Memory Fallibility and Cognitive Biases

GOOD THINKING!

Don’t forget this about your memory: You can’t trust it! Human memory is a fragile and fallible thing. Our memories are constructed in our head, like stories based on bits of information. They are not reliable playbacks of “recordings.”

Your brain constructs and interprets what you look at. You don’t have a camera in your head that faithfully captures reality. What we see is something the brain has produced for us, based loosely on what comes in through our eyes. It’s never 100 percent true and complete. For this reason, we can’t always be sure about what we think we see.

Learn about some of the many cognitive biases that come with every human brain. If you are not careful, these weird thinking processes will trip you up, leading you to make errors in reasoning and embrace bad beliefs.

A skeptic should also recognize the limits of their own judgment. In most cases, doubting an unusual claim does not mean claiming to know that it is impossible. Maintaining an open mind leaves room to respond to evidence.

It goes both ways—just as believers shouldn’t pretend to know things that they actually don’t, skeptics ought to avoid following this kind of thinking, too. For example, based on the absence of good evidence and the improbability of a large creature eluding scientific confirmation in a confined space for so many years, I’m very confident that the Loch Ness monster doesn’t exist. But I stop just short of declaring that it’s impossible. After all, stranger things than that have happened. Microscopic mites, germs, and walking on the Moon once seemed pretty crazy, too. The Loch Ness–monster claim doesn’t necessarily contradict the known laws of nature. And I’m not emotionally invested in a world with no Loch Ness monster. I wouldn’t shed one tear or feel awkward for one second if Nessie were netted tomorrow. In fact, I would be thrilled to hear the news. Sure, it would mean that I had been leaning the wrong way on this one, but so what? I don’t care if I was wrong yesterday; I want to be right today. The discovery of a modern-day plesiosaur would be wonderful, something to celebrate. In fact, I would probably be on my way to Scotland within hours of the announcement so that I could try to interview the discoverers. A good skeptic does not stubbornly defend a rigid position against a claim at all costs. A good skeptic only wants to base her or his conclusions on the best available evidence and arguments. If truth and reality were to translate to a world with ghosts, magic crystals, and vampires in it, then that is the world good skeptics want to know about. Skeptics are often accused of being “against everything” when in reality we are against nothing except mistakes, delusions, and lies. Why should anyone disagree with this position? Furthermore, shouldn’t we all be against mistakes, delusions, and lies?

Too many good skeptics fall short when talking with believers about their beliefs. It is not enough to simply demand evidence and poke a few holes in a claim. Experience has taught me that a good skeptic who wants to be helpful and make a lasting impression on others needs to bring something more to the party. Relevant ideas, a bit of historical context, some science, some insight into how the brain works, and maybe a good alternate explanation can go much further than ranting about the absence of evidence and leaving it at that.