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REMARKABLE as it may sound, they have made a science out of fooling people. No wonder as time passes, idiots are becoming, more and more, the superior race, in Herbert Spencer’s ‘survival of the fittest’.
I for a very long while have been stumped by rational peoples’ stubbornness to change their views in the face of hard facts — until now when I came across agnotology defined as “a branch of science which looks at the ways in which doubt or ignorance about certain subjects is created. A very good example of how this happens is the publication of scientific studies that rely on data that is inaccurate or misleading. More generally, the term also highlights the increasingly common condition where more knowledge of a subject leaves one more uncertain than before”.
Apparently Mr Trump cannot claim credit for agnotology’s origin; which, on a personal level are even more sinister. In the face of indisputable facts from unquestionable sources relating to the harmful effects of smoking, way back in the 1960s, there were predictions that the day of reckoning was around the corner for the tobacco industry. Almost 60 years later, they still make bundles of money.
The strategy is well explained in an internal memo of a tobacco company from 1969: “Doubt is our product since it is the best means of competing with the ‘body of fact’ that exists in the mind of the general public. It is also the means of establishing a controversy.”
There are reasons why the common man gets duped.
Apparently, there are a bunch of strategies which verge from clever and complex to downright simple when applying agnotology. In the first instance, the strategy is to promise to look into the issue in depth and allocating all resources to uncover the truth.
The second stage is where you raise doubts, complicate the question, ask more questions which are generally irrelevant, and find other alternatives to lay blame on.
Next is when you start questioning the original information — where is the evidence, the experts are conflicted, the evidence is circumstantial — and ultimately the entire exposé is irrelevant. And once enough time has passed, and the issue crops up again, you retort, don’t you have anything better to do than pull skeletons out of the closet?
When you now, after reading this, think back on how our leadership, political and otherwise, has been responding to scandals over the past many years, you suddenly realise that they seem to have the tobacco industry’s agnotology playbook. Come what may, do not agree, nor disagree, keep the controversy alive, keep going around in circles until it is stale news. Rather simplistic is it not when presented in this manner; but you wonder why it works. Is the man on the street really that stupid!
Apparently, there are reasons why the common man gets duped. First of all half truths or untruth are very simple statements while facts are complicated. For instance, if I believe that the stock market is not a barometer of a country’s economy, the proof requires a detailed analysis spread over many decades to identify the absence of causation and correlation between the stock market and the real economy. On the other hand, since the barometer argument is simpler, it sticks to everybody’s mind, everyone believes it!
Facts are also boring. The statement that the economy is doing well since the GDP growth rate has improved considerably is simple, exciting and generates positivity; irrespective of the fact that except for the very few, most don’t even understand what is GDP and how it is calculated.
Contrarily trying to prove that all the underlying debt contracted to sustain this growth will have an adverse impact on the country’s resources requires detailed mathematical workings based on complicated assumptions which nobody even wants to understand. In fact, I am sure that the take away from this paragraph for most readers was that GDP is growing, which is good!
Finally, all of us hate to be wrong. Quoting from an article by Tim Harford, “When we hear facts that challenge us, we selectively amplify what suits us, ignore what does not, and reinterpret whatever we can”. French dramatist, Molière once wrote, “A learned fool is more foolish than an ignorant one”. In the end, motivated reasoning gets you; if you believe the economy is doing great, the ‘feel good’ will carry the day, irrespective of all boring data to the contrary.
Well I for one have my answer, thanks to science. Unfortunately the net conclusion is that facts just can’t win. Apparently, the only solution to winning an argument is to make up an untruth even more fantastic, but simple, than the untruth you weren’t to dispel. Science finally has proven that ignorance is bliss!
The writer is a chartered accountant.
Published in Dawn, January 19th, 2018
