The problems with Libertarianism

Some of my best friends are libertarian, but I don’t hold it (too much) against them. Libertarianism appears to be very popular these days, especially among Republicans who wish to pretend to be anti-big government and yet are ashamed of eight years of huge government deficit and interference in personal life under W. Unfortunately, there are several problems with being a libertarian, perhaps the major one being that it is hard to say what exactly a libertarian is.

I actually spent quite some time wading through the bewildering taxonomy of libertarian-like positions, and finally came up with a complicated tree-like “concept map” that summarizes the basics. First off, you know how they say that in politics the extremes are often close enough to touch each other? Well, you can’t get any further on the two sides of the political spectrum as leftist anarchists and libertarians, and yet both are major branches of Libertarianism in the broad sense. How’s that for strange bedfellows?





There is, of course, a major difference between the two branches of Libertarianism: one is non-propertarian (i.e., they don’t believe in private property), the other is propertarian (for them private property is a fundamental human right). Interestingly, Noam Chomsky has pointed out that everywhere in the world except in the United States, being a libertarian means falling into the non-propertarian group, so that most libertarians in the US are actually not libertarian by the historical standards of the rest of the world.

Confused? Hold on, we are just getting started. It would seem natural to think of non-propertarian as leftist and of propertarians as conservatives, but it ain’t that simple. True, all non-propertarians are in fact left-leaning, including Chomsky’s favorite ideology, anarcho-syndicalism. These are people that fight for the individualization of the means of production, similar to socialists and communists, but unlike the latter, are strongly against state control (they are anarchists, after all!). Moreover, they think that natural resources are a common good to be shared, hence their stance against private ownership of things like land, water, and energy. Needless to say, I have extreme sympathy for this position, though I think it overestimates humans’ ability to live peacefully and to respect each other’s rights.

It is also true that many propertarians (which are often referred to broadly as “anarcho-capitalists” — not an oxymoron!) are conservative: they want a strong national defense (though they do often question aggressive military action against other countries), they endorse a conservative life style (though they do not seek to impose it by law), and they think that big business is the victim of state intervention. They are not as bad as actual religious fundamentalists, but I wouldn’t want to spend an evening in such company.

Then again, there are some propertarians who are in fact rather progressive in terms of their social attitudes (the above mentioned friends of mine who are libertarian tend to fall into this category). Not only they are against war, but oppose policies that foster impoverishment of large sections of the population, as well as any form of oppression, including in the workplace (some of them are even known to support trade unions!).

And what, you might say, about Objectivism? That’s the so-called “philosophy” espoused by non-philosopher (but highly successful fiction writer) Ayn Rand, who is often invoked by libertarians as their idol (especially by leftist libertarians). Interestingly, the two top selling books of all time in the United States are the Bible and Atlas Shrugged, from which simple observation an entire book could be written on American culture.

Well, it turns out that Rand herself despised libertarianism, referring to it as a threat to freedom and capitalism! (She despised many things, including everyone who disagreed with her.) Objectivists accuse libertarians of adopting a toothless form of Objectivism. That’s because objectivists loath any type of anarchism, including anarcho-capitalism, and think that state government is absolutely necessary, if in limited fashion. On the other side of the divide, Nick Gillespie, the editor of Reason magazine (a libertarian publication), has gone so far as to say that he is positively embarrassed by the common association with Ayn Rand and her followers. Ouch.

And then there is the dark side of things, like the infamous episode of the “Chicago Boys,” a group of libertarian economists trained at the University of Chicago who provided active, and in fact crucial, assistance to the illegitimate government of Augusto Pinochet in Chile, thereby supporting a tyranny that ended up being responsible for the death of 3,000, the incarceration or torture of another 28,000, and the suspension of civil liberties in that country for a decade and a half. Not exactly a record of which to be proud, my libertarian friends. (Of course, some excuse this sort of thing by pointing out that Chile went through a reasonably good economic time under Pinochet, which to me only further proves how uncompassionate libertarians tend to be.)

All libertarian positions, it seems to me, have the same fundamental problem in common: they do not take human nature seriously. (Yes, I know that it is politically incorrect these days to talk about such a thing as “human nature,” but I’m thinking of the general outlines of what makes us human, not of rigid biological determinism. And at any rate, that’s another conversation.) The problem is that any anarchist position — be it propertarian or not — simply puts too much trust in humans’ ability to live a good and reasonable life without societal checks and balances. For all our cooperative instincts, we are still too darn selfish and greedy for that to work. Moreover, modern societies are made of millions, often hundreds of millions, of individuals, and on that scale a society simply cannot exist without a functional government. That, of course, is not to say that we should give the government any more power than is strictly necessary, but the libertarian’s view of “strictly necessary” seems unreasonably, well, restrictive.

Which brings me to the crucial issue of rights. Propertarians see life, liberty and property as the fundamental rights of human beings. Non-propertarians agree on life, but think that real liberty comes only when one has free access to natural resources, which in turns means that property needs to be limited. We can have a long debate about what rights we ought to respect, or have to give priority to, but for me it is inevitable to feel that the propertarian position ends up looking mean and uncaring: according to a libertarian, if I own water on my land, and you are dying of thirst, it is my right to hold on to my resource unless you can pay for it (this example was actually brought up to me by a libertarian friend of mine). Of course, many libertarians would say that they are compassionate beings, so they would give the water away under those circumstances. Besides the reasonable skepticism one can have about “compassionate -isms”, they are still missing the point: I don’t think you have the right to withdraw a vital resource from another human being, even if in practice you are willing to gift it to them.

At any rate, given the complex structure and deep contradictions of the libertarian universe, at the very least, libertarians should all do us the following favors: first, don’t label yourself a libertarian, unless you are willing to tell us, at a minimum, whether you are a propertarian or non-propertarian; second, if you are a propertarian, ask yourself why so many people think your ideology is uncharitable, and see whether you shouldn’t reconsider it, at least a little. Lastly, please do not invoke Ayn Rand, she wouldn’t like it one bit.

Massimo's picks

* Guess what? There is scientific evidence that being nice to people makes for a better world. And you'll personally feel better about it.

* Teen birth rates are highest in States with high levels of fundamentalist religiosity. Imagine that.

* The American working class is angry. They have good reasons. But they are five years too late.

* Classic debates: Jonathan Wells vs. Yours Truly on evolution and intelligent design.

* Philosopher Julian Baggini on living a good life without children.

* Does post-modernism imply moral relativism? Here is a (perhaps too) charitable interpretation.

* Reflections on the financial crisis, from a philosophical perspective.

Dear Penn and Teller: Bullshit!

I like Penn & Teller, the magicians and debunkers of pseudoscience and general inanity. I regularly use clips from their show in my critical reasoning class, despite cringing every time Penn indulges in his “fuck this” and “motherfucker that” exercise in free speech (it distracts the students from the real point, not to mention the always lurking possibility of an administrator asking me about the appropriateness of foul language in a philosophy class). Heck, I even recently went to Vegas to see them in person, had a photo taken with Teller, and managed to tell him (to his surprise) about how my students enjoy stimulating discussions triggered by the duo’s antics.

But as we have learned recently from the Atheist Alliance / Dawkins Foundation / Bill Maher fiasco, “skepticism” is sometimes too broad a label, as someone can be properly skeptical in politics but not about pseudoscience (Maher), while someone else may be great at debunking astrology and magnetic therapy, and yet also unable to shed some huge blinders when it comes to politically charged issues. The latter is, unfortunately, P&T’s case, as made excruciatingly clear by the 2008 (season 6) episode “Being Green” of Bullshit! I just watched it last night, and I found myself wanting to call up Penn to let go a few expletives of my own. Fortunately, I don’t have his phone number.

P&T have been very good at showing that just because one is concerned about the environment it doesn’t mean that one can think critically or act rationally. Their demonstration of well meaning environmentalists signing up to ban the “dangerous and ubiquitous” chemical known as dihydrogen monoxide (i.e., water) is priceless. In “Being Green” they pull off some of the same useful cautionary tales by showing how easily people can be duped by “green guilt” into all sorts of nonsense, like walking around with gravel (for which they paid real money) in their pockets in order to feel “connected with the earth.” Even more disturbingly, the episode raises some serious questions about large scale exploitation of pro-environment sentiment by web-based companies selling “carbon offsets” that are calculated in ways which the companies themselves have a hard time explaining.

But you know even our smart debunkers are running out of arguments when they choose to introduce former Vice President and Nobel winner Al Gore as an “asshole.” Again, there may be some legitimate criticism of Gore’s arguments and even tactics, but to give him the same treatment Penn & Teller usually reserve for real assholes, like con artists who sell snake oil to gullible people, just seems the kind of ad hominem attack that reflects badly on the attacker.

And going back to the issue of carbon offsets for a moment. It is one thing to alert people that they need to look into the companies that offer them, how the offsets are calculated, and how they are used. But P&T explicitly compare these offsets to the indulgences to avoid hell that were sold by the Catholic Church during the Middle Ages (and which eventually helped bring about Martin Luther’s Reformation and the rise of Protestantism). I admit that it is funny to see P&T in medieval church garments, but really? Do they seriously mean to imply that the two are on the same level? Hell doesn’t exist, and the Vatican is a corrupt operation for making money and inducing misery (as P&T themselves masterfully showed in a more recent episode of their series), but we really are fucking up (to use Penn’s florid language) with the environment, and it is no joke.

Except, of course, that P&T’s libertarian blinders simply do not allow them to accept something that is so obvious to anyone who looks at the data and listens to the actual experts in atmospheric science: yes, Penn, global warming is happening; and yes, Teller, a good part of it is caused by human beings. Instead, the best P&T can do is to resuscitate a television weather man from the 1970s to assure us that global warming is a myth. And of course we have the predictable appearance of a guy from a libertarian think tank (the Cascade Policy Institute), who has no credentials that we know of, except being President of said think tank. (Note to self: create own think tank and declare yourself President. Make sure to have web site and business card. No thinking is actually necessary.) Needless to say, no one with a knowledgeable alternative viewpoint is presented during the show.

Instead, our libertarian heros keep telling us to relax, enjoy life, and drive SUVs, despite showing at the beginning of the episode a good number of frightening examples of all too real environmental destruction. Even Penn and Teller, however, have limits. Right at the end of the show, Penn enters a confessional (again with the Catholic Church!) and admits that he isn’t sure that there isn’t global warming, and that he isn’t positive that humans don’t cause it. But he tells us that even if that were true, heck, nobody knows what to do about it, so once again, go out and party all night long, because somehow technology and the god of free markets will solve every problem for us.

That, my dear Penn and Teller, truly is Bullshit!

Massimo's picks

* Olivia ("Dr. Tatiana") Judson on why British libel law is bad for science and for democracy.

* I'm sure you knew this, but guess what? Men literally lose their mind when they talk to an attractive woman...

* Whole Foods, not quite as progressive as you may think.

* New Scientist put out a pretty controversial blueprint for a better world. It includes ideas like moving to a city, vaccinate your kids, and liberalize drugs.

* The website Science-Based Medicine publishes a (long) in-depth critique of Bill Maher. He is funny, and his politics may be on the mark, but don't trust him with your health!

* Wearing condoms can actually help combat climate change. I'm not kidding.

Fish against curiosity

Readers of this blog may begin to think that I have a personal antipathy for New York Times editorialist Stanley Fish. I don’t, really. Don’t even know the guy. And yet, somehow he manages to get criticized in writing by yours truly more often (and certainly more harshly) than Richard I-don’t-know-what’s-wrong-with-Bill-Maher-but-I’ll-endorse-his-award Dawkins.

What has Fish done now? In his latest inanity for the Times he wrote a column against curiosity. Yes, you read correctly: if unchecked, curiosity, for Fish, is a major scourge of humanity, bringing us the atomic bomb and vivisection, while at the same time turning us away from god. Now, if these were the rants of a fundamentalist preacher from Alabama (or Mississippi, or Georgia, or Tennessee, you pick) then it would hardly be worth bothering about. But this is a professor (“distinguished,” no less) of law at Florida International University in sunny Miami (and formerly at the University of Illinois-Chicago). But of course Fish is also a postmodernist, and herein lies the bullshit.

Fish begins by quoting, and then criticizing, James A. Leach, the new chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Leach’s sin is to have said in a recent speech that “a right to be curious would have been a natural reflection of [Thomas Jefferson's] personality ... [Because] the cornerstone of democracy is access to knowledge, the curious pursuing their curiosity may be mankind’s greatest if not only hope.” Radical stuff, as you can see, which deserves a rebuttal in the New York Times before a pandemic of curiosity hits the country, resulting in the death of innumerable cats.

Fish reminds his readers that curiosity is not a universal value, or an unqualified benefit. Let us parse these two claims. The quintessential example — to which the good professor devotes an entire paragraph of his column — is of course god’s prohibition to Adam from eating of the fruit of knowledge. The idea, apparently, was to test Adam’s faith and ability to self-impose limits. Disobedience was interpreted by god as human arrogance, with the results we all know. I always thought this tale was one of the best reasons not to be a christian: there it is, folks, right at the beginning of your so-called sacred book, god is despotic, narcissistic, engages in arbitrary and cruel punishment, and — of all things — prohibits you from learning. Need anything more be said?

Apparently, yes. Fish goes on quoting Thomas Aquinas as chastising human curiosity as a form of pride, and even the obscure 16th century churchman Lorenzo Scupoli, who contemptuously said “They make an idol of their own understanding,” all the way to the contemporary author Jonathan Robinson, who disapproves of curiosity and labels it a (apparently despicable) pursuit of “every conceivable subject that takes our fancy.” And what, exactly, is wrong with that, esteemed churchmen and assorted religious apologists?

Paul Griffiths, author of Reason and the Reasons of Faith explains: “Late modern societies that are fundamentally shaped by the overwhelming presence of electronic media and the obscene inundation of every aspect of human life by pictures and sounds have turned the vice of curiosity into a prescribed way of life. ... “In a world where curiosity rules, unmasking curiosity as a destructive and offensive device ... amounts to nothing less than a ... radical critique of superficiality and constant distraction.”

Wow! In other words, curiosity is bad because it distracts us from worshiping and studying god (Fish’s words), and even from our secular obligations because our minds are obsessed by it and find no time for anything else. Perhaps Fish and his buddies are confusing pornography for curiosity, because I’ve never encountered a “secular” person so obsessed with curiosity that he/she became dysfunctional in everyday life. On the other hand, I have encountered plenty of religious bigots whose utter lack of curiosity about the world leads them to incredible fits of mental gymnastics aimed at denying evolution (basic science) or that condoms are crucial in the fight against AIDS (applied science).

But of course Fish has an ace up his sleeve, because you see, it is not curiosity per se that is the problem, but unbound, unchecked, curiosity. That’s the monster that pushes scientists to ignore the pain of animals on which they experiment and, well, good old Stanley immediately runs out of examples there, so he has to deploy fictitious ones: “Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, H.G. Wells’ The Island of Dr. Moreau, and Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.”

Of course, anything in excess is not a good thing, as Aristotle taught us 24 centuries ago. Even too much water is bad for you, because you can drown in it or die from an imbalance of electrolytes. But to accuse people of worshiping “curiosity — sometimes called research, sometimes called unfettered inquiry, sometimes called progress, sometimes called academic freedom” is the quintessential example of the twisted post-modernist mind. If this country and the world is suffering from something, it is too little curiosity (about the world and about other people), too little critical thinking (including among the editors of the Times that keep publishing this rubbish), and too much post-modernism. Curiosity may be lethal to a cat, but it is a source of freedom and knowledge for a human being.

Massimo's Picks

* An article from a few months ago, on Star Trek's bold vision for the future and critical involvement with events of the present.

* Traces of the Origin of Species: a graphic comparison of how Charles Darwin changed his mind about what he wanted to say across six editions of his book.

* Being smart is sexy, apparently. Then again, it is an evolutionary psychologist who tells us so. Caveat emptor.

* Fruit Loops is health food... according to Kellogg's and its cronies, of course.

* Support Penn & Teller's right to make fun of the Vatican, and watch the full show free!

Ah, metaphysics!

The other day I went to a talk about the fall and revival of metaphysics, given by Sebastian Kolodziejczyk at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Metaphysics these days has a bad reputation even among philosophers, so I was aware of its “fall,” but I was rather curious about the possibility of a “revival.” I came out of the lecture without much conviction that the 21st century is going to see anything like a resurrection of metaphysics.

Metaphysics, of course, is that classical branch of philosophy that deals with the fundamental nature of the world. Or is it? That was what Kolodziejczyk called “the Aristotelian model,” where philosophers who engage in metaphysics ask questions about the nature of space, time, causality and so on. It is an honorable tradition, of course, but it has ceded most of its terrain to fundamental physics. These days those philosophers who have something to say about such issues are likely to be philosophers of science or mathematics working in fields such as quantum mechanics or string theory. Saying that “water is the principle of all things,” as Thales of Miletus (ca. 624 BC–ca. 546 BC) used to do, just doesn’t cut it anymore.

After Aristotle, for a long time metaphysics was taken over by theological considerations, from the Scholastics to Hegel, and it became increasingly esoteric, self-contained, and at every iteration, inching closer and closer to complete absurdity. The Monadology (1714) by Gottfried Leibniz was one of the last pre-physics attempts to account for fundamental aspects of reality by simply thinking about it, but again to say that monads are a basic unit of perceptual reality is to assert something rather obscure without a shred of evidence, and moreover something that has been superseded by much clearer and more evidence-based accounts provided by modern science. And let us not even get started with all the metaphysical fluff about the existence of god, of course (if someone mention’s the ontological argument I will reach for my metaphorical gun!).

It was within this context that the 20th century saw the famous (or infamous, depending on who you ask) critique of metaphysics by the logical positivists, whose position was that metaphysical concepts — in philosophical parlance — have no referent. In lay terms, metaphysicians talk literally about nothing, and therefore do not and cannot make any sense. These days it isn’t polite in philosophical circles to show much sympathy for the neopositivists, but I must admit that as far as certain kinds of metaphysics are concerned, it seems to me that they got it largely right.

How, then, do we save metaphysics? Well, how about by simply redefining it? One of Kolodziejczyk’s major points was that there are other, radically different, ways of conceiving of what metaphysics is. For instance, for philosophers like Wittgenstein and Derrida (!!) metaphysics is an exploration of concepts, while for people like Heidegger (again, !!) it is about our experience.

There are two problems with this approach: first, it is not at all clear what these new ways of understanding metaphysics have to do with, well, metaphysics! Wouldn’t it then be more honest to say that (classical, Aristotelian) metaphysics has run its course, it has achieved what it could achieve, and has now receded into the background and left the initiative to physics? Secondly, exploring the meaning and structure of concepts smells a lot like philosophy of language, if not like linguistics itself, and investigating phenomenological experience quickly leads to psychology and cognitive science. Where’s the metaphysics?

If philosophers insist in saying things like “persistence is the only unchangeable reality” (quoted in the handout from Kolodziejczyk’s lecture) one is perfectly within their rights to ask what the devil does “persistence” mean in this context, and what exactly is the meaning of saying that it is the only unchangeable reality? This is the sort of fluff that gives all of philosophy a bad name, but that ought to be confined to only a sub-group of misguided philosophers who mistake obscurity for profundity.

We finally come to Kolodziejczyk’s own proposal, which was better — in my opinion — than Heidegger’s (then again, almost anything is), and yet somehow not exactly the harbinger of a new revolution in metaphysics. Kolodziejczyk’s idea is that metaphysics is the “analysis, description, and explanation” of what he calls “basic metaphysical beliefs.” Such as? His examples include “things surrounding us exist,” “things we are talking about are distinct in space and time,” “[things] are similar in many ways,” and so on.

Well, maybe there is some analysis to be done of such simple concepts, though it is hard to imagine that a very thick book will ever be written about these matters. But as for a satisfactory description and explanation of our basic beliefs about the world, it seems to me that they are much more likely to come from, respectively, the cognitive sciences and evolutionary biology than philosophy. Moreover, as someone pointed out in the Q&A following the lecture, we know now (thanks to fundamental physics) that a lot of our folk metaphysics is, in fact, wrong, which is not surprising considering that we have evolved as macroscopic animals needing to be equipped with ways to handle those aspects of the world pertinent to our survival and reproduction — aspects that don’t include an understanding of quantum mechanics or string theory.

What, then, is metaphysics good for? Other than its (invaluable, I think) historical contribution to human thought, there are two things that modern metaphysics can do for us: on the one hand, aspects of it can serve as good models for a fruitful relationship between philosophy and science (think of attempts at understanding the nature of time and space, for instance); on the other hand, it is a constant reminder that even science can get started only on premises that cannot be justified empirically within science itself (think of causality, or reality). But please, no more nonsense about unchangeable persistence.

Massimo's picks

* Not only Obama is not a socialist, but according to philosopher Andrew Levine, he is as centrist as you can be without crossing the line to the Republican side. I'm afraid he's right.

* Does a "science of origins" make sense? I don't think so, but for another take, read this enthusiastic article by Lawrence Krauss.

* Here is an interesting possibility: the good shared by many religions is actually their humanist core...

* The top 10 worst Bible passages, as picked by Christians themselves!

* These days many conservatives claim to be Libertarians (rather than Republicans, which is becoming an increasingly embarrassing label). Here is a list of reasons you might not be a Libertarian after all.

* What is philosophy? This video does a good job at explaining the basics, though the guy might have used a shot of caffeine before getting in front of the camera...

* Book club: Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me), on the perils of cognitive dissonance.

* Classic Groucho Marx video: sounds like the Republicans these days...

The logic of skepticism

Being a skeptic is a rather lonely art. People often confuse you for a cynic, and I’m not using either term in the classical philosophical sense, of course. In ancient Greece, the cynics were people who wished to live in harmony with nature, rejecting material goods (the root of the word means “dog-like,” and there are various interpretations as to its origin). The Western equivalent of Buddhist monks, if you will. The skeptics, on the other hand, were philosophers who claimed that since nothing can be known for certain the only rational thing to do is to suspend judgment on everything. That’s not what I’m talking about.

A skeptic in the modern sense of the term, let’s say from Hume forward, is someone who thinks that belief in X ought to be proportional to the amount of evidence supporting X. Or, in Carl Sagan’s famous popularization of the same principle, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. In that sense, then, what I will call positive skeptics do not automatically reject new claims, they weigh them according to the evidence. And of course we aren’t cynics in the modern sense of the term either, i.e. we don’t follow Groucho Marx when he famously said “Whatever it is, I’m against it!” (Of course, he was joking, though that seems to be the motto of the current Republican party.)

Now, you would think that few people would object to the pretty straightforward idea (which can actually be formalized using a Bayesian statistical framework) that one’s beliefs should be adjusted to the available evidence. You would also think it hard to disapprove of the corollary that — since the evidence keeps changing and our assessment of it is perennially imperfect — than one ought not to subscribe to absolute beliefs of any sort (except in logic and mathematics: 2+2=4 regardless of any “evidence”). Boy, would you be wrong!

For one thing, the positive skeptic finds herself more often (in fact much more often) than not in a position to (provisionally) reject a given claim rather than (provisionally) accepting it. Why, you might ask? Shouldn’t the expected likelihood of the truth of a claim a priori be something like 50-50, in which case the skeptic should accept and reject beliefs in about equal manner? No, as it happens, things aren’t quite that nicely symmetrical.

One way to understand this is to think about a simple concept that everyone learns in statistics 101 (everyone who takes statistics 101, that is): the difference between type I and type II error. A type I error is the one you make if you reject a null hypothesis when it is in fact true. In medicine this is called a false positive: for instance, you are tested for HIV and your doctor, based on the results of the test, rejects the default (null) hypothesis that you are healthy; if you are in fact healthy, the good doctor has committed a type I error. It happens (and you will spend many sleepless nights as a consequence).

A type II error is the converse: it takes place when one accepts a null hypothesis which is in fact not true. In our example above, the doctor concludes that you are healthy, but in reality you do have the disease. You can imagine the dire consequences of making a type II error, also known as a false negative, in that sort of situation. (The smart asses among us usually add that there is also a type III error: not remembering which one is type I and which type II...)

What’s that got to do with skepticism? Whenever confronted with a new claim, it’s reasonable to think that the null hypothesis is that the claim is not true. That is, the default position is one of skepticism. Now the tricky part is that type I and type II errors are inversely proportional: if you lower your threshold for one, you automatically increase your threshold for the other (there is only one way out of this trade-off, and that’s to do the hard work of collecting more data). So if you decide to be conservative (statistically, not politically), you will raise the bar for evidence, thereby lowering the chances of rejecting the null hypothesis and accepting the new belief when it is not in fact true. Unfortunately, you are also simultaneously increasing your chances of accepting the null and rejecting the new belief when in fact the latter is true.

Human beings are thus bound to navigate the treacherous waters between Scylla and Charybdis, between being too skeptical and too gullible. And yet, the two monsters are not of equal strength: if we accept the assumption that there is only one reality out there, then the number of false hypotheses must be inordinately higher than the number of correct ones. In other words, there must be many more ways of being wrong than right. Take the discovery that DNA is a double helix (the true answer, as far as we know). It could have been a single helix (like RNA), or a triple one (as Linus Pauling suggested before Watson and Crick got it right). Or it could have been a much more complicated molecule, with 20 helices, or 50. Or it may have not been a helicoidal structure at all. And so on.

So when trying to steer the course between skepticism and gullibility, it makes sense to stay much closer to the Scylla of skepticism than to bring our ship of beliefs within reach of the much larger and more menacing Charybdis of gullibility. The net result of this prudent policy, however, is that even positive skeptics are bound to reject a lot of beliefs, with the side effect that their popularity plunges. As I said, it’s a lonely art, but you can take comfort in the psychological satisfaction of being right much more often than not. This will not get you many girls and drinking buddies, though.

(Caveat: I have actually argued in a technical paper that we should abandon the whole idea of null hypotheses and embrace more sophisticated approaches to the comparisons of competing explanations. But that’s another story, and it doesn’t change the basic reasoning of this post.)