Skepticism

I used to think that whatever I read on news outlets and expert-looking blogs was the truth. Even just six months ago, this was still the case. But now I'm slowly starting to see how these authorities of information and opinion should almost always be seen with skepticism.

There are many outlets of information in our world today. Newspapers, magazines, blogs, tv shows, news channels, radio broadcasts, podcasts, ... the list is long. It's hard to spend a few hours without encountering some form of this information thrown at us as we go about our business. This flood of information, combined with our preoccupation with life's mundane but ubiquitous tasks, makes it easy for us to suspend critical thought about the words we are receiving. It is all too easy to let an argument pass through straight into our brains, without giving it a second thought. I guess the more sensationalist phrase would be "Brain Dead".

But in order to truly live in today's world of hyperinformationism, it is imperative to see everything with a skeptical eye. There is no authority to which you can give absolute trust. We're increasingly subject to biased words and positioned phrases. In a way, there is no such things as absolute truths. Only relative truths, otherwise known as perspectives, exist.

I suspect that part of why this has been such a problem for myself personally, is that I have a tendency to take things at face value. I typically believe what people say; I certainly don't follow the doubt first approach. As a function of this behavior, I have realized that I am incredibly bad at detecting sarcasm.

How did I manage to start looking at things with a skeptical eye? I think there were two aspects to this. The first was that I started to regularly engage in critical discussions with friends. Receiving and dishing out doubts and criticisms slowly re-ingrained the idea of thinking by and for myself into my brain.

The second, of all things, was reading John Gruber's blog. Gruber, while he himself a supposed expert, regularly lambastes other so called experts in his writing. While this may surely seem like a trivial fact to some, it showed me that these supposed experts can be convincingly shown that they are not always right. If they are not always right, then by extension they could always be wrong. If they could always be wrong, then I would always have to ask myself,

*"Is what I'm reading B.S., or does it actually make sense to the best of my knowledge? Does the guy's logic actually make sense, or is he using smoke and mirrors to mask his unfounded thoughts?

As some of you may recall, I have started to read the Economist regularly. The other day, I was reading an article when I thought,

"That's nonsense. That fact he's claiming is at best a partial truth and a carefully selected piece of information. I could definitely find another economic statistic that would undermine his claim."

So there it was. I was able to throw away my sheepskin and engage in critical thought as part of my regular reading routine. This kind of doubt towards the material doesn't arise in me nearly as often as it should (I do have a long ways to go), but to be able to fire at as venerable a publication as the Economist should be an indicator for my increased capacity for skepticism. To me it's a reason to be pleased with my so called progress.

Everyone has an agenda. We do too. Our agenda as individuals is to be aware of how and why we are being swayed by the new information that comes our way. Our desire is to stay intellectually independent and free - to avoid becoming sheep in the growing herd of blind followers in the world.