Getting Skeptical

If I were to come to you and say, “I’m a robot from the future”, how would you respond?

I hope you’d be skeptical. I hope your first reaction would be something along the lines of, “Bullshit!”

And if I insisted, I’d hope that you’d demand to see evidence. You’d want me to peel off my skin to show you the wires. You’d be unmoved in your assumption that I’m lying unless I astounded you with undeniable evidence of my roboticism. 

And even then, you’d still be skeptical that I’m also from the future. Just because I’ve proven I’m a robot that does not make my claim to be from the future any more valid. You’d need me to accurately predict the exact movements of future Microsoft stock values or something equally convincing.

So if you understand this kind of challenge to my claims, then you get the gist of critical thinking – the art of challenging your biases and assumptions.

But what if I were to tell you something more reasonable, like “I’ve published five books”?

If you know me, then you know I’ve published some books. You know I’m a prolific writer. Would you be as skeptical?

The Subtlety of Lying

The truth is, I’ve published four books. So saying I’ve published five is a lie. In fact, I’ve really only written three books, as one of them is just a transcript from my online course.

And yet, I know you’d be much more likely to believe my publishing claim than my claims to be a time-travelling robot. Why, though, is one more believable than the other? They are both equally untrue.

This is the problem of manipulation. If someone wants to manipulate you, they only need to figure out how much bullshit you will swallow before you get skeptical and stay within those parameters. 

If someone is a skilled manipulator, they will engage you in what seems like normal conversation while secretly prodding and testing your limits. And you’d be amazed at how easy it is to slowly move someone from believing a claim like publishing five books through to believing in time-traveling robots.

Take conspiracy theories for example. If I can get you to believe that the government has secret meetings to suit their own agenda while telling lies to the public, you’d probably find that easy to believe. And yet, even though this is almost certainly true, I can’t actually prove it.

From there, I can start to embellish on what kind of secrets these meetings are about. Then I can expand the nature and breadth of the conspiracy. Because you believed my first claim, your biases will lead to you feel inclined to believe future claims I make, especially if I’m careful not to trigger your skepticism by pushing too far and fast. Before long, I’ll have you believing the world is actually a spaceship run by alien reptiles.

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And yet, skeptical thinking does not mean rejecting all ideas outright. As a comedian I saw once said, “The only thing crazier than a conspiracy theorist is someone who doesn’t believe there are any conspiracies”. Rebelling against all claims that seem extreme or unsubstantiated and refusing to hear them out will also lead to missing out on the truth.

Critical Thinking

So what is critical thinking? What’s the right amount of believing we should do? And how do we apply it to protect ourselves from manipulation?

One way to look at it is taking this position: I don’t believe anything I hear but I’m open to being convinced by overwhelming evidence.

Whether someone claims to be an author or a robot, your first reaction must be: “I don’t believe you”. You might still feel convinced. Critical thinking means you don’t trust such feelings. You override the urge to believe by demanding you first see compelling evidence. You won’t resist evidence either, but it will need to be strong evidence.

The reason I don’t believe in God is not because I don’t feel there must be a higher power. It’s simply because no one has ever shown me something that convinces me. I’m open to being shown, but so far nothing has been enough to move me.

It doesn’t matter who’s making the claim. Whether it’s a politician on the news; a friend from your baseball team; your own father; a police officer – skepticism is understanding that any of them could be lying. Hell, they might actually believe what they’re saying even if it’s untrue.

This doesn’t mean you must be cruel to anyone who makes any claim. You don’t need to accuse people of being liars or gas-lighting narcissists. You don’t need to become an obnoxious contrarian. You just need to restrain your own impulse to believe something without proof, especially when you want to believe it.

You’re most at risk when what’s being said is something you hope is true, already believe in, or is coming from someone you have positive feelings toward. Manipulators know this, and they’ll prey on this weakness. If anything, you must be extra skeptical when it comes to claims that match your political beliefs and moral principles, or those which come from your loved ones and heroes.

If you’re one of my readers, you probably think I’m trustworthy and reliable. But what if I’m wrong and yet believe I’m right… how would I know? I could pass a lie onto you without realising I’m doing it. So you shouldn’t even believe what I say without questioning it.

Ironically, you should be applying skepticism to this very post you’re reading!

Healthy Paranoia

You don’t need to be a psychology expert to protect yourself from manipulation. You just need to be skeptical all the time. Make people convince you with lots of solid evidence, and always look for potential holes in their story. 

Even evidence itself should not be totally convincing. Videos can be faked. Scientific studies can be corrupt. Screenshots can be photoshopped. Facts can be taken out of context. Perceptions can be biased. You need to be overwhelmed by evidence, and even then keep a little window of uncertainty open, just in case.

And a person is only as good as their last claim. Even if you consider a source to be trustworthy due to them proving themselves consistently over time, there’s always the possibility of two problems.

Firstly, they might believe something that isn’t true, so even though they aren’t knowingly lying they can still be wrong. And secondly, a master manipulator will spend lots of time grooming you to earn your trust first, so their track record will be clean until they make their move.

You don’t need to become misanthropic and assume all people are evil manipulating bastards. But it’s also dangerous to assume all people are genuine, truthful, and coming from good intentions. It’s overkill to disbelieve everything and treat everyone as a threat, but it’s naive to treat everyone as an authentic and kind truthteller.

Evidence Rules!

The key is in not believing what people say or claim, but believing only in evidence, patterns of repeated results, and replicated experiments.

And a little motto I’ve found helpful: An honest man doesn’t need to tell you he’s honest.

If you focus on patterns of behaviour, you don’t need people to tell you who they are. In fact, in my experience, the more someone tells you about who they are, the more likely they are manipulating you. They make such claims to override your senses so you fail to see the counter-evidence in their behaviour.

A genuine person will just walk the walk instead of talking the talk.

Trust evidence and patterns even more than you trust your feelings, instincts, and inflated sense of your ability to “read” people. 

You won’t always get it right, but the more skeptical you are, and the more you challenge people to provide evidence, the less attractive you’ll be to manipulative people. They aren’t looking for difficult targets, so make sure that convincing you takes a lot of hard work!