Beyond Belief

One of the relics from a more superstitious era that manages to poison the debate-wells in our (relatively) enlightened times is the word belief.

A religious person would say he believes in God, or he believes that the Earth was created 6000 years ago with Adam and Eve riding dinosaurs shortly thereafter. These beliefs are a psychological commitment to an assertion, however likely or unlikely that assertion may be.

A so-called “rational thinker” may scoff at the simplicity of a religious person’s beliefs, but they often make the very same fallacy that superstitious people do, resulting in all the same negative side-effects. Here is what happens:

1. Rationalist encounters a hotly contested argument – Argument AB.

2. Rationalist weighs the body of evidence on both sides.

3. Rationalist concludes that Side A has more evidence than Side B.

4. Rationalist decides he is a believer in side A.

This is where things go wrong. Rather than simply remembering that Side A simply had a more convincing case at the point in time whereupon our protagonist reviewed the evidence, Rationalist instead decided to stake belief in the Side he found more likely.

be·lief : 1. The mental act, condition, or habit of placing trust or confidence in another: My belief in you is as strong as ever. 2. Mental acceptance of and conviction in the truth, actuality, or validity of something: His explanation of what happened defies belief.3. Something believed or accepted as true, especially a particular tenet or a body of tenets accepted by a group of persons.

// Synonyms: belief, credence, credit, faith

It often does not matter whether the Rationalist staked his belief in something only 55% more likely than the alternative . The word belief was born and raised  in a black and white world of Good and Evil, Right and Wrong, of intellectual Authority and Submission. Let’s watch what happens next to our Rationalist:

5.  Skeptic presents evidence that counters Rationalist’s new belief  – and may even tip the scales in favor of Side B!

6. Rationalist, now psychologically invested in Side A, has a non-rational, visceral reaction to Skeptic, and foams at the mouth like a Catholic priest encountering the work of Galileo. An unproductive flame war (Inquisition) ensues! (we’ll ignore the fact for now that our Skeptic may just be another kind of believer, and that more often than not, self-proclaimed Rationalists are merely parroting other members of their intellectual tribe instead of actually doing steps 2-3)

It’s my opinion that too many people still think in the old religious manner of belief and non-belief. If we expand our minds to think in a more probabilistic Bayesian fashion, then we can avoid the emotional shock of encountering evidence that shakes our deeply held beliefs – since any such beliefs will become almost non-existant.

I find thinking in such a way allows me to explore the arguments of various unorthodox (and ridiculed) possibilities. What I often find is that while unorthodox Position X is unlikely to be true, I subjectively assess the actual odds of X’s truthiness at much higher levels than someone would who thinks only in terms of 0% and 100%. The implications of this are significant: With 5 unorthodox Position X’s at 20% probability-of-truth, any one of them is still unlikely to be true, but chances are one of them is.

I think we need a new word to replace “belief”. Is there a word out there that conveys acceptance of something found more likely to be true, without all the dogmatic psychological baggage of belief?