Organized Skepticism

Organized skepticism: real skeptics make arguments and friends

Skepticism gets a bum rap because it tends to be associated with negative character traits. Someone who disagrees could be considered “disagreeable.” Someone who dissents may be creating “dissention.” Maybe part of it is that “skeptical” sounds like “cynical.” Yet true skepticism is consistent with good manners, civil discourse, and friendly communications.

Skepticism is about approaching the world by asking why things might not be true rather than why they are true. It’s a recognition that, while there is an objective truth, not everything we believe about the world is true. Thinking in bets embodies skepticism by encouraging us to examine what we do and don’t know and what our level of confidence is in our beliefs and predictions. This moves us closer to what is objectively true.

A productive decision group would do well to organize around skepticism. That should also be its communications guide, because true skepticism isn’t confrontational. Thinking in bets demands the imperative of skepticism. Without embracing uncertainty, we can’t rationally bet on our beliefs. And we need to be particularly skeptical of information that agrees with us because we know that we are biased to just accept and applaud confirming evidence. If we don’t “lean over backwards” (as Richard Feynman famously said) to figure out where we could be wrong, we are going to make some pretty bad bets.

Acknowledging uncertainty in how we communicate can make dissent less confrontational, because we leave room for our own view to be mistaken. Just as we can wrap our uncertainty into the way we express our beliefs (“I’m 60% sure the waiter is going to mess up my order”), when we implement the norm of skepticism, we naturally modulate expression of dissent with others. Expression of disagreement is, after all, just another way to express our own beliefs, which we acknowledge are probabilistic in nature. Therefore, overtly expressing the uncertainty in a dissenting belief follows. No longer do we dissent with declarations of “You’re wrong!” Rather, we engage by saying, “I’m not sure about that.” Or even just ask, “Are you sure about that?” or “Have you considered this other way of thinking about it?” We engage this way simply because that is faithful to uncertainty. Organized skepticism invites people into a cooperative exploration. People are more open to hearing differing perspectives expressed this way.

Skepticism should be encouraged and, where possible, operationalized. The term “devil’s advocate” developed centuries ago from the Catholic Church’s practice, during the canonization process, of hiring someone to present arguments against sainthood. Just as the CIA has red teams and the State Department has its Dissent Channel, we can incorporate dissent into our business and personal lives. We can create a pod whose job (literally, in business, or figuratively, in our personal life) is to present the other side, to argue why a strategy might be ill-advised, why a prediction might be off, or why an idea might be ill informed. In so doing, the red team naturally raises alternate hypotheses. Likewise, companies can implement an anonymous dissent channel, giving any employee, from the mail room to the boardroom, a venue to express dissenting opinions, alternative strategies, novel ideas, and points of view that may disagree with the prevailing viewpoint of the company without fear of repercussions. The company should do its best to reward this constructive dissent by taking the suggestions seriously or the expression of diverse viewpoints won’t be reinforced.

Less formally, look for opportunities to recruit a devil’s advocate on an ad hoc basis. When seeking advice, we can ask specific questions to encourage the other person to figure out reasons why we might be wrong. That way, they won’t be as reticent to challenge the action we want to pursue; we’re asking for it, so it’s not oppositional for them to disagree or give us advice contrary to what they think we want to hear.

Make no mistake: the process of seeing ourselves and the world more accurately and objectively is hard and makes us think about things we generally avoid. The group needs rules of engagement that don’t make this harder by letting members get away with being nasty or dismissive. And we need to be aware that even a softer serve of dissent to those who have not agreed to the truthseeking charter can be perceived as confrontational.