Understanding the world well involves synthesizing evidence from disparate sources:
1. Direct experience: if you only believe what you directly witness, you’ll greatly underestimate the diversity of cultures, and literally think the earth is flat.
2. Knowledgeable authority: if you believe whatever your community’s trusted authorities say, then if you were born in a cult you’ll still be in it, and if your authorities become corrupt, they’ll exploit you.
3. Valid reason: if you believe any logical sounding argument that you can’t refute, then your perspective will be determined by the luck of the draw of which clever authors you happened to read the books of first.
4. Scientific experiment: if you only believe what has been demonstrated in a randomized controlled trial, then you’ll never be able to conclude that your spouse loves you, or that a global pandemic could happen again.
5. Lessons from history: History: if you base your beliefs just on what has happened in the past, then you can’t recognize the ways society is becoming dramatically different than it ever was before, and cultural changes that new technology brings.
Too heavily overweighting one of these has been the downfall of many thinkers.
This piece was first written on November 8, 2020, and first appeared on my website on September 25, 2026.
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