Pseudoscience, Cults, and Social Media: Misinformation in the Modern Age

Concepts

Pseudoscience, Cults, and misinformation go hand in hand. But how do these communities come to be, and how are they so effective at spreading nonsense? Well, today let's find out. And let's discover the worrying way these dynamics are mirrored on social media and our everyday lives.

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Wisecrack Video: https://youtu.be/7LJyvmRn864?si=ukmTKVNo-4MmW3ss

Some sources on the disputes around echo chambers:
https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.06631
https://arxiv.org/abs/2004.09603
https://www.rcommunicationr.org/index.php/rcr/article/view/16
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10388309

00:00 Pseudoscience and Misinformation
03:30 Pseudoscience: A Brief Introduction
12:45 Cults and Epistemology
20:15 Influencers and Social Media
30:19 Knowledge, Truth, and Communities

Transcript

Pseudoscience and Misinformation

0:00

we live in an unprecedented age of information and misinformation of scientific breakthroughs and

0:06

pseudoscientific nonsense it has never been more vital to ask how do we ensure

0:13

we do not fall for all the lies and that we make the most of what the modern

0:18

information landscape has to offer I believe we can take our lessons from an

0:24

unlikely Source we can look at pseudo scientists and Cults to see exactly how

0:30

they fool people into believing absurdities and how many of those Dynamics are worryingly replicated on

0:37

the internet today we'll be looking at astrology apocalyptic religions and

0:43

certain social media influences to see what each of them can teach us about how to spread nonsense as quickly and

0:50

effectively as possible and how we can move past these disturbing Trends into a

0:56

new way of approaching this dizzying world of endless information before we

1:02

get started I want to remind you all more than ever not to take what I say

1:08

here uncritically I am just proposing one way of looking at these issues it is

1:13

not the only one it is certainly not a perfect one and I fully encourage you to

1:19

build correct and refine it let's begin by looking at the fascinating history of

1:24

pseudo science and how philosophers and scientists have attempted to study and

1:30

Define it but if you want to avoid misinformation or pseudo science in your

1:35

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2:28

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2:35

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2:42

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2:48

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2:54

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3:00

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happy to have them as a sponsor anyway back to the video one pseudo science a

Pseudoscience: A Brief Introduction

3:32

brief introduction in a 1964 US Supreme Court case Justice Potter Stewart had to

3:39

Define what obscenity meant in a legal context and he famously gave the laconic reply I know it when I see it and a lot

3:48

of scientists and philosophers have very similar intuitions about pseudo science they look at Fields like young Earth

3:55

creationism or astrology and they instinctively call them pseudoscience ific but most attempts to Define

4:02

necessary and sufficient conditions for what counts as pseudo science have ultimately failed just to warn you we'll

4:09

be covering an awful lot of ground in this section but I promise it will all be important later in the video the

4:15

study of pseudo science as we know it began with the philosopher KL popper who separated science from pseudo science

4:22

with his falsifiability Criterion he thought that a statement was pseudoscientific if it did not make

4:28

predictions that could be proven false and thus ultimately falsify the theory the example he used was Albert

4:34

Einstein's prediction that certain distortions of light waves would be observed during an upcoming solar

4:39

eclipse because that was what his theory of general relativity had predicted Einstein effectively put his thesis on

4:47

the line if the requisite distortions were not observed then he would have to admit that his theory was partly or

4:54

wholly falsified this was the very thing POA did not observe in pseudo science

5:00

for example often times astrological charts make predictions that are so vague they can fit almost any set of

5:06

experiences take an excerpt from my horoscope in the UK newspaper the Metro on the day I'm writing this video new

5:14

ideas may come out of nowhere offering unique solutions to challenges you've been pondering if you solve any problem

5:22

even a tiny one then this horoscopees prediction has come true its claims are

5:27

so vague that they become effectively unfalsifiable the entire statement is even framed as a mere possibility new

5:34

ideas may come out of nowhere is trivially true it is basically always the case unless I'm in a coma or a

5:41

recently deceased in which case I'm very unlikely to have read the horoscope however Poppa's definition ultimately

5:48

has a couple of significant flaws the first is that it excludes statements most people would still call pseudo

5:55

scientific a creationist theory of life does make certain predictions

6:00

it predicts that species will not change over time and that there will not be a carbon dated fossil record that goes

6:06

back more than a few thousand years it is just that these statements have been falsified it seems the problem isn't

6:13

necessarily that the statements are unfalsifiable but how people react to the statement's falsification do they

6:19

accept it or do they unjustifiably reject it put a pin in this because in

6:24

about 2 minutes time it's going to be very important at the same time sometimes we who rejects the supposed

6:30

falsification of scientific theories for very good reasons when irregularities were observed in the orbit of Uranus

6:38

this technically falsified the predictions of newtonium mechanics but it was such a successful theory that the

6:44

physicists of the time said another planet must exist behind Uranus and interfere with its orbit as it turns out

6:51

they were right and the planet Neptune was later discovered of course newtonia mechanics did not turn out to be wholly

6:58

true but it's still doesn't seem quite right to say that the physicists engaged in pseudo science here another fun

7:05

example is a set of experiments in 1933 which claimed to discover that the speed

7:10

of light was not constant but varied according to direction if true this

7:15

would disprove special relativity however the theory was not immediately rejected despite no one at the time

7:22

being able to justifiably dismiss the results it was only in the 1950s that

7:27

the results were eventually explained by variations in temperature interfering with the measuring instruments if we

7:33

took falsification at face value then all of the research in special relativity between 1933 and 1955 was

7:41

pseudo science but that just seems untenable and moreover I don't think POA

7:46

would want to endorse this either the repeated failures to create a perfect definition for pseudoscience eventually

7:53

led the philosopher Larry lden to declare the quest dead in 1983 but a lot

7:58

of people in including myself think that this was premature just because we can't

8:03

set up an infallible dividing line between science and pseudoscience does not mean that there are no clear

8:10

examples of pseudo science out there and it's important to be able to clearly and justifiably label pseudo science because

8:17

believing in it can do real damage the philosophers John Dupre and mimo Puchi

8:23

and God I apologize to the nation of Italy for how I pronounce that have argued that we can think of pseudo

8:29

science as a cluster concept where different pseudo Sciences hold different criteria to a greater or lesser extent

8:36

it's a bit like how we don't have an airtight definition of sports but we can still say that basketball is a sport and

8:42

napping is not one and we can still come up with various deible criteria for whether a given activity is a sport

8:48

Martin manner has suggested a series of criteria for whether something is pseudo science including whether the results of

8:55

experiments can be independently reproduced whether the theories make specific predictions and whether they employ valid

9:01

argumentative structures these all aim at the statements and theories themselves to see if they hold up to

9:08

scrutiny additionally one of the recent developments in pseudoscience studies has been to focus on how communities of

9:15

pseudo scientists behave and to examine their internal methodology and I think this is a very promising line of

9:22

research NOA coer observes a key sociological difference between scientific communities and

9:28

pseudoscientific ones in a scientific Community results are put to rigorous critical tests a peer review process is

9:36

carried out to uncover any potential flaws in research methodology or argumentation and only then is the paper

9:43

published and its results accepted into the shared body of knowledge for that field of course this is an idealized

9:50

picture there have been plenty of times where this system has failed or been deliberately undermined but it is still

9:56

a general Trend within scientific communities and the History of Science however coer observes very different

10:03

behavior in pseudo Sciences where she sees belief buddies groups of people who

10:09

already basically agree on things but come together to reconfirm and discuss those beliefs again it is not that this

10:16

is always pseudoscientific if I'm organizing a conference on how to conserve wildlife I probably do only

10:22

want to invite people who already agree it is a good idea otherwise we'll just get nothing done it's a presupposition I

10:29

of the conversation taking place but this inevitably comes with drawbacks in

10:34

ensuring the reliability of the ideas and assumptions for the rest of the video I'm going to refer to this sort of

10:41

phenomenon as a closed epistemic group of course epistemic groups can be closed

10:47

to greater or lesser degrees and openness is not inherently a virtue if

10:52

physics conferences started practicing extreme epistemic openness and hosting groups of flat earthers or geoc

10:58

centrists I doubt that would be helpful but I would suggest that there is a golden mean of epistemic openness that

11:05

is appropriate in a given situation A group of casual friends bonded over an idea might want to be quite

11:11

epistemically closed regarding that idea and I don't see anything inherently wrong with that the trouble with

11:16

pseudoscientific communities is that they are too epistemically closed to be making the kind of broad sweeping

11:23

statements about the world that they often do if you think that astrology can predict the future that is an except

11:29

claim with exceptionally wide scope so refusing to allow valid critique of that

11:34

idea sets up a mismatch between the Ambitions of the field and its level of epistemic openness speaking very broadly

11:42

we can think of epistemic openness as the extent to which a community permits honest and open challenge of their ideas

11:49

and epistemic closeness as the opposite of this or as coer might say an epistemically closed group has far more

11:57

belief buddies than critical community ities so we have two angles from which

12:02

to look at this pseudo science question there are the statements and theories of pseudo scientists which tend to violate

12:09

certain scientific Norms like but not limited to falsifiability and the way

12:14

their communities are constructed which lack the kind of critical analysis that would make their claims and statements

12:21

seem plausible neither the content nor the process justifies the confidence

12:26

given to the assertion and to explore the dynamic of epistemically closed groups in more detail I want to move on

12:33

to perhaps the most extreme example of one the cult if you want to help me make

12:39

more videos like this then please consider becoming one of my wonderful supporters on patreon the link is in the

12:44

description two cult and epistemology the word cult has become so

Cults and Epistemology

12:52

sensationalize that it is almost impossible to talk about them in a serious manner so in this section I want

12:58

you to R away all of the emotional associations that you have with Cults and just think of them as a group with

13:04

most of the following properties one a claim to have esoteric or specialized knowledge ignored by everyone else two

13:12

the veneration of a leader or set of leaders three a disdain of any challenge

13:17

to the group's beliefs or not permitting those challenges and four an exclusive commitment to the group above all other

13:24

social ties these are all taken from Stephanie Alis Baker's work on cults like defining pseudo science defining a

13:31

cult is very difficult and there will be borderline cases and just for the record I've not included all of the criteria

13:37

here but just the ones most relevant for our discussion some of the lists of criteria for identifying a cult span

13:44

multiple Pages it's fairly well known that Cults and pseudoscientific beliefs

13:49

often go hand inand this is because the combination of claiming to have esoteric knowledge and being unable to question

13:56

that knowledge is almost perfect for cre pseudo science Stefan levandowski has

14:02

pointed out that when pseudo science gets a positive reaction from a group other members of that group and anyone

14:08

who observes them become more likely to believe it they take the group consensus as evidence for example apocalyptic

14:15

Cults often rely on pseudoscientific ideas to predict when the end of the world will come and these ideas are not

14:21

revised even when the F date arrives and the world remains spinning The Seekers a

14:27

UFO cult predicted that the world world would end in 1951 when it did not the

14:32

followers of the group did not disband but became even more devoted they developed ad hoc hypotheses to explain

14:39

why nothing happened very much like the pseudo Sciences we looked at in the last section the philosopher Daniel Monroe

14:46

has recently compared cultish belief Dynamics to what he calls fantasies of knowledge he points out that there's a

14:52

real pleasure in believing we have access to some fundamental truth about reality that no one else does it makes

14:59

us feel special and it imbus us with this sense of power it invokes a little

15:04

of what Mera eliad calls sacredness something both extremely important and

15:09

meaningful and yet mostly hidden from human eyes I really relate to this idea

15:15

I do find an intrinsic pleasure in simply learning things and I imagine that that pleasure would be

15:21

significantly heightened if I thought that it was a deep truth that no one other than me and my group had uncovered

15:26

eliad thought this wish was linked with the human desire for power and stability

15:31

to know what we should be doing and how we should Orient Our Lives Perhaps it is no wonder that so many health and

15:38

wellness Trends have proclaimed that they can cure cancer or remove someone's PCOS using simple dietary changes it

15:46

resembles the link that many other Cults have between esoteric knowledge and some nebulous idea of Salvation none of this

15:52

is to say that health and wellness fads are the same thing as Cults I just want to point out the similarities in how

15:58

their claim to knowledge function and thus how they can both be so appealing

16:03

I'm hardly the first to make this comparison the term Wellness cult has almost slipped into mainstream

16:08

vernacular now Monroe argues that many of these cultish beliefs and conspiracy theories initially function as these

16:15

fantasies of knowledge sometimes for desperate people just trying to make sense of their situation again I sort of

16:22

relate to this I've talked on this channel before about suffering from chronic pain and I was very nearly taken

16:28

in by my own fantasies that if I just tried the right Health fad I would immediately be cured alas no luck so far

16:36

Monroe says that once we are unshed in communities of people doing similar fantasizing the endless repetition of

16:43

the same ideas eventually makes them seem real even when they fly in the face of evidence the fantasy becomes a

16:50

genuine illusory belief and the community insulates The Believer from critique by reassuring them that any

16:57

contradictory evidence has been placed there by Bad actors it's an epistemic version of Dungeons and Dragons where

17:03

everyone is a wizard and the game Never Ends by now it should be clear that

17:08

outright Cults are on the extreme end of that epistemic closeness scale I introduced earlier in many traditional

17:15

Cults Believers are encouraged to cut off friends and family who do not join and to preemptively discredit any

17:21

evidence that would contradict the cult's beliefs this is precisely why I think they are so valuable to look at

17:27

for our current goal of uncovering undesirable or misleading epistemic structures in Plato's Republic Socrates

17:35

argues that to investigate what a just man is it is helpful to ask what a just

17:40

City would look like because that would reproduce many of the same properties on a much greater and grander scale making

17:47

them significantly easier to spot likewise looking at Cults can help us

17:52

understand the key qualities of a closed epistemic group how that group remains so closed and how destructive its

17:59

effects can be the factors that keep people in a cult are varied and

18:04

multifaceted but a few Stand Out There is the Charisma of the leader the

18:09

promise of interpersonal fulfillment the Allure of control and knowledge and a source of meaning in one's life then

18:17

when someone is deep in the cult leaving means abandoning all of the social attachments they have formed there and

18:23

also some of their most strongly held beliefs a study by rousel and colleagues found that many cult members remained in

18:30

the cult for long periods even when they wanted to leave because they feared the social repercussions this coheres with

18:37

the earlier observation made by the psychiatrist Mark galanter that many only lose faith in a cult belief system

18:43

when something about the social fabric of the cult breaks down in other words when the systems maintaining epistemic

18:50

closure are no longer airtite he also observed that leaving a cult was often

18:56

accompanied by a bout of depression as a key source of meaning in the former believer's life had now simply vanished

19:04

these same factors can give us an insight into how any group of people can adopt patently false beliefs or pseudo

19:11

science it might be delivered to them by a charismatic figure who had earned their trust the knowledge might promise

19:17

to solve some great problem in their life or just mark them out as one of the special enlightened ones the belief in

19:24

question might provide someone with a purpose either implicitly or explicitly Charles Manson convinced his followers

19:30

that he was a manifestation of Christ giving them an immediate religious purpose to their lives modern day

19:37

Wellness Cults while unlike formalized Cults in many important ways give people

19:42

an implicit Direction in their life to become as well as possible using their

19:47

particular techniques I'm sure many of you can figure out where I'm going with this and I may have even put it in the

19:53

title these methods of creating an epistemically closed group are certainly not limited to pseudo sciences and Cults

20:00

these are just the most recognizable examples of them perhaps more unsettling is how they replicate in less

20:07

caricatured ways in our everyday L and how recent developments in technology

20:13

have facilitated this three influencers and social media

Influencers and Social Media

20:21

this section is mostly going to be me telling you not to blindly rely on people like me for your information

20:28

which means a fair few of you will end the section going aha but this guy has

20:33

told me to not just rely on him that probably means he is more reliable than most and I do try to be but I would

20:41

still encourage you not to make me or this channel any kind of exception to the rule I still hold that the Dynamics

20:47

at play in much of social media and specifically social media influences can

20:53

encourage unhealthily closed epistemic systems regardless of whether the influencer in question is aiming to do

20:59

so much has been made of the parasocial relationships that emerge between so-called influencers and their

21:05

audiences the idea is that we form one-sided attachments to the people we watch regularly online in itself this

21:11

seems to be a mixed bag parasocial relationships can help to alleviate loneliness but also can become

21:17

inappropriate or explosive funnily enough the day I'm recording this the YouTube channel wise crack released a

21:23

video exploring this very topic so I'll link it in the description but I want to focus mainly on the way an influencer

21:30

can intentionally or inadvertently disrupt the way people form beliefs to make them more epistemically closed than

21:37

they otherwise would be or is perhaps desirable to return to Stephanie Alice Baker in her book with Chris roek

21:44

lifestyle gurus they discuss how authenticity and self-disclosure can be used to build trust with an audience

21:51

this is a pretty intuitive idea friends in the non-digital world often Bond over

21:56

sharing personal anecdotes or confessing vulnerable information to one another but for an influencer this can quickly

22:03

become epistemically disruptive just because an influencer has confessed some

22:09

deep dark secret to you does not mean that you should take their financial advice or treat them as a general

22:14

Authority the danger is that a mixture of self-disclosure and perceived authenticity can subtly replace the need

22:22

to demonstrate actual expertise on an issue additionally unlike expertise this

22:28

nebulous sense of trust or closeness is transferable to any field for example I

22:34

know a fair amount about two things mathematical logic and philosophy not that I would consider myself an expert

22:40

on either of them but if you want to know the latest developments in health or Fitness I am very much not your man

22:47

of course deep down we already know that just because I've read a bit of nature doesn't mean I'm a good source of

22:53

information on other topics but if we just trust someone in this vague unspecified sense it is very easy to

23:01

treat everything they say as definitely reliable until proven otherwise if

23:06

someone truly does have knowledge on something this is all well and good the problem comes when someone sharing their

23:12

private life on Instagram implicitly makes you more likely to trust their advice about medicine or Finance the

23:19

amount of questionable cryptocurrencies being pushed by influencers whose content is not even about these

23:24

Investments is a testament to just how powerful this nebulous trust relationship can truly be now I'm not

23:33

saying that influencers even those you really dislike are cult leaders a cult

23:38

Leader's power and control over their cult is orders of magnitude greater than

23:43

that of a social media influencer over their audience my point is that a similar overreliance on a particular

23:49

perceived Authority for information can emerge often on very Broad and disperate topics without a good epistemic

23:56

justification for doing so while while a cult leader may use their Charisma or some form of social proof as their roots

24:02

to being uncritically believed the influencer can use their perceived authenticity this may not even be

24:09

deliberate I know that when I've watched a channel for a while I start to implicitly trust the presenter more it

24:15

is the effect of this subtle parasocial and it may even just be human nature we

24:21

are social beings and for the vast majority of our history we could not see someone so much and yet have so little

24:29

contact with them in a real physical sense moreover I suspect that this

24:35

parasocial gives the opportunity for followers to develop Fierce loyalties towards the influencer which has the

24:41

potential to quell dissenting views pretty quickly within the space that they dominate to be Frank this is

24:47

basically speculative on my part but it follows naturally from the factors we've already discussed if an influencer has a

24:54

following that largely likes them and they do not Garner hate follows inad dead then the emotional attachment

25:00

formed to that influencer may make people want to defend them from criticism regardless of whether they

25:05

deserve that criticism again I want to clarify that this is just my speculation and my anecdotal observation I've not

25:12

been able to find any peer-reviewed search that examines this question either way but if it is true it is

25:19

another way that social media Dynamics can replicate cult Dynamics in a much less severe form and thus make them more

25:26

epistemically closed as a result result another Hot Topic has been social media

25:31

Echo Chambers the thing is these are quite difficult to study while it's clear that voluntary Echo Chambers can

25:38

emerge online where communities come together and isolate themselves from critique the jury is still out on where

25:44

the algorithms themselves do create Echo Chambers and to what extent this varies between platforms I've left a few

25:50

sources in the description if you want to check them out but for the sake of this video I will limit our discussion

25:56

to these voluntary Echo chamers here we see yet another example of these

26:01

closed epistemic systems manifesting online in the same way that there might be belief buddies in pseudoscience

26:08

conferences or Cults communities congregate around a set of shared beliefs that are then unlikely to meet

26:14

critical challenge again I don't think this is necessarily bad people have always gathered over Mutual beliefs

26:20

values and interests and this seems like more of a continuation of that General Trend or human propensity than a

26:27

radically new phenomena the difference comes in the ability to isolate yourself

26:32

from dissenting opinions whereas in the non-digital world we are often forced to

26:38

encounter people who disagree with us be it at work or school or with relatives in the digital world we can deliberately

26:45

avoid dissenting thought almost entirely or only confront it in caricatured forms

26:50

presented by our own tea while Research into this tendency is in its preliminary stages some mathematical models have

26:57

predicted that this would lead people to developing ever more extreme opinions it is what buun Han calls the death of the

27:04

other he argues that the mere ability to isolate ourselves from those who

27:09

disagree with us or resist us is both tempting and pentious it is tempting

27:15

because encountering disagreement is often unpleasant especially if it is delivered inconsiderately as is often

27:21

the case online but Han also thinks it is pernicious because isolating ourselves from dissenters and desent

27:28

information can have extremely harmful effects both personally and societally

27:34

Han worries that if we can live just swimming in information that agrees with us then the truth can slowly lose its

27:40

pull we will exist in Blissful ignorance of all the ways we're wrong about things

27:46

by the time we're forced to encounter a genuine critique of our position we'll be so confident in our beliefs that it

27:52

will just have little to no effect on us this mirrors the observation we made in section two about how cult members often

28:00

do not lose faith in cult Doctrine before some aspect of the cult social structure shows its flaws again I'm not

28:07

saying that these are Cults just that we should be wary when the same worrying epistemic Dynamic does appear even in

28:14

less extreme forms lastly there has been a lot of encouraging Research into the

28:20

ways online communities can foster a sense of belonging especially in people who would otherwise be totally socially

28:27

isolated this this is undeniably a great thing and yet like any sense of

28:32

belonging it's worth being aware of how this can also create undesirably

28:37

epistemically closed communities some recent Studies by Max Lebron Christine mcky and others have theorized that

28:45

online conspiracy groups are often motivated by the same sense of social belonging that pseudo Sciences or Cults

28:51

are then the sense that they are on the same team and that they are part of a wider tribe or movement help to insulate

28:58

them from valid critique in meshing them in a web of further belief buddies it's

29:04

not that there is no disagreement within the group on details but rather that the core tenants of the conspiracy just

29:11

can't be questioned if a sense of belonging can disrupt reliable belief formation in major ways in online

29:17

conspiracy groups and Cults it may do so in minor ways in less extreme online

29:23

groups this is definitely speculative but it would be consistent with Solomon Ash's replicated findings that our

29:29

judgments are highly influenced by the judgments of those around us and by extension are probably highly influenced

29:36

by our Social Circle just to reiterate influencers are not cult leaders and

29:41

social media communities are not Cults but many of the same factors that cause people to believe in absurdities in cult

29:49

situations or in pseudo Sciences seem to manifest to a lesser extent Within These social media spaces and in an

29:56

increasingly digital age this is worth knowing about reflecting upon and is also certainly worth some more Empirical

30:03

research conducted by people far more qualified than I am but why am I talking about this why should we care about all

30:10

of these structures that can disrupt belief formation well it's because I

30:15

think we can do something about it four

Knowledge, Truth, and Communities

30:21

knowledge truth and communities one of the most difficult

30:26

truths to swallow is just how wrong we humans can be about almost everything

30:32

this was succinctly put by Socrates when he was defending himself from prosecution and uttered the famous

30:37

phrase I was conscious that I knew nothing which is sometimes reported as I

30:43

know that I know nothing this saying comes from Plato's apologia and Socrates

30:48

uses it to motivate his curiosity into unfettered and unbridled inquiry he

30:53

narrates how this awareness of his own ignorance caused him to consult poets Craftsmen and anyone he came across to

31:01

learn what wisdom was as a result he does not claim to be wiser than others

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because he knows more than them but rather because he is aware of just how much he does not know so while he may

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not have all that much knowledge neither does he have the illusion of knowledge

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this self-awareness and epistemic humility is what Socrates thought set him apart from many other thinkers of

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the day and it's supposedly why the Oracle of Deli thought that there was no one wiser than he now you can dispute

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whether the Socrates of Plato's dialogues lives up to this ideal but I still think it is an ideal worth

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learning from effectively this video aims to make you aware of just some of

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the structures that can implicitly affect the way that you form beliefs and how more obviously harmful Dynamics from

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pseudo signs or Cults can manifest in less Extreme Ways in online spaces and

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indeed in your everyday life but there is a pessimistic Temptation here to

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throw up our hands and Proclaim that there is no hope that if these distorting mechanisms are basically

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everywhere and affect basically everyone then we are forever cut off from truth

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or honest inquiry however I would caution against this just as communities

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can become epistemically closed they can also open up again it will almost certainly take a lot of effort but we

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can work to Awards building more critical communities both online and

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offline I want to return to Netta CO's paper on pseudoscientific groups because

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alongside the more depressing analysis of their inner workings she notes several aspects of genuine investigative

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inquiry that we can all learn from the first is the strict scrutiny given to

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new ideas and the ability to revise old ones in line with new evidence this

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helps to ensure that any proposed Theory iies are given the appropriate level of consideration at first they are merely

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conjectures or hypotheses and then they are preliminary results and then if the

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results are robust reliable and replicable then the theory is accepted as fact all while acknowledging that

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some new evidence could emerge that would overturn the theory in the future there are a set of values that are held

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as standards for proposed propositions including Precision logical consistency

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and validity of argument there are investigative ideals like the free exchange of ideas that hypotheses should

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not be unduly politically motivated and that results should not be prejudged based on the personal characteristics of

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the researcher cerge is not suggesting that these Norms are all followed at all times there are many examples from The

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History of Science where one or more of them have been violated to severe degrees but this does not invalidate

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them as epistemic ideals to strive for and to guide us so combining this with

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the factors that lead to epistemically closed spaces we now have a sketch criteria for examining the communities

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we are a part of both off and online here are some questions that I would

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suggest are helpful to ask what are the criteria for something being accepted as

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knowledge in this group which statements receive less scrutiny than others and is this lack of scrutiny Justified what are

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the social consequences for holding a desent ing opinion and how do people justify them are propositions revised in

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the light of new evidence or do they persist far beyond that point are there a few figures that the group considers

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reliable by default and why are they considered reliable and finally what

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questions are off limits and are there good reasons for them to be off limits

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this list is certainly not exhaustive and I'm sure you can come up with your own questions as well and I do encourage

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you to leave them in the comments the point is not that epistemic closeness is undesirable but rather the reasons why

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it is closed to certain things and certain ideas is important a biology conference might not want to revisit

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creationism for pretty good reason it is already been considered thoroughly and rejected on epistemically Justified

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grounds on the other hand if a community simply rejects an idea because it is

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oppositional as if that is bad in and of itself then that may be a Cause for alarm I suspect it's probably impossible

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to define a perfect way of working out the epistemic health of the communities we're a part of but using the principles

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in this video I think we can begin to uncover some of the issues that might have passed us by unnoticed we may

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realize that we actually do value the opinions of a few sources much more highly than we can justify or that our

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communities are unjustly intolerant of descent the reason I framed this whole

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discussion at the community level is that there's just far too much information around nowadays to sit

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through it ourselves none of us have the relevant expertise to examine the latest thinking in physics and biology and

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sociology and politics and philosophy and literature and psychology and so on

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so our next best bet is to maximize the collective reliability of the communities we are a part of the

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difference between an epistemically healthy community and an unhealthy one is the difference between astrology and

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general relativity between Alchemy and modern chemistry and between a society

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that stays in touch with the truth and one that loses its way to again draw

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from no urge it is not enough to dismiss pseudo scientists or cultists as fools

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some extremely clever people have fallen into one or both of these camps I think

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it is more fruitful to look at how these unreliable beliefs are proposed and maintained despite consistent evidence

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to the contrary and to avoid these social structures both in our own lives

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and in our societies but if you want to learn more about how to examine your own

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beliefs and learn socrates's own questioning model I have a video on that topic right here thank you so much for

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watching and have a wonderful day