This I Believe

Many suckers just like you come to me seeking spiritual solace and philosophical guidance. “Master,” they ask, “what should I believe?”

In a moment of blinding realization, which occurred during a cocktail party, I received the authentic principle of universal enlightenment. I term it The Principle of Epistemic Perversity and I offer it now to a world beset by confusion: The probability that x is true is inversely proportional to the number of people who believe it. This is true precisely because everyone holds it to be false, as neat a confirmation as could be wished.

Now consider a simple disagreement. We have three people: call them Smith, Jones, and Funk. And let’s stipulate that Smith, Jones, and Funk are of similar intelligence and, at the outset, possess similar information. Smith and Jones believe that the Great God Yottle is displeased, while Funk disagrees.

That Smith believes that Yottle is displeased is regarded by Jones as a justification for his own belief that Yottle is displeased, and vice versa. Smith and Jones confirm one another in an infinite circle of epistemic back-slapping by which each congratulates the other – and hence by which each congratulates himself – on his insight and sagacity. In addition, having dreamed up the notion of Yottle’s displeasure, to say nothing of the notion of Yottle himself, they tend to believe any tissue of fallacies which might support them in this belief, which they in turn justify by their agreement on these sophistries themselves.

Funk, on the other hand, must search his mind and the rest of the world as he defies the consensus, and will be pressed for a defensible justification. And if he persists, he persists at a cost to himself. On the other hand, Smith and Jones replace the world with one another. While they gather with their fermented berries to party at the human sacrifice, Funk probes, observes, works.

Once Smith and Jones have latched onto Yottle like cloned barnacles, their conviction persists even in the face of what ought to be regarded as a great deal of evidence against it, some of it no doubt brought forward by Funk himself. Such evidence is repressed as an anti-social subversion of the obvious deliverances of good sense.

Before long they conclude that Yottle’s displeasure is directed at Funk, whom they then remove from the gene pool by artificial selection and whose books they burn, so that future generations – and indeed this one – become ever-more committed to unanimity. Funk’s approach is extinguished beyond hope of resuscitation, while the glory of Yottle endureth eternally.

There is no better way to reduce a theory to absurdity than to disseminate it universally, and once it makes its way into middle school textbooks or the speeches of politicians, it is suitable merely for children and morons.

The Principle of Epistemic Perversity can be of use to you even if you are in fact incapable of independent thought. To find the truth, simply consult polls, signing up with the smallest minority on any given question. Alternatively, ask your friends what movies they like or what political party they belong to.

As to the application of The Principle of Epistemic Perversity to such beliefs as that children are our future, or that America is the land of promise, I leave it to your imagination. If I told you what I thought about it, you’d just agree with me.