Thread by @surrealSanilac, AB HOMINEorPRACTICAL EPISTEMOLOGY: HOW WE REALLY KNOW THINGS, AND HOW THE MEDIA [...]

AB HOMINE

or

PRACTICAL EPISTEMOLOGY: HOW WE REALLY KNOW THINGS, AND HOW THE MEDIA USES THIS TO ABUSE OUR JUDGMENT

a thread by

J. Sanilac

Second Edition

"Epistemology" is the philosophical study of how we know things. The basic concepts aren't complicated.

For instance, we know some things through experimentation, others through logic or intuition, etc.

It sounds nice, except that's not how we ACTUALLY know things.

The way we actually know things, EVEN IN THE SCIENCES, is by "ab homine" thinking, i.e. "from the man."

Anything we haven't directly experienced or deduced we actually "know" because we trust the people or institutions who are telling us it's true.

Argument "ad hominem" is considered a logical fallacy, a fundamental flaw, but ask yourself how many things you know COMPLETELY INDEPENDENTLY from any sources beyond yourself, just on the basis of direct observation and logic.

Very little!

There are an incredible number of examples I could use to explain this to you. Let's start with the simplest one. You're in a room with no windows, your friend comes in and you ask him if it's raining. He says "yes." You assume it's raining because he's your friend.

But suppose a bratty twerp comes in the room and tells you it's raining. Maybe he's just trying to annoy you, maybe he's making something up. In this case you assume it COULD be raining but who knows for sure. You'll have to check yourself.

Simple example, not very interesting. Let's move on to another.

You're in history class and the historian/professor tells you why WWI started. You take notes, listen closely, memorize the answer.

Now you know why WWI started, right?

Well, sort of.

What really happened is that you decided you trust your professor, and so take his explanation on board as "knowledge."

The history preceding WWI is actually immensely complicated. You could research it all yourself. You might have to study it for a few YEARS to confirm his answer. Do you have time? Probably not.

It turns out you're going to decide the whole question on the basis of whether you trust your professor or not.

And he seems like a trustworthy fellow. He's up there in a tweed jacket, speaks confidently, credentialed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Fox_effect#Experiment

Okay, but that's just history. What about science?

Well suppose your physics professor tells you the result of some extremely complicated equations that predict the motion of the storms on Jupiter.

You assume he's right. It's SCIENCE!

But do you have time to check those equations?

Not really, but you assume that he's trustworthy, just like the history professor. His discipline has a record of consistent accuracy. But could they be wrong this time? Perhaps the person who originally worked out the equations was a fraud and no one bothered to look closely.

But what if you're a real professional in the hardest of the hard disciplines. What if you want to prove Fermat's Last Theorem. Surely then you can have absolute, direct knowledge?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Wiles

If the proof is complicated enough so that you can't verify every step personally, then the answer is still NO. If the proof takes seven years and relies on the work of many other people... did you have time to verify every step in the proofs that they did?

And if you didn't have time to verify, then how did you know they were true?

You relied on the trustworthiness of the institution.

You said "signs suggest the institution is working properly, therefore, this is likely to be true."

The classic example is global warming. The partisan disagreement over global warming (no, I'm not going to tell you my opinion) isn't a disagreement over whether science works, but over whether or not a particular branch of science, staffed by actual humans, is trustworthy.

Thus, traditional "epistemology" is of no value, because few people are proposing that the scientific method is wrong. Dissenters argue that "the scientists went down the wrong path and got stuck" or "the scientists are corrupt."

It seems like a science question, but it's a TRUST question.

No one reading this has the physics background AND the time to go verify all of the climate models personally.

Your opinion is a second or third hand index of WHO YOU TRUST.

Now, if even our knowledge of sufficiently advanced sciences (which it is no longer possible for ANYONE to fully verify firsthand) is dependent on trust then a fortiori so is our knowledge of history and current events.

I recently spoke to a friend who had a completely false idea about a particular current event that had been captured on video. His idea derived from mass media headlines, which he trusted. He trusted them because he didn't have time to do the research himself.

I persuaded him to find the video, which, since it had been banned almost everywhere, took him a while. In fact, he only found it on a website that he "didn't trust."

But there it was, and he admitted the media headlines were wrong.

How did the media control his mind before my intervention?

By capturing, and then abusing his trust, and increasing the cost (in time and effort) of finding other sources that would contradict their version of the story with harder evidence.

"Trust control" is one of the most fundamental propaganda techniques used by mass media.

They know we rely on signals of trustworthiness to form our beliefs, and they specialize in COUNTERFEITING those signals.

Think of the nightly news anchor. He's an actor. He doesn't know anything. His purpose for existing is to simulate trustworthiness.

"when both the actor and the scientist presented their material in an engaging, expressive, and enthusiastic manner, the students rated the actor just as positively as the genuine professor....

This lack of correlation between content-coverage and ratings resulting from conditions of strong expressiveness became known as "the Dr. Fox effect."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Fox_effect#Experiment

What goes on with mass media news personalities is similar to the Dr Fox effect.

Simulation of trustworthiness also plays out in the realm of branding. The NY Times has been wrong about important events REPEATEDLY, but people trust it anyway.

Branding is psychologically very powerful, maybe even MORE powerful than individual signals of trustworthiness!

Then the media run the game that they ran on my friend earlier.

They present information that appears trustworthy, and is ubiquitous as well. They repeat it endlessly (another important technique for abusing the way we practically form our beliefs--if we hear something often in seems more likely to be true.

Then censors HIDE (carelessly, but they don't need total censorship) conflicting accounts, increasing the cost of finding them for busy people, so that they just accept the "trustworthy" source.

Naturally, they also make ad hominem arguments against anyone who contradicts them.

In this classic image we see multiple signals of trustworthiness:

--nice suit
--stentorian voice
--sciencey vial
--official venue
--high rank

"It's science, guys!"

Can you see through false signals of trustworthiness?

Not necessarily. Not if someone is REALLY good at faking it.

Is the situation hopeless then?

Not necessarily. You form more accurate opinions partly by triangulating and checking your "trusted" sources on topics you understand better.

It's important to avoid an error common to rationalists, who often fall into the trap of believing that THEIR opinions are based on purer sources of information than the rest of us.

As I've made clear above, NO ONE is exempt from the need to form beliefs based on judgments of trustworthiness.

I'm done. If you didn't like this thread, try this one: https://twitter.com/surrealSanilac/status/1308703076174315520