Media
The Epidemic of Certainty
Beware of categorical assumptions.
Posted September 22, 2021 Reviewed by Chloe Williams
Key points
- Certainty is an emotional state, not an intellectual one. To feel certain, the brain must filter out more information than it processes.
- Confirmation bias, mental focus, and social media can fuel certainty and preclude people from considering complexity.
- Considering evidence against one's assumptions and opinions can illuminate blind spots and help people escape certainty.
Have you noticed that the more complex and nuanced social issues become, the more certain some people are of their categorical assertions?
Problems with Certainty
Certainty is an emotional state, not an intellectual one. To create a feeling of certainty, the brain must filter out more information than it processes, which, of course, increases its already high error rate during emotional arousal. In other words, the more certain we feel, the more likely we’re oversimplifying, if not downright wrong.
Confirmation Bias. The more certain we feel, the more vulnerable we are to noticing only the evidence that supports our beliefs while ignoring or discounting contradictory evidence. Confirmation bias fuels the painful polarization we currently experience in this country, with different factions focusing on what the others overlook or discount.
The ancient Greeks warned us about certainty more than 2,500 years ago. Inscribed on the Temple of Apollo at Delphi: "Surety brings ruin."
Focus. Mental focus contributes to feelings of certainty in less than obvious ways. Focus amplifies, magnifies, and usually decontextualizes the object of focus. What we focus on becomes more important than what we don’t focus on. We like to think that we focus on those aspects of reality that are most important, when, more often, those aspects seem most important because we focus on them.
Wherever we shine the light of focus, we create shadows around it.
Social Media Effects. To some extent, our brains have been trained to think within the character limits of social media, which preclude consideration of complex variables. What you can’t put in a tweet must be wrong or irrelevant.
The algorithms skillfully implemented in social media and search engines provide validation for any opinion on anything. The hunger for validation itself reveals the paradox of certainty. The more certain many people feel, the more validation they seem to require. Validation seems necessary when we’re insecure about our beliefs, opinions, and prejudices. Self-doubt is typically covered up with anger and attempts to devalue others.
Verbal Violence: Labeling People
Negative labels have become the shorthand of social and political discourse, functioning as little more than stereotypes and slurs against people who don’t validate those who use them. If you disagree with those who feel certain, you're immoral, unintelligent, unpatriotic, crazy, sexist, racist, hate-mongering (worthy of the hatred of those who hate hate), or simply personality-disordered. Pirandello parodied this tendency in the early 20th-century play, Right You Are, If You Think You Are, in which all the characters have different versions of the truth and regard the others as insane.
Underlying the feelings of certainty that drive the impulse to devalue those who disagree is a coping mechanism that first emerges in toddlerhood. Spitting helps us tolerate uncomfortable emotions by making someone or something seem all good or all bad, all right or all wrong. Intolerance of ambiguity is a damaging affliction of those who feel certain in our ambiguous world.
As Voltaire put it in the 18th century, “Doubt is an uncomfortable condition, but certainty is a ridiculous one.”
How to Overthrow the Yoke of Certainty
To escape the chains of certainty, we must illuminate the blind spots in our assumptions and opinions. All assumptions and opinions have blind spots; if you think yours don’t have them, that’s your number one blind spot.
A simple way to free yourself of the need for certainty is to ask: "What is the evidence against the assumptions and opinions that cause me to devalue or label others?"
A more profound way is to invoke your sense of basic humanity. All humans are worthy of respect. If you exercise basic humanity, you’ll not only feel more humane, you’re likely to see through your biases. There is much honor in saying, “I don’t know,” or “I’m not certain, but this is what I think,” or “I see your point, but this is why I disagree.”
Uncertainty Is Our Friend
How we cope with uncertainty determines how well we do in life. Uncertainty, if we can tolerate it, drives us to learn more intellectually and connect to one another emotionally. It makes us smarter and more compassionate.
All of us, at one time or another, have reacted to uncertainty, not by learning and connecting, but by trying to pretend that it doesn't exist. Instead of seeing it as a friend to help us improve, we vainly try to defeat it — or cover it up — with dogma, superstition, delusions, drugs, ego, perfectionism, anger, attempts to control what other people think, say, and do.
Most of us now and then cope with uncertainty through an implicit recognition that it gives value and meaning to life and that our quest to understand and connect, in the long run, makes us feel less vulnerable. We sometimes grasp that the ever-changing, never-completed picture of reality that uncertainty drives us to piece together is the substance of our lives.
Life can be hard for the certain — reality simply won't cooperate with their view of it. Life is more interesting and valuable for those who embrace its inherent uncertainty.