Disclaimer: Enuff is built on exploring how we can make the best choices the easiest choices.
By “best choices,” we mean choices that abide by Seventh Generation Thinking, prioritize community health and wellbeing, and honor the complexity of life.
By “easy,” we mean to measure the difficulty of a task without regard for time, through a fluid lens, and with a focus on impact (not effort).
If you’re new, take some time to dive into the links above. This publication is a slow burn, so don’t feel anxious about digging immediately into the content below. It’s not going anywhere!
The Challenge
To establish rules for applying a healthy skepticism to any and all information we encounter—be it from an external source or our internal conversations.
The Summary
Even with the ground rules established for distinguishing what constitutes a “best choice” and what makes something “easy,” there is another big hairy question: What sources can I rely on when sorting out what the “best choice” is (and avoid confirmation bias)?
I need some guiding principles for encountering information with healthy skepticism. And, it’s going to take multiple weeks to do it. If you have any resources or thoughts you’d like to add to this exploration, leave a comment!
13 years before passing at the age of 53, René Descartes penned one of his most influential treatise, Discourse on the Method, where he laid out four principles he used to guide his own skepticism.
His first principle is one I will absolutely adopt: “…never to accept anything for true which I did not clearly know to be such…”
The second and third principles promote breaking things down into their smallest parts and exploring the most easily accessible pieces first. I don’t sit well with these and won’t be adopting them outright (I’m open to finding value in them as this exploration continues).
The fourth principle, for me, isn’t necessarily something I would consider as a principle for skepticism. Rather, it’s more a principle for how to present information. And, I’m definitely interested in adopting it as a rule for how I present information in Enuff.
So, as things currently stand, there is one principle for being a healthy skeptic that I currently find right in adopting:
All new information is just information. It has no “truth” to it until I’m able to take the initiative and determine its validity through my own research and self-reflection.
For the full story on why skepticism is my current project of choice and to learn more about Descartes’ Discourse on the Method, explore below!
The Dig
This was supposed to be a post about sleep. But, a couple of weeks ago, this guy named Alexey Guzey threw that plan in the trash.
After spending a good 15 hours listening (and taking notes) to the audio version of Why We Sleep (purposefully not linking to it) by Dr. Matthew Walker, I realized I didn't do any real vetting of the book itself. I went into it trusting that a guy who founded the Center for Human Sleep Science at Berkley and gave an enticing talk at Google would be A-OK.
Call me a fool. (Seriously, head over to Twitter, @expertlypaul, and lay it on me.)
I headed over to the one-star reviews of the book on Amazon to see what people might be fussing about and there were multiple mentions about this Alexey Guzey guy. Apparently, he had some dirt that needed to be examined.
And dirt there was.
For two months, Guzey dug into the first chapter of Why We Sleep and found a laundry list of hyperbole, data manipulation, and outright lies. Worst of all, because I was listening to the book (not reading), I had no idea Dr. Walker didn’t provide any kind of bibliography.
This is insane.
How does a guy who has published over 100 research papers write a book that references sleep experiments from him and other researchers around the world and not provide a bibliography?
Well, when you go to his personal website where he calls himself the “Sleep Diplomat,” the cringe sets in a bit. We might have a glutton for notoriety on our hands.
Ok, enough about Dr. Walker.
A bigger issue began settling in for me. An issue I had battled with for years and thought I had finally settled.
I’ve always known going to the original source is the most appropriate way to dig into any topic of interest. But, when time is short and topics are many, trusting an expert here and there seemed like a fair call.
Afterall, reading a single book on sleep that is packed with (what appears to be) rich and robust information is far more efficient than laboring my way through myriad research articles (not to mention the time spent just trying to find free ways to access them in the first place) only to feel more lost than when I started.
Starting with trust felt right.
But, I have trust issues. Meaning, I trust people way more than they deserve. Meaning, someone could walk up to me, cool as the other side of the pillow with blood all over their clothes, ask for a ride home, and I would feel rather inclined to oblige (because look how good of a person I am).
I need to strike a better balance.
For whatever reason, this most recent happening was the final straw. Now, I’m on an unexpected journey to balance my trust out with some principles around healthy skepticism. I specify “healthy” to avoid overcorrecting and developing into an outright cynic.
Say Hello to René Descartes (1596-1650)
Shortly after the sleep debacle, I spoke with a good friend (a Ph.D. candidate himself) about my desire to explore what it means to be a healthy skeptic. He recommended reading René Descartes’ Discourse on the Method (fun fact: this is the original source of his famous quote: “I think, therefore I am.”)
Life happened for two weeks, and then I dove in.
I’m a slow reader, so reading an old philosophical text where run-on sentences are a badge of honor is a bit taxing. But, I absolutely loved reading this treatise.
Descartes, at least in his writing, was incredibly humble:
“For myself, I have never fancied my mind to be in any respect more perfect than those of the generality”
“After all, it is possible I may be mistaken; and it is but a little copper and glass, perhaps, that I take for gold and diamonds.”
“I hope it will prove useful to some without being hurtful to any, and that my openness will find some favor with all.”
And, he had a poetic nature to his thinking:
“…large towns are usually but ill laid out compared with the regularity constructed towns which a professional architect has freely planned on an open plain; so that although the several buildings of the former may often equal or surpass in beauty those of the latter, yet when one observes their indiscriminate juxtaposition, there a large one and here a small, and the consequent crookedness and irregularity of the streets, one is disposed to allege that chance rather than any human will guided by reason must have led to such an arrangement.”
“I am quite sure that the most devoted of the present followers of Aristotle would think themselves happy if they had as much knowledge of nature as he possessed, were it even under the condition that they should never afterwards attain to higher. In this respect they are like the ivy which never strives to rise above the tree that sustains it, and which frequently even returns downwards when it has reached the top; for it seems to me that they also sink, in other words, render themselves less wise than they would be if they gave up study...”
And, he had a self-awareness that is laudable:
“I observed, besides, that an inquiry of this kind was of all others of the greatest moment, and one in which precipitancy and anticipation in judgment were most to be dreaded, I thought that I ought not to approach it till I had reached a more mature age (being at that time but twenty-three), and had first of all employed much of my time in preparation for the work, as well by eradicating from my mind all the erroneous opinions I had up to that moment accepted, as by amassing variety of experience to afford materials for my reasonings, and by continually exercising myself in my chosen method with a view to increased skill in its application.”
One thing to mention about this treatise is that Descartes is driven by finding undeniable truths—those that will stand the test of time. That is not my focus with Enuff.
When it comes to making the “best choice,” we can only act on the information available to us. Today, we poison people in an attempt to save them from cancer—it’s the best of what we currently know. Sometime in the future, we will place this practice in the same medieval category as bloodletting (a practice that likely killed George Washington—a story I first learned about from Allan Cohen).
I mention Descartes’ intentions as they make reading his four precepts for arriving at “true knowledge” a different experience.
Here is the non-paraphrased version:
The first was never to accept anything for true which I did not clearly know to be such; that is to say, carefully to avoid precipitancy and prejudice, and to comprise nothing more in my judgment than what was presented to my mind so clearly and distinctly as to exclude all ground of doubt.
The second, to divide each of the difficulties under examination into as many parts as possible, and as might be necessary for its adequate solution.
The third, to conduct my thoughts in such order that, by commencing with objects the simplest and easiest to know, I might ascend by little and little, and, as it were, step by step, to the knowledge of the more complex; assigning in thought a certain order even to those objects which in their own nature do not stand in a relation of antecedence and sequence.
And the last, in every case to make enumerations so complete, and reviews so general, that I might be assured that nothing was omitted.
Here is how I read it:
All information is just information until it can be properly examined through my own research and self-reflection.
Break big things down to small things to make better sense of the big things.
Bring order to the chaos and tackle what looks most verifiable first and build up to the more complicated pieces.
Be complete. Own where your thoughts, ideas, and stories come from.
I’m fanboying over the first principle and will definitely be adding it to my list of what I think should guide a healthy skeptic.
The next two have caused a significantly different reaction. In my current line of work, we talk a lot about emergence, which is beautifully described by Margaret Wheatley:
“Emergence violates so many of our Western assumptions of how change happens that it often takes quite a while to understand it. In nature, change never happens as a result of top-down, pre-conceived strategic plans, or from the mandate of any single individual or boss. Change begins as local actions spring up simultaneously in many different areas. If these changes remain disconnected, nothing happens beyond each locale. However, when they become connected, local actions can emerge as a powerful system with influence at a more global or comprehensive level.”
If I hold the belief that “if changes remain disconnected, nothing happens beyond each locale,” then I can’t solely approach evaluating information by breaking it down into more digestible pieces. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts, which means the parts cannot fully explain the whole.
The fourth principle is simply how I want to approach the presentation of information—complete and transparent. If I choose to extrapolate or infer, I want to be intentional about what I credit to my source and what I claim as my addition so if my addition is much weaker, the original source isn’t taken down with me.
And, just as I did above when mentioning the George Washington story in parentheses, I want to be ruthless in citing where I originally picked up my information. Of course, there are times where we have held onto some knowledge for so long that it will be difficult to give credit where credit is due. But, if the source is clear in my head, I will make it known on paper.
This is as good of a stopping point as any. I made quite a few notes about Discourse on the Method that I may or may not bring to the table next week. I’ll be diving into Cicero’s Academica next, which focuses on academic skepticism. Stay tuned!