We are bombarded with misleading or even downright false ‘facts’ all the time. These can range from a sensationalist headline, the claims of quacks and charlatans, or even to more serious absurdities proposed by policy makers. In many cases those ‘facts’ come dressed in what appears to be scientific language.
In an age where science has largely won the battle against superstition and religious dogma, it is not surprising to find those who wish to use it to lend credibility to their dodgy claims. But we give them an easy time, for it seems that even in our post-enlightenment era we still have not fully embraced science’s main tenet:
“we should not believe, or make anyone else believe, any proposition for which there is no evidence whatsoever”.
This simple, yet profoundly radical statement was first made by Bertrand Russell in 1928 but the idea behind it is much older. It forms the basis of a broader way of thinking called rationalism, out of which science emerged. It turns out this type of thinking is all we need if we wish to minimize the risk of being misled. So let us consider in more detail what it means to be a rationalist.
It means having high regard for truth. If something is true then rationalists should believe it, if it is not then they should not. But truth can only be achieved in mathematics; in any other areas, the best we can do is to hold an opinion (or theory) with the same degree of certainty as its evidence can afford. If the truth of a claim is not known then we should be honest and confess ignorance. Believing a falsehood because it is comforting, convenient or even morally beneficial may be tempting at first, but to a rationalist this would amount to intellectual cowardice.
It means allowing evidence to be the source of your opinions. This of course raises the question, what is evidence? It consists of the type of thing that would persuade a scientist to favour one theory over another, or that would convince a jury of the guilt of a defendant. This immediately invalidates opinions based solely on authority, revelation, popular wisdom and newspaper headlines. An opinion should be put to test. Wherever possible you should try to do the testing yourself. If you cannot, then seek the consensus among those who did, like science specialists.
It means being skeptical. Not the kind of radical skepticism that denies the possibility of any knowledge whatsoever, for that would be self-contradictory; radical skeptics would also have to doubt their own skepticism. What is meant is the kind of skeptical attitude that prevents one from holding any opinion with absolute certainty and that treats with suspicion those who fail to do so. It means accepting that even your most deep convictions can be wrong.
And of course it means possessing an irresistible urge to debunk nonsense. Take homeopathy, for example. To this date, and in spite of many tests, no evidence has been presented in support of its claims and there is nothing to suggest there ever will be. Homeopathic remedies are just water, nothing else, prepared according to a magical ritual of extreme dilution. And yet, to the delight of rationalist comedians, many countries in the world pay huge sums of taxpayers’ money to include homeopathy among the treatments available in the public health system.
In a more rational world besides homeopaths, also acupuncturists, chiropractors, creationists, nutritionists, clairvoyants, AIDS and climate change deniers and all other purveyors of nonsense would have a hard time.
Once people start demanding evidence for everything, the world of politics might also benefit from the rationalist treatment. Policies could start to be chosen based on their evidence and not on the wise opinion of politicians and lobby groups. The issue of drug criminalization, for example, despite all the money spent enforcing it in some places shows no sign of slowing drug trafficking or addiction, while in countries like Portugal where drugs were decriminalized, drug addiction and HIV cases fell significantly. Or even the problem of extreme poverty, where evidence shows that simply empowering women with good education, easy access to contraceptives and abortion procedures, can be an effective solution.
What about morality? On one side we have religious heads trying to convince us that the values written in their holy books are all we will ever need. On the other side, we have godless libertarians who claim morality is an inherently relative concept and so will have nothing to do with it. But we could also just view morality in terms of well-being and then use science to find out how we can maximize it. That is exactly the rational take that Sam Harris brought to this discussion recently. This idea is not new but it is only now that we might have the tools to do it properly.
If all this made sense to you, welcome aboard, you too are a rationalist. But now please do get to work, there is a lot of bullshit around.
André Luzardo is a former a PhD student at the Champalimaud Neuroscience Programme and can be found in the blogosphere at this address [in Portuguese].
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