Thank you for this interesting, thoughtful article. I agree with your criticism of Rasmussen. I don't believe with their statement that they thought their question, "should be uncontroversial.” They had to know this would result in divided results, and their use of the word "should" suggests bias by itself.
I also don't know why Adams would sabotage his career. Maybe he has plenty of money and decided to let his a long-hidden racist attitude out. I hope the public turns away from his work and gives him what he deserves.
Excellent article. The ironic thing is that being overly certain *looks* confident, but it can easily signify insecurity. But being able to admit "I don't know" or "I'm not sure" or "I need to learn more" often requires a different kind of confidence.
Absolutely right. I was once asked by a young woman who works in a macho environment full of bluster how she could keep her confidence level calibrated realistically while still surviving in that environment. I told her it takes confidence to avoid bluster in that environment. She just needed to communicate that confidence. Hence, when expressing uncertainty, express it confidently.
Hi Dan, I myself directly applied a WYSINATI to the story of Adams. I am not particularly interested in his comments, he is just a great cartoonist and author of the office life. I try not to take a persons most recent comments or actions to colour my view of them, rather stick to the whole story.
With regard to the lab leak hypothesis, the issue is not whether it is true, false, or uncertain. The issue is that even raising it as a possibility during the ~2020-2022 timeframe was enough to get one banned, condemned, and/or ignored. The basic question under dispute was free speech, not epistemic uncertainty.
Well, it's possible to have more than one issue in play. But more fundamentally, I would suggest what you raise is very much entwined with our tendency to sweep aside uncertainty in favour of certainty: Why were the people who insisted it was outrageous to even mention the possibility so sure it was untrue? Their confidence was out of all proportion to the available evidence, which is to say, they replaced the abundant and evident uncertainty with certainty.
Good point. But even if they were unjustifiably certain, why the need to suppress the allegedly false view? For example, no one feels the need to ban blatantly wrong views such as the flat earth theory. We let the kooks have their say, laugh at them, and move on.
This makes me think that the "certainty" and stridency of the lab leak deniers (by which I mean those who denied even the possibility of a leak) was somehow counterfeit, or motivated by factors other than a desire to understand the truth. I concede that hatred of uncertainty might have been part of it.
In my more than seventy years about the only thing that I have learned with certainty is that I don't know much of anything and, as a result, the daily news never fails to amuse and surprise me (in both the negative but also the positive). My point is that I continue to learn about the world and the people who live in it. Sometimes those people live down to my already low expectations and sometimes the wildly exceed expectations but always they find ways to surprise me.
I'll leave theory to very clever people like old Bertrand. As a practical matter, for the things that concern ordinary folk, "nothing is certain" works.
In my early youth I was confronted with so many clear statements of adults. Every time I expressed my feeling that there were some gray areas I was « comforted « with ‘yes there are some exceptions’. I concluded that exceptions were giving adults the excuses they needed to be always right. Later, in my professional career I started to spend my time in maybe- and most likely- and less likely-land. I love your pictures of a dial. This should be applied to every report on laboratory analytical results e.g. blood analysis or blood pressure, rather than giving you ranges of ‘normal’. More like that dial on my stove: I turn it up too high and my eggs burn, set it too low they never get to the necessary firmness.
I wonder whether pundits and politicians have over the past ten to twenty years found a way to use these traits. It strikes me that in the past there was greater attention paid to the need to be truthful. Or at least time was spent crafting statements in a manner that made them more nuanced, even when trying to bend the truth. For example, in the US we have heard constant statements hammering home the idea that its southern border is open. Any subtlety about what that means is lost as those citizens who are supporters or concerned about illegal immigration adopt the belief that this is true. Yet, even minuted later the same commentators will note (negatively) the large increase in drug seizures at the border which should lead to at least a tweaking of the view that the border is complete open.
Similarly, politicians and the media offer little context when describing situations with nuance and doubt built in. The use of the term ‘broken’ with respect to Canada, can lead to a view that the country is well on its way to being a failed state. Or recent references to Canada never having been more ‘divided’ leaves the impression that we have somehow been equally split between those supporting and opposing vaccines and pubic health measures to address the pandemic. Politicians have certainly always tried to argue that a majority of Canadians support their point of view even when that cannot demonstrably be true but it is easier now to get away with if we base such contentions on ill-defined terms in polls about Canada being ‘broken’.
Thank you for this interesting, thoughtful article. I agree with your criticism of Rasmussen. I don't believe with their statement that they thought their question, "should be uncontroversial.” They had to know this would result in divided results, and their use of the word "should" suggests bias by itself.
I also don't know why Adams would sabotage his career. Maybe he has plenty of money and decided to let his a long-hidden racist attitude out. I hope the public turns away from his work and gives him what he deserves.
Excellent article. The ironic thing is that being overly certain *looks* confident, but it can easily signify insecurity. But being able to admit "I don't know" or "I'm not sure" or "I need to learn more" often requires a different kind of confidence.
Absolutely right. I was once asked by a young woman who works in a macho environment full of bluster how she could keep her confidence level calibrated realistically while still surviving in that environment. I told her it takes confidence to avoid bluster in that environment. She just needed to communicate that confidence. Hence, when expressing uncertainty, express it confidently.
Hi Dan, I myself directly applied a WYSINATI to the story of Adams. I am not particularly interested in his comments, he is just a great cartoonist and author of the office life. I try not to take a persons most recent comments or actions to colour my view of them, rather stick to the whole story.
With regard to the lab leak hypothesis, the issue is not whether it is true, false, or uncertain. The issue is that even raising it as a possibility during the ~2020-2022 timeframe was enough to get one banned, condemned, and/or ignored. The basic question under dispute was free speech, not epistemic uncertainty.
Well, it's possible to have more than one issue in play. But more fundamentally, I would suggest what you raise is very much entwined with our tendency to sweep aside uncertainty in favour of certainty: Why were the people who insisted it was outrageous to even mention the possibility so sure it was untrue? Their confidence was out of all proportion to the available evidence, which is to say, they replaced the abundant and evident uncertainty with certainty.
Good point. But even if they were unjustifiably certain, why the need to suppress the allegedly false view? For example, no one feels the need to ban blatantly wrong views such as the flat earth theory. We let the kooks have their say, laugh at them, and move on.
This makes me think that the "certainty" and stridency of the lab leak deniers (by which I mean those who denied even the possibility of a leak) was somehow counterfeit, or motivated by factors other than a desire to understand the truth. I concede that hatred of uncertainty might have been part of it.
Dan, first, thank you for this thoughtful column.
In my more than seventy years about the only thing that I have learned with certainty is that I don't know much of anything and, as a result, the daily news never fails to amuse and surprise me (in both the negative but also the positive). My point is that I continue to learn about the world and the people who live in it. Sometimes those people live down to my already low expectations and sometimes the wildly exceed expectations but always they find ways to surprise me.
Have you bumped into Russell’s paradox with your prediction that no prediction is 0% likely and no prediction is 100% likely to be accurate?
I'll leave theory to very clever people like old Bertrand. As a practical matter, for the things that concern ordinary folk, "nothing is certain" works.
In my early youth I was confronted with so many clear statements of adults. Every time I expressed my feeling that there were some gray areas I was « comforted « with ‘yes there are some exceptions’. I concluded that exceptions were giving adults the excuses they needed to be always right. Later, in my professional career I started to spend my time in maybe- and most likely- and less likely-land. I love your pictures of a dial. This should be applied to every report on laboratory analytical results e.g. blood analysis or blood pressure, rather than giving you ranges of ‘normal’. More like that dial on my stove: I turn it up too high and my eggs burn, set it too low they never get to the necessary firmness.
I wonder whether pundits and politicians have over the past ten to twenty years found a way to use these traits. It strikes me that in the past there was greater attention paid to the need to be truthful. Or at least time was spent crafting statements in a manner that made them more nuanced, even when trying to bend the truth. For example, in the US we have heard constant statements hammering home the idea that its southern border is open. Any subtlety about what that means is lost as those citizens who are supporters or concerned about illegal immigration adopt the belief that this is true. Yet, even minuted later the same commentators will note (negatively) the large increase in drug seizures at the border which should lead to at least a tweaking of the view that the border is complete open.
Similarly, politicians and the media offer little context when describing situations with nuance and doubt built in. The use of the term ‘broken’ with respect to Canada, can lead to a view that the country is well on its way to being a failed state. Or recent references to Canada never having been more ‘divided’ leaves the impression that we have somehow been equally split between those supporting and opposing vaccines and pubic health measures to address the pandemic. Politicians have certainly always tried to argue that a majority of Canadians support their point of view even when that cannot demonstrably be true but it is easier now to get away with if we base such contentions on ill-defined terms in polls about Canada being ‘broken’.
That you start off with an attack on Scott Adams was only to be expected.