Doubt Over Certainty

When I had started reading Thinking, Fast and Slow, I had the intention of blasting through it quickly. I'm glad that I've, through more adversity than intention, had to take a much slower approach. My goal recently was to try and read a chapter per day, but that hasn't even been possible.

That being said, the chapter I just read talks about sampling errors, but there was a particular idea that I've been thinking about recently that came up here- Doubt Over Certainty.

Premise: The World is Gray. It's a messy place, filled with examples and counter examples. Any declaration of truth carries with it some probability of error. In a few cases, an attempt to quantify that error is given (a 95% chance that A is true), but even that isn't necessarily accurate if the study wasn't designed well.

The general premise I've come to believe that you should doubt people who speak with certainty, especially outside of their profession. There are exceptions to this rule of course, but it gives you a starting place to set your bullshit meter. Yes, this statement is just obvious common sense, but it seems like for whatever reason in our current environment that fewer people are heeding this advice.

I think where this is profound is the impact it has over my personal convictions. For instance, "Buying an expensive car is wasteful." That seems like a reasonable statement - vehicles tend to depreciate quickly, the quality in general of cars has been improving over time, the amount of time most people spend in their car is really low. However, that doesn't take into consideration many ideas. I know this may sound controversial, but money, isn't necessarily the ultimate arbiter of value.

For instance, time and attention are both precious resources that are regularly squandered. But if you are trying to preserve both, it makes sense to spend money on something that is reliable or offers a higher level of service that minimizes your headaches. So in a way, buying an expensive car can be a hedge against that.

Another case in point, patronage. What if you want to support a particular producer. You believe in them for whatever reason and you want them to continue to exist, be it practical (support a local manufacturer) or purely for astetic reasons (you think what they produce is beautiful). In this case, the expensive car isn't really about "the car." It's more about the teams of craftsmen, engineers, operators, designers, etc that can continue on because you supported them.

So my advice to myself is to not trust anything said too confidently, especially if it's about to come out of my own mouth. Inversely and more importantly, I probably have something more important to say when I'm reluctant and have my doubts.