On Skeptical Perspective

I wrote this a long while ago. Due to what I've written here, I believe it's very important to draw attention to the links to the left; what I write was invariably somebody elses idea first. It follows:


In the modern day, as larger portions of the population in developed countries become educated, academia has increasingly gained a revered status in our civilization – partly due to the self-reverential nature of these increasing numbers of academics. One might say that this admiration might have got too far, almost jumping to dogmatism. Somewhere along the way people begin to forget that everybody is merely a product of their environments.

Yesterday I read a paper on the origin of ideas, and of invention (source A). The article talked about the affect of long term and short term memory in creativity. It referenced the same idea as a similar article about invention as related to patents (source B). That is, the contention that each new invention is a conglomeration of past inventions that make them possible. The airplane, to use the same example as in the article, is a combination of the wheel, the metallurgical manufacturing process, the idea to standardize bolt diameters, the engine, internal combustion, and even fire. The list is limitless, going back to the beginning of time. (On a somewhat unrelated note, it could be argued that a patent merely patents a novel combination of other people's ideas, which is unfair to them, and also prevents further innovation for a few years by keeping people from putting this new idea, which is really just other people's ideas, to use as part of another new concept.)

In the same way, the first article talked about how creative solutions to problems are derived from all of the other ideas we've been exposed to. Logically, this might also apply to opinions and ideologies. That is, the opinions and ideas central to a person's beliefs are the direct result of what ideas and opinions they grew up around, and what contentions and ideologies they've chosen to surround themselves with after that. If this is true, then a person can essentially choose what they believe in and stand behind. At first you might think this is fairly obvious, but consider that a person doesn't just wake up and choose to get religion on a particular day, doesn't suddenly choose to fully stand behind a particular ideology. The formation of a belief founded ideology is a slow one. In this light, perspective becomes even more important since it is clear that people choose their perspective to a great extent, just by choosing who to listen to and what to read. And it is perspective that provides the filter for new ideas, and predisposes an individual to accepting some and rejecting others.

This becomes crucially important for understanding academia. In academia, students are taught by individuals with viewpoints and perspectives, and their viewpoints and perspectives are similarly taught to them by their forbears (and later changed and modified by they themselves). Schools are highly opinionated and biased places. What teacher wants to teach something they themselves think is incorrect?

For example, in high school economics class I was taught Friedman's economics with a more or less Keynesian view on monetary policy. In American History it was the mainstream liberal American view. Bear in mind that at the time it was supposed by the students that these subjects were simply objective views of history and economics. The point, however, is that contrary to the assumptions of many publicly educated people, scientists and academics have pre-existing dispositions and ideas. They are not neutral. Often, they are quite the opposite. Money talks, and money for scientists, and public high schools and colleges, comes from Washington. It is ridiculous to simply ASSUME that these leading scientists, researchers, and professors are anything more objective than ideologues seeking to use their area of research or study to prove a conclusion they had already come to. Add in the aforementioned money and often this preconceived conclusion is the one that results in the most funding/profit for them.

Bear in mind the argument here is not for any specific viewpoint, but rather against simply taking someone else's. Many, many people assume that because somebody is more educated about a particular subject than they, their opinion is more reliable and factual than their own might be. Unfortunately there is no such thing as an objective human being, and the output fits the inputs. Again, since we screen the inputs we want to allow, the opinion of anybody, no matter their education and experience level, must be allowed for both perspective and agenda. It is important to remember that the same set of data, the same set of facts, can be presented in different ways and then used as the basis for many different claims. Sometimes all that is necessary is the movement of an axis or an alteration in scale. Sometimes all that must be done is data inundation, from which one picks out what they want to draw attention to and ignores what doesn't support their conclusion.

Al Gore's climate presentations are a fantastic example of this. He, for example, has a graph of historic terran temperatures that, if one accepts the questionable basis of using trapped ice bubbles for modeling the temperature of an entire planet and atmosphere, still strikes the viewer as manipulative. He takes his model for historic temperatures and ignores all but the last few years, and then extrapolates that isolated trend. It is only his chosen data which supports the conclusion he'd already decided to come to beforehand.

Consider history. Let's say I contend that the largely American phenomenon of moving out of the parents' house as soon as possible is due to the longer lifespans created by modern medicine. Since America did not exist long before recent advances in medicine, keeping our ancestors in our house never became an established custom here. As evidence, I offer that it makes sense since while before the generation before would die off, leaving the new generation the chance to live the last twenty years of their shorter lives with the house to themselves, now a person's parents can survive until they are in their late sixties.

This seems to be at least logical. But consider the relative use of the words 'long before.' Americans' life expectancy didn't begin jolting up until about the last century, leaving plenty of time for the formation of uniquely American ancestral customs. Even if one accepts the logic, there is no way that I could convincingly support the claim that it is definitely due to better medicinal procedures, and not the infinite other factors and variables separating the formation of American tradition from the history of other countries. I could easily argue that it is due to the radical new perspectives that mixed groups of people have from ancestors who came from more homogeneous, older countries. That each successive generation in America becomes more American and less... whatever culture their parents are. Thus, the differences between generations force children out of their homes faster, since their own perspectives are so radically different from those of their parents.

Both of those are logical. But logic and evidence are not enough to prove an idea. I could research and start throwing out facts and figures to support either contention, but the fact remains that these are merely perspective based ideas presented in a highly subjective, persuasive manner. I'm again only acknowledging the variables I want to be significant. Of course, this is obvious, and my intelligent reader is likely to realize much of this. But this response is to the often religious way in which people blindly believe those with a letter after their name or a few published works. Viewed from an outside perspective (although no such perspective exists in the real world), it becomes clear at this point that right and wrong are relative, evidence subjective.

The sound perspective is a skeptical one. Hear and read with suspicion. There is nothing sacred or omniscient about scientists, researchers, or academics, and for every view supporting a particular contention, there is another opposing it, although one or the other is often more publicized. Scrutinize and analyze ideas yourself. Find what your truth is, for this too is relative, and remember that your life becomes you just as others' ideas, if let, become yours.

SOURCES:
Source A: http://mises.org/story/3461
Source B: http://mises.org/story/3406

An additional source: the introduction to 'Human Action,' by Ludwig von Mises.