A question about rational / scientific / sceptical thought processes..
If there is a claim made about a certain topic, a sceptical way to
look at it is to assume that the claim is false until proper evidence
is brought up that validates the claim. In the absence of the required
and necessary evidence, the claim is disposed as false.
I'm totally fine with that.
But what if there are two sides to a topic, and there is a
counter-claim that arrives as a hidden counterpart to the claim made?
What if the decision to assume the original claim to be false, ends up
freely legitimizing / ratifying the counter-claim without any rational
scrutiny? What if the lack of satisfactory evidence on the claim side,
can not be counted as sufficient and necessary evidence to prove the
counter-claim to be true, but gets passed off as such by vested
interests?
What if, by not bringing the counter-claim up to the light of
scrutiny, by not mentioning it, and instead focusing only on disposing
of the original clam, you end up giving the counter-claim a free ride,
a golden ticket of blanket approval sans any due process of scientific
inspection?
What if there have been enough instances of this kind of thing
happening to become a pattern, and what if someone figures out how to
GAME this pattern?
Let's imagine a hypothetical scenario : You want claim A to be
accepted as "proven" truth, and want to avoid due inspection of it.
Its counter-claim is B. You don't bring claim A to the table. You just
bring claim B (or have it brought through other parties). You sabotage
things such that there is not enough evidence to validate claim B.
Therefore the authoritative body declares that they are assuming B to
be false. You then quote that declaration to assert everywhere that A
is hence true.
Claim A hence gets a "free ride", and gets ratified as truth without
having to provide a shred of evidence to support it.
Is this a problem? Yes! Most real-world issues have two prominent
competing arguments, philosophies etc to them. By disposing of one
side after scrutiny and not exercising due diligence on the other, we
become susceptible to blindly believing the flip side.
This is very much what we call binary thinking.. assuming that, like
in an electronic NAND or XOR gate, the output can be either 1 or 0 and
hence if it's not 1 then it has to be 0. Digital circuits rely on this
binary logic for the sake of their own stability, but real life is not
like a NAND gate.
Also, this binary defaulting process short-circuits any chances of
finding a THIRD side to a topic, one that might be able to stand up to
scrutiny better and provide a better understanding of the topic than
both the original claim and counterclaim. If anything, this is what
innovation has always been about : to find the third side, to go
beyond the present binary confines. The binary logic endangers all
chances of innovation through its defaulting process.
How can we avoid this kind of a situation? Well, by exercising what
I'll call TRUE neutrality : by treating ALL sides to a topic with due
skepticism, by recognizing and pointing out the counter-claim, and
most importantly, ALWAYS KEEPING ROOM FOR A THIRD SIDE TO EMERGE.
Example :
We know that capitalism can't be trusted, but that doesn't mean we can
just trust communism either. Conversely, we know the horrors that
communism has caused, but that doesn't mean we can blindly trust
capitalism either. This is not a binary issue, so should NOT be
treated as such.
Another one:
We know that every vaccine is not toxic for everybody. But we also
know that all vaccines are not safe for everybody. The failure of one
side in producing a solid proof (because several studies needed have
never even been done, perhaps?) cannot be allowed to blindly prove the
counter-claim. The counter-claim must also pass equally rigorous
scrutiny. And we must make room for a third or more sides to this
issue. The decisions by governments to make the entire vaccination
schedule mandatory to everybody without exception : is one example of
binary default,which short-circuits the possibility of third sides
emerging that might help reconcile the unsolved questions.
And if we want to continue being controversial, then here's a less
scientific and more political one, but which brings out the binary
hazard beautifully: if Trump is bad, that doesn't automatically prove
Clinton is good, but binary logic says it does. Millions of dollars
were spent on pushing that binary logic. The entire American
establishment : media, social media giants, academia, Hollywood,
corporations, deep state: was actively promoting the concept of binary
default, and continues doing so to this day, even asserting that
Mother Nature is punishing the USA because they didn't vote for
Hillary Clinton. Several third sides got short-circuited out in the
binary heat. It's very possible that the whole damnation of claim B
was gamed to make claim A win without the need for proving itself on
its own, and it might not be such a bad thing after all that this game
was recognized and rejected in spite of all the dominant forces
pushing it. And take a look at the demographics of who all bought into
the binary logic. Qualified and enlightened much? It might just turn
out that the people not rewarded by our binary-thinking systems may be
more immune to binary hazard than we give them credit for.
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