scientific literacy and numeracy by the conservative members of the public.
On the Left side of Political Spectrum: the same dominance of academic institutions by progressive scholars (Ref) - led to the assumptions by many progressive members of the public that they can blindly rely on academic experts since they are in the same political camp as them. Therefore, they believe that there is no need for them to expend time and effort to become scientifically literate.
Exploitation of Scientific Illiteracy by Narrative Creators
Political narrative creators on both sides of political spectrum are exploiting scientific illiteracy and innumeracy in many ways - to manipulate the public opinion in accordance of their partisan agendas. Here are some examples of such manipulations:
Promoting experts supporting narrative: Politicians claim that they “follow the science” but in reality they simply follow scientists who agree with them. Consequently such politically useful scientists are uncritically idolized, and vigorously promoted as infallible experts and geniuses via the carefully crafted deceptive narratives.
Discrediting experts critical of narrative: Political narrative creators routinely undermine the credibility of scientific experts who disagree with their position by attacking their credentials or impugning their motives. By casting doubt on the expertise of those who disagree with them, they create confusion, doubts and make it more difficult for the scientifically illiterate public to discern the truth.
Audaciously Misinterpreting the the published papers or patents. Some internet pundits present to the public real patents or papers published by the mainstream academic scientists as “evidence” supporting their narrative - even though such papers do not contain anything supportive of their claims. Such deception is achieved most frequently using following deceptive mechanisms:
Taking the advantage of similarly sounding scientific terms. Certain scientific terms sound very similar and may be confused by the untrained medical public to represent the same thing - while in reality the similarly sounding terms denote very different matters.
For instance the word “coronavirus” is used vernacularly to describe virus causing COVID-19. However, in science - the term “coronavirus” refers to any virus that is member of large family of RNA viruses called coronaviruses. Those viruses vary in structure and can cause various human and animal diseases. COVID-19 is caused by the very specific novel coronavirus discovered in 2019 and named “SARS-CoV-2”: severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus. However, many member of general public are unaware of those important details. Some of them assume wrongly that COVID-19 is caused by the virus known as “coronavirus” that was “officially discovered” in 2019. Therefore if someone would show them papers or patents containing the word “coronavirus” published before year 2019 - they could erroneously assume that such papers are the evidence of the conspiracy. A conspiracy in which the virus causing COVID-19 was known or even manufactured and patented before the year 2019. Such a shocking “discovery” will result naturally in panic, anger and indignation. That assumption however is wrong since the “coronaviruses” described in old papers refer to viruses that have different structure and cause different illnesses SARS-CoV-2 virus causing COVID-19.
In another example a visual similarity can be exploited in similar fashion between abbreviation SARS-CoV - that refers to coronavirus causing SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) emerged in November 2002, and an abbreviation SARS-CoV-2 that denotes different virus causing COVID-19. Those are two distinct viruses but the deceptive narrative creator can conflate both of them convincing the audience that papers that described SARS-CoV were describing SARS-CoV-2.
Taking the advantage of hermetic language of the paper to misrepresent to the public its results and even claim that the paper contains the conclusions that are not contained in the paper at all. Scientific papers are often long, complex and written in esoteric technical language that can be difficult for the average person to decipher. Therefore it is easy to claim that the hermetic technical paper contains the conclusions that are just not there. This deceptive technique is used very frequently. Internet is awash with false claims made either deliberately or due to incompetence - by some pundits who take selectively certain passages from the legitimate scientific publications and misinterpret them egregiously. Those pundits claim that those fragments of officially approved research - do support their false claims, while in reality - they do not. Obviously, any bona fide scientific expert can easily demonstrate that those pundits are wrong. Unfortunately, part of the public will rather believe their favorite pundits - than listen to a valid criticism. Such criticism is immediately dismissed by the lay Right Wing public as a “voice of the Lefty officialdom” and hence it has to be a lie. To be fair, this situation is in large part due to the arrogance of traditional academia that lost any credibility with the Right Wing audience.
Misusing scientific jargon: Narrative creators - either politicians or salesmen - tend to invent “scientifically sounding” neologisms or misuse real scientific terminology to create a sense of authority and legitimacy for their arguments. By using scientific-sounding language, they can make their arguments seem more convincing to those who are not well-versed in the relevant scientific disciplines.
Cherry-picking data: Manipulators frequently use a selected subset of legitimate scientific data to support their arguments, while ignoring or downplaying evidence that contradicts their position. By highlighting only the data that supports their narrative, they can create a false sense of consensus and credibility.
Oversimplifying complex issues: Science can be complex and nuanced, but political narrative creators may present scientific issues in overly simplistic terms that misrepresent the complexity of the subject in a way that promotes their agenda.
Fear-mongering: This is one of the most abhorent ways of manipulating public opinion and assuring compliance. Unscrupulous politicians or activists can easily exploit most basic psychological defense mechanism of fear - by exaggerating the risks associated with treatments, processes or behaviors and/or by playing up the potential consequences of inaction. By doing so they create a sense of urgency that motivates people to act in the desired by them way.
Diminishing the real risks: this is the antithesis of fear-mongering strategy. The public is being told that the probability of dangerous outcomes of certain favored by manipulators treatments, processes or behaviors is much lower than it really is.
Exploiting the abhorrence of uncertainty: It is argued here that this manipulation technique is used most frequently by the narrative creators due to the fact that abhorrence of uncertainty is even more universal psychological trait than response to fear. As discussed below humans have a very low tolerance for uncertainty. Dishonest politicians, predatory grifters and even attention seeking cranks know that the uncertainty is scary for most people. Those nefarious characters are aware that people will flock to the path that promises certainty - especially about things that simply cannot be certain. Hence there are plethora of manipulators who are creating a fantasy world that offers false but reassuring certainty to their followers. They know that one who buys into the comforting fantasy of certainty - will become totally dependent on those who keep that reassuring fantasy going. Hence, those evildoers will have the steady supply of political acolytes, generous clients and ardent fans.
Upon carefully reviewing the above list of manipulation techniques used to create deceptive narratives - one can make a very useful observation. Namely, the resistance to all but the last one technique (that relies on uncertainty) - requires rather advanced level of scientifically literacy and numeracy. However, the last technique - that is also the most overarching of them all - can be actually resisted simply by acceptance of uncertainty. And only minimal level of scientific literacy is required here.
Ideally, to be perfectly resistant to all manipulative narratives, one shall be scientifically literate and numerate in the most advanced manner. However, as explained above only few members of general public have a luxury do do so. In such a context - a recognition of one’s irrational proclivity towards certainty as a detrimental factor appears to be the simplest and most efficient way of being immune to majority of weaponized narratives. This method is not ideal but it is practically achievable without huge investment of time and effort.
Acceptance of Uncertainty
To fully understand why the acceptance of uncertainty is a condition sine qua non to resist political narratives one has to first explore concepts of certainty and uncertainty and understand their psychological significance.
Certainty
Certainty refers to a state of being absolutely convinced or sure about something, without any doubt or uncertainty. It is the quality or condition of being confident or completely assured about a particular belief, proposition, or outcome. Certainty is often used to describe a feeling of comforting complete confidence or trust in something, such as an idea, belief, or decision. However, it's important to note that certainty is very subjective. Being certainty does not indicate that one possesses actual knowledge, irrevocable proof or clear evidence of something. It rathe implies a strong sense of possessing them independently if this is an objective truth or illusion (Ref), (Ref).
Uncertainty
In scientific investigations, uncertainty refers to the degree of imprecision or ambiguity in the measurements or observations made, as well as the low degree of confidence that can be placed in the results obtained (Ref), (Ref). Uncertainty is an essential aspect of science because it helps scientists understand the limitations of their knowledge and the potential sources of error in their experiments and observations. Some thinker like J.H. Baron include uncertainty as the obligatory part of the definition of science: “Science involves the conception and construction of refutable hypotheses, and their testing by repeatable experiments, followed by publication of the results. Thus, science is uncertain, tentative, probabilistic and universal. Every scientific statement remains tentative forever.” (Ref)
However, most people are not scientists conducting investigations. As discussed below in a contrast to scientists - laypeople do not appreciate value of uncertainty. They find it discomforting. They want certain answers and they want them now, as well as they want them to remain unchanged forever. And this attitude is a trap that is being exploited by the manipulative narrative creators.
Craving of Certainty and Abhorrence of Uncertainty
While most humans crave comforts of being certain - certainty represents the ideal that is rarely achievable in real life. In a contrast uncertainty is most prevalent in reality. The questions why people seek certainty and abhor uncertainty was puzzling philosophers and psychologists for centuries. Modern psychology proposes three psychological motives that drive humans to achieving certainty by any means possible (Ref), (Ref):
Epistemic: a desire to make sense of chaos and random events, especially when it is simply impossible to do so.
Existential: the pursuit of safety, security and empowerment, that requires being “certain of how things are”. The uncertainty of real life is common and true but is also scary and discomforting. True certainty is very comforting but it is very rare in real world. Hence, many humans would subconsciously prefer to embrace the delusion certainty to obtain comfort, rather than face the uncertainty.
Social: a desire to be a member of a large group with a shared rigid and therefore “certain” belief system. Stability means predictability and it is comforting as well. Unfortunately the certainty provided by the group is typically false. Despite of this, most humans will accept eagerly that shared delusion. The satisfaction of being certain of things in a group of others who are equally certain is hard to resist. Humans crave to live among people who are likeminded: who think the same way that they do, who believe in the same things and who parrot eagerly the same dogmas.
For the reasons stated above, most people will crave certainty and have a very low tolerance of uncertainty. Members of the public of both progressive (Left Wing) and conservative (Right Wing) don’t want to be uncertain with the same passion. However, they tend to satisfy their desire for certainty in different ways:
Progressives (Left Wingers) seek safe haven from uncertainty by blindly and uncritically believing in their official experts and authorities. “Trust the science” (meaning: accept the opinion of progressive experts as absolute certain) became the one of the most frequently repeated mantras of the Left Wing for a very good psychological reason.
Conservatives (Right Wingers) on the other hand tend to distrust the official experts mainly because majority of these experts belong to the opposing to them political camp (as discussed above). Instead, first they try to seek patterns and meaning in the frequently random and meaningless environment. If the real patterns and meanings cannot be found - some conservatives may conjure them up subconsciously. Subsequently, they they will flock to any pundit - who would eagerly validate those conjunctures and therefore provide them with the illusion of certainty (Ref), (Ref). Hence, ironically, some conservatives who are rightfully very skeptical of the official sources (that obviously lied to them) - tend to show the uncritical trust in any random self-proclaimed “expert” - as long as he claims to be “a conservative dissident scientist” and who tells them exactly what they want to hear. Certainly, there are many honest dissident scientist but this indiscriminate trustfulness can be easily exploited by the nefarious individuals.
Pragmatic Uncertainty Principle
The pitfalls of false certainty and a value of uncertainty were appreciated by many thinkers throughout history. However a modern and systematic approach to those concepts was introduces by the American philosopher Charles Sanders Pierce. Pierce argued that our beliefs are always subject to revision based on new evidence or experience. In other words, what we believe to be true today may be proven false tomorrow. Pierce summarized his theories of uncertainty by introducing the Pragmatic Uncertainty Principle - that posits that there are limits to what we can know with certainty about the world. It postulates that any knowledge we gain about the world is always uncertain to some degree, and that we must accept this uncertainty in order to make meaningful decisions and take proper actions.
Furthermore, Pragmatic Uncertainty Principle propounds that our knowledge is always limited by our methods of inquiry and the tools we use to gather information. Our ability to observe and measure the world is always subject to certain limitations and biases, and we must be aware of these limitations in order to avoid drawing inaccurate and therefore misleading conclusions. The Pragmatic Uncertainty Principle demonstrates that counterintuitively - embracing the discomforting but real uncertainty - will lead to better assessments and better decisions than clinging to comforting but frequently illusory certainty.
The Pragmatic Uncertainty Approach
Based upon the above discussion, the simplest and most efficient way of seeking the truth in times of weaponized narratives is to adopt the approach based upon the Pragmatic Uncertainty principle.
This requires abandoning the comforting but treacherous tendency to seek certainty by automatically accepting any information as absolutely certain and proven based merely upon our intuition, or on trust in the favored by us “experts”. Instead of uncritically believing in one “neat” version of the story - one should start to assign probabilities to all its potential variants - to the best of his abilities acknowledging own deficiencies in terms of scientific literacy and numeracy. In this process, it is necessary to leave the comfort zone of absolute certainty. One cannot know everything all the time and certain things will remain unknown. Yet, despite this uncertainty, one’s diligent guesstimate about what is going on will be more accurate than some made to order narrative prepared by manipulative narrative creators.
Conclusions
There are many crucial questions in the public arena and there are plenty of answers to them that are neatly prepared for the pubic consumption by politicians, pundits and merchants. The problem is that majority of those answers are false and their goal is not to inform the public but to manipulate it. The best method of resisting such manipulation is to become scientifically literate and numerate. However, if this time and effort consuming approach is impractical or infeasible - the next best method to avoid being manipulated is to embrace the described here Pragmatic Uncertainty Approach that favors realistic uncertainty over the comforting but frequently misleading certainty.