Chapter XXI: Intellectual Honesty | The Philosophy Of Science by Steven Gussman [1st Edition]

        “Bad faith changes everything.”

        – Bret WeinsteinI

        “Trust, but verify.”
        – U.S. President Ronald ReaganII


        Intellectual honesty is one of the most difficult ethics for people to follow, but also one of the biggest non-starters in science.  It is just not optional.  One does not want any amount of trust in science, yet reluctantly concedes that it is necessary methodologically (in-principle, we could all replicate every experiment, in-practice, we cannot do everything for ourselves, and need to rely on the credible reports of others).  Yes, there are experts, but no, they are not authorities.  Science does rely in practice, methodologically, on some small amount of trust because, dollars to donuts, once one implements the scientific process, the reality is that not everyone can perform and replicate every result and experiment for themselves.  It makes no economic sense in terms of resources, including basic opportunity costs of time, so we have had to foster a culture where we can at least trust some basic fundamentals about each other, on average (even, and perhaps especially, among our greatest scientific nemeses).  These norms include initial assumptions like, “this person did not commit fraud—when they reported empirical evidence, it was the actual empirical evidence they measured.”  This is generally followed not just due to the ethics of individuals, but also because the bureaucratic establishment has put a high price on dishonest behaviors like plagiarism and fraud; that is, reporting inaccurate data is dis-incentivized.  Far less so, we should be able to trust that researchers performed their research dispassionately, rather than as a verificationist or activist exercise in confirmation bias.III  Finally, we should be able to take each others' statements at face value, assuming that one is actually saying what oneself believes (and conversely believing what oneself says).  This most basic facet of intellectual honesty is not (and probably cannot be) explicitly policed.  Nevertheless, many researchers (depending on the field) routinely break some of these precepts due to ulterior concerns; though we all do our best to facilitate an environment of trust, and to trust, we also cannot ignore evidence of untrustworthiness.IV  This is why it is important we foster the scientific ethic, and not some political ethic.V  Thus, we see that there is unfortunately some minimal role for trust at play in the scientific process, in-practice (though none at all, in principle).  Such a situation calls for something like former U.S. President Ronald Reagan's favorite Russian proverb: “trust, but verify.”  While we need to foster a scientific society that embodies the scientific ethic and follows the scientific method, there must still be error-correcting recourse for when someone (or some field!) fails to follow it.  Such a mechanism is built into the scientific project by turning it inward on itself.VI  Peer review is meant to facilitate the checking of each other's work among thinkers, arguments towards cohesion with all of the available information, and even evidence-based accusations of fraud or other forms of intellectual dishonesty (though the converse of our insistence on encouraging the following of the scientific ethic, we try to avoid accusations of fraud as a last resort when all other explanations have been explored).VII

        These concerns show up in the methodology implementation rather than in the epistemology interface because of real-world practical constraints.  You will have frauds, liars, and stupid people; not to mention mistakes, errors, and biases even among the smart.  Those who are not intellectually honest are considered to be acting in bad-faith whereas those who are, are acting in good-faith (mistakes and genuinely being wrong are of course permitted under good-faith, and it would be damaging to the scientific ethic to be too harsh on this necessary part of the process).  All too often, though, you'll meet someone—who will often have beautiful credentials, they may hold a PhD or an M.D.—whom acts dishonestly in an argument, seemingly by instinct or otherwise habit.  Either they contradict themselves within an argument, or shamelessly give into confirmation bias in contradiction to known evidence, or they claim to (dis)believe something when it serves some ulterior motive to do so, or they require double-standards of evidence for others (and others' ideas).VIII  Usually, these people are not serious scientists, they are not living their lives with any attempt or true aspiration to participate in discovery, they are merely someone who cherishes a “scientific” identity, the status that comes with it their credentials.  Above all else, such people value looking smart in front of others, and winning an argument at all costs.  I know of no other advise from my miserable experience with these types (and perhaps it is most people) than to avoid and ignore them: one should realize they are playing a different game, by different rules, and that they have designed (or evolved) their social lives such that you cannot, “win,” (or such that they cannot, “lose.”).  Leave trivia night to them, keep your head down, and work towards discovery—in the final analysis, the record will show posterity who played which game, and with what level of success.  Many credentialed people appear to be in cultural echo chambers where their in-group never disagrees with them on certain (particularly political) topics;IX or they may be used to getting the implicit trust of lay-people who treat them as authorities rather than as fallible experts.  In the best case, we can educate even otherwise-lay-people with the epistemological tools to apply scrutiny for themselves; any handsomely credentialed elite should then be able to stand up to that scrutiny by their merit such decorations were allegedly honoring.X  The scientific process should be an actual battle of ideas, not a game of trust and authority between lay-people and technocrats.

        Sometimes people are being intellectually dishonest when they think they are merely following some enlightened path of Socrates—leading their interlocutors around with obfuscating questions, claiming to believe some things you believe, almost like a debate is a kind of fair-trading, and generally treating others with an elitist “teacher-like” air, so as to manipulate them down a certain path.XI  Often, the intellectually dishonest will contradict themselves by revealed preferences—their beliefs in other arguments, and especially the way they live their lives, will be in complete contradiction to what they argue in the abstract debate (and their interlocutor may know this during the conversation, based on their past revealed preferences).  The basic foundation of intellectual honesty is, after all, ordinary honesty.  When people are being dishonest with you, it is impossible to argue with them, and cannot be a productive engagement.  Such behavior simply cannot be interacted with in a scientific way because the dishonest will not participate; these people actually need to be excluded from the process, until they will follow the basic rules of the project; until then, they can only muddy the waters, adding error and bias to a process that is attempting to weed out just such things.XII  I don't take saying this lightly, because one wants science to be democratized and anti-authoritarian, but the epistemology is the point, and it is required one has basic intellectual honesty to enact the scientific methodotherwise one is maximizing the distance between methodology and epistemology, and thereby minimizing the actual science going on.  This could only damage our understanding of the world, and by consequence, our engineering (meaning that those with ulterior motives are probably hurting even their cause more than helping it, in the long run).  Seen in this light, the scientific ethic is much like the general ethic you learned as a child: don't lie, don't misrepresent others' opinions, and don't attack people instead of ideas when doing so is not warranted (there are times we have to attack the character of someone who is evidently unethical, and such evidenced claims are not expressions of the ad hominem fallacy).XIII

        Courageously say what you actually believe, and try to give others the benefit of the doubt in lieu of evidence suggesting otherwise.  Assume (until shown otherwise) that others mean what they say, and that they truly believe their own arguments without ulterior motives, and then try to convince them of your position, using evidence.  Given this ethic, we can have much more constructive conversations.  Here, too, it bares mentioning that you also have to be able to have your mind changed, you have to be moved by genuine evidence.XIV

        One must not let that the fact that truths may be inconvenient to one's other values get in the way of one's scientific belief system.  Do not be worried about the potential for someone to misuse the truth, or what the consequences of the human race being in possession of the truth is, nor what others will think of you for your beliefs; all one could do by worrying about such things is impede progress.XV  Typically, a key feature of world atrocities has been un-truth (in fact, anti-truth);XVI at best, in such scenarios, pseudo-scientific language has been used to lend a patina of objectivity to biases believed for ulterior reasons.


Footnotes:

0. The Philosophy Of Science table of contents can be found, here (footnotephysicist.blogspot.com/2022/04/table-of-contents-philosophy-of-science.html).

I. For B. Weinstein's views on good-faith versus bad-faith (whether or not one is honest about their stated intentions and beliefs), see “Interview Excerpt: Bad Faith Changes Everything - Bret Weinstein” uploaded by YouTube user Ray Notes (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4ak2e8W9Hw) which is an excerpt from “What Happened to the Intellectual Dark Web? Bret Weinstein” by David Fuller and Bret Weinstein (Rebel Wisdom) (2020) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WigprYZPaLc) (though I have not listened to this full podcast). See also "Intellectual Honesty" by Sam Harris (Edge / Harper Perennial) (2017 / 2018) (https://www.edge.org/response-detail/27227) in This Idea Is Brilliant edited by Brockman (pp. 83-85).

II. This is a Russian proverb popularized in the west by U.S. President Ronald Reagan, see “Trust, But Verify” (Wikipedia) (accessed 11/19/2022) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trust,_but_verify).

III. See "Bret and Heather 34th DarkHorse Podcast Livestream: Portland & Covid: What the Hell?" by B. Weinstein and H. Heying (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-U95sRfCKU&t=) (0:44 – 8:47) and “Bret And Heather 36th DarkHorse Podcast Livestream: Doing The Math On Sensemaking” by B. Weinstein and H. Heying (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sg4hKX4obnk) (0:45 – 12:23);

VI. See Cosmos by Sagan and Druyan (pp. xviii, 94, 194); The Demon Haunted World by Sagan (pp. 20-22, 230, 274-275, 414, 423); Cosmos: Possible Worlds by Druyan (pp. 75); The Ape That Understood The Universe by Stewart-Williams (pp. 229-230, 268); Enlightenment Now by Pinker (pp. 7, 11, 26-28, 83, 393, 408-409); "Recursion" by Montague (https://www.edge.org/response-detail/27035) and "Fallibilism" by Curry (https://www.edge.org/response-detail/27192), both from This Idea Is Brilliant edited by Brockman (pp. 61-62, 82-83); "Science Advances By Funerals" by Barondes (https://www.edge.org/response-detail/25386) and "Planck's Cynical View Of Scientific Change" by Mercier (https://www.edge.org/response-detail/25332), both from This Idea Must Die edited by Brockman (pp. 481-485); and "Science Must Destroy Religion" by Harris (https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11122) in What Is Your Dangerous Idea? edited by Brockman (pp. 148-151).

VII. For more on this topic, see the “peer review” chapter.

IX. The concept of “echo chambers” or “information silos” have become popular in the last decade, and I believe it first got to me by way of video game journalist Colin Moriarty.

XI. I have always had an issue with the most extreme version of the Socratic method, which is less about applying scrutiny and more about using sophistry to confuse and obfuscate in a debate. In this August 29th, 2019 tweet, Shapiro argues that The Washington Post was attempting to “cancel” Socrates. I am sympathetic to this fear, as in recent years, I do believe that our great traditions and historical figures have been under unfair attack by, “cancel culture.” Yet when one reads the sentences referencing Socrates that Shapiro is referencing, in “The Problems With Online ‘Debate Me’ Culture” by Donna Zuckerberg (The Washington Post) (2019) (https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/whats-wrong-with-online-debate-me-culture/2019/08/29/c0ec8aa2-c9ca-11e9-8067-196d9f17af68_story.html) (though I have read only the first sentence, and those referencing Socrates), it is clear that D. Zuckerberg is complaining, at least in part, about this same hard-Socraticism that I take issue with, not “canceling” him for some moral failure (although it is also clear that this is a sexist, anti-male rant from someone who wants to be able to state their positions in the public square without anyone freely expressing dissent).

XII. See for example, “Good Faith Vs. Bad Faith - Eric Weinstein” uploaded by YouTube user Let's Save Our Planet, which is an excerpt from “Critics And The Intellectual Dark Web, Eric Weinstein (Sensemaking Series)” by David Fuller and Eric Weinstein (Rebel Wisdom) (2020) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGtWwln491U) (though I do not think I have heard this full podcast). I want to be clear that I am not advocating for any form of top-down censorship; individuals must decide for themselves who is worth their time or not and interact accordingly.

XIII. See Dawkins' (@RichardDawkins) April 25th, 2015 tweet about the utility of ridicule: https://twitter.com/RichardDawkins/status/591923321299705856?s=20&t=sEKIQ0ZhZ1sC1LKSDbKcGg. I was under the impression he made this argument in The God Delusion, but I cannot find it. Journalist Douglas Murray writes the beautiful sentence, “So here is another paradoxical, impossible demand. A person who chooses to be ridiculous without being ridiculed,” see The Madness Of Crowds:Gender, Race And Identity by Douglas Murray (Bloomsbury Continuum) (2019) (pp. 240).

XIV. Harris once argued that, yes, evidence does change some people's minds, see my April 11th, 2018 tweet: https://twitter.com/schwinn3/status/984250499665989633?s=20&t=sEKIQ0ZhZ1sC1LKSDbKcGg, which further cites “#121 — WHITE POWER A Conversation With Christian Picciolini” by Sam Harris and Picciolini (Making Sense) (2018) (https://www.samharris.org/podcasts/making-sense-episodes/121-white-power).

XV. The conflation of what is natural or descriptively true with what is normatively or morally good is known was the naturalistic fallacy, see The Blank Slate by Pinker (pp. 150, 162-164); The Ape That Understood The Universe by Stewart-Williams (pp. 31, 59, 115, 164-165, 284); The Selfish Gene by Dawkins (pp. 260); "Truer Perceptions Are Fitter Perceptions" by Donald D. Hoffman (Edge / Harper Perennial) (2014 / 2015) (https://www.edge.org/response-detail/25450) (which, while I don't agree with Hoffman's extreme version, makes the same point for epistemology) in This Idea Must Die edited by Brockman (pp 467-468); and "The Evolution Of Evil" by David Bus (Edge / Harper Perennial) (2006 / 2007) (https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11925) and "Hodgepodge Morality" by David Pizarro (Edge / Harper Perennial) (2006 / 2007) (https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11745) both from What Is Your Dangerous Idea? edited by Brockman (pp. 7-9, 63-64). See also The Demon Haunted World by Sagan (pp. 259-261, 297, 311) and Letters To A Young Scientist by E. O. Wilson (pp. 240).

XVI. Peterson once exclaimed that postmodernists' claims, 'are not just un-true, they are anti-true,' though I am not sure where to find this clip.

Comments

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