I don’t remember when I started asking for reasons for the existing beliefs. But I do remember that I had had problematic beliefs before I questioned them. Caste feelings, Religious stigmas, Gender roles etc. I’m fortunate that somehow the torch of rationality turned on in my brain and I could scrutinise all these beliefs under the light of reason. I ask myself and other rational people I meet, “When did you start thinking rationally?”, but I seldom receive a clear answer.
But I know the concepts that helped me think rationally. I have blogged about a few of them in the past. This blog will be a dictionary of it.
- Anecdotal evidence: Anecdotal evidence is a personal observation. You yawned and, say, your headache disappeared. It is your personal observation and there is no one denying it. But in the scientific realm, anecdotal evidence is BS.
- Beliefs: Beliefs are concepts that are accepted to be true without questioning. I believe that my mom loves me and I’ll never question it. It is good if beliefs remain personal.
- Bias: Knowingly or unknowingly, our minds are inclined towards certain kinds of people, movies and information. Such inclinations influence our thoughts and make us hold irrational beliefs. Examine your biases well.
- Burden of proof: I might claim that my belief is actually a science/fact/truth. That the earth is flat is not a personal belief but is actually a fact. And when I make such claims, it is on me to prove it. Not on those who criticise me to disprove it.
- Causality: Any physical effect has a cause. A large part of the scientific endeavour is to find causes of various phenomena. To find the cause, one of the most reliable ways is to conduct an experiment. Take two identical groups, treat one group with medicine and the other with a placebo sugar pill, and if the first group performs differently than the second group – we can say with some confidence that the medicine caused the effect.
- Coincidence: Coincidence is an occasion when two plus events happen at the same time. There is always a probability, however small it is, that two events happen at the same time. I might vomit on a new moon day. But that does not mean the new moon caused my vomit. If I want to prove otherwise, I have to conduct an experiment.
- Correlation: Correlation is a mutual relationship between two entities. For instance, you could see a pattern that the weight of a person increases with height. Clearly, weight and height are correlated. But that does not mean height causes weight or vice versa. There could be some other thing causing an increase in both height and weight of an individual. Or the pattern could just be a coincidence. “Correlation does not imply causation.”
- Evidence: Evidence is the data/material one has to provide along with their claims. Evidence will be reviewed to accept it as proof. Anecdotal evidence will be rejected during the review.
- Falsification: This concept was introduced by Karl Popper and is a gold standard in separating science from pseudo-science. The principle of falsification is that a statement or hypothesis or theory cannot be judged to be true if there does not exist some way to show it to be false. For instance, I make a statement that “God exists” but there is no way to prove that this statement is false. Hence the statement fails to be a scientific statement. Falsification also implies that if a statement is falsified (proved to be false), it refuses to be a scientific statement.
- Logical Fallacy: Logical fallacy is a mistake in one’s logic while making an argument. There are many such mistakes. For instance, I might argue that your statement is wrong because you are a Muslim. It is obviously a flawed argument on my end. There are several such logical mistakes, and a few of them are actually not very intuitive. It is a good exercise to monitor these mistakes as and when we make them.
- Superstition: Superstitions are a subset to beliefs. When a belief involves supernatural agents or starts sounding ridiculous, it’s a superstition. For instance, I believe that my mom loves me. But if I also believe that this love protects me from death (As Dumbledore told how Harry got saved from Voldemort), then I started to become superstitious. (Sorry for the Harry Potter reference. I just completed reading Philosopher’s stone and have been giving Harry Potter references left, right and centre.)
The dictionary is not exhaustive yet. Tell me if I miss anything?
My friend Bhavabhuthi has built a Mozilla Add-on Fallacies & biases. Whenever you open a new tab, it shows you a logical fallacy or a cognitive bias.
Related blog posts: (A few of my opinions would have changed since writing these posts)
- God, Religion, Philosophy and Science
- Astrology is a by-product of our psychological foolishness
- Rationalism is more important than Atheism
- Scientific Temper in India
Sai Krishna 