Question Everything, But Prove Something

I don’t believe everything I’m told. I also don’t believe everything I’m told not to believe. Somewhere between blind faith and blind rejection is a harder, less glamorous job: actually investigating.

A lot of what gets called “doing your own research” is really just shopping for a conclusion you already liked. That’s not scepticism. It’s the same credulity, pointed in a different direction.

Scepticism has a cost

Real scepticism is uncomfortable because it applies to your side too. It means holding the comfortable story to the same standard as the official one. It means being willing to end up somewhere you didn’t want to go, or — more often — concluding that you simply don’t have enough to know yet, and sitting in that.

Cynicism is cheaper. It feels like insight but asks nothing of you. “They’re all lying” is a way of never having to do the work of figuring out who’s lying about what.

Some tests I try to apply

Before I take a claim on board, I try to ask a few plain questions. Who benefits if I believe this? What would have to be true for it to hold up — and is that actually true? Is there a boring explanation that fits the facts just as well? Would the people pushing this change their minds if shown they were wrong, or is the belief now part of their identity?

None of these are clever. That’s the point. Most bad reasoning doesn’t survive ordinary questions asked honestly.

Sometimes the sceptics were right

Here’s the part that keeps me from being smug about any of this: history is full of “conspiracy theories” that turned out to be true. Institutions do cover things up. Powerful people do protect each other. Pretending otherwise is its own kind of naivety.

So I don’t think the answer is to trust authority by default. The answer is to demand evidence from everyone — the official account and the rebel one. Question everything. But before you believe something, prove something.