During the Covid pandemic, there were strongly differing opinions about things like social distancing, vaccinations, masks, and so on. Although experts gave recommendations, in most cases with good alignment between them, it was common for people to say that “I did my own research”, and claim a different, generally “better” understanding of any given topic. This phrase was so common that it became a catchphrase that’s still used to highlight people’s tendency to distrust experts.

However, it has also taken on the connotation of bad decision making because experts are generally correct much more often than lay people, and it’s not hard to find examples where someone’s “own research” was wrong. This aspect of the phrase was captured by a popular meme that circulated for a while in which the phrase was on a headstone.

Although this quote was mainly about people investigating Covid-related topics, the principle can be applied elsewhere. And perhaps it illustrates a general tendency for us to approach matters with a level of overconfidence.¹

In general, we form opinions about most matters through our upbringing, associations with other people, life experiences, and so on. Based on the perspectives developed in these ways, we address new topics with the ideological biases that we’ve already developed. In the example above, many people who were wary of government actions to begin with, were then automatically distrustful of their directions regarding the pandemic and preventative measures such as vaccines and masks.

It’s rare that we stop to wonder how it is that we are able to determine the correct perspective on so many topics when so many intelligent, highly educated, committed thinkers and researchers come to different conclusions. Instead, we just assume that we’ve got it right and everyone else is wrong, and even ignore the fact that we sometimes change our own minds over time.

This seems really crazy, imagining that we can out-think people who are much more qualified than us to hold an opinion in some area. Yet we do this all the time. Where it may be a little less crazy is when there is no agreement among subject matter experts. In these cases it may make some sense to have a strong opinion, but we should probably still remain tentative and humble and perhaps think about our opinion as a choice rather than something proven.

One of the places where this shows up is around metaphysics, especially where it touches on things like religion. It’s very common for both religious people and atheists to assert that their perspectives are proven in some sense. But as far as I can tell, it’s definitely not the case that we have such certainty, which is really the point of this blog.

At the end of the day, although I do have some strong opinions about matters of faith, one of the things I’m actually most certain about is that holding dogmatic views is itself a big error.

1. I think these things are a sort of hubris sometimes referred to as the “Dunning-Kruger effect” in which people overestimate their abilities in some domain in which they are not competent. ↩︎