The Pandemic Proves That Humans Follow Stories, Not Evidence
Data will never lead to an agreement. But there is hope in a different approach.
Suppose you expressed a belief like: “Masks mandates reduce cases,” and I present you with a data graph, such as:
What would be your reaction?
I’m guessing you would a) try to discredit the source of the data, b) question the methodology of the data collection (i.e., did it account for compliance? or increased testing?) or c. try to produce a graph which showed the opposite.
What you would not do is abandon your belief.
And I don’t think that’s unique to you or your belief. Data or evidence, in and of it itself, never causes humans to abandon their beliefs.
And there is a good reason for that.
The Psychology of Sticking to Our Narrative
In the early nineties I had the privilege of studying in what was, then, one of the few History and Philosophy of Science programs for undergrads in the world. At that time, understanding science both in terms of philosophy and historical context was still just a couple decades old.
The granddaddy of this entire approach was a UC Berkeley professor named Thomas Kuhn. In the Sixties, he published a little treatise called The Structure of Scientific Revolutions which, true to its name, set the entire way we think about science on its ear. (And, true to historical context, no accident that it was published at a time of much societal upheaval in the United States).
In Structure, Kuhn introduced the idea that scientists are not, as most people probably think, operating in contextless vacuum, independently examining objective reality and drawing conclusions from those observations — they are operating in a paradigm, a set of working principles or a theoretical framework which only allows them to see things a certain way. If they encounter data that falls outside their operating paradigm, it does not, Kuhn says, falsify their theory… the data merely get classified as “anomalous”. Moreover, scientists operating in two different paradigms, a quantum physicist, say, and an Einsteinian relativist, will never compare notes nor see eye to eye about the phenomenon they are observing. Their viewpoints are, in Kuhn’s terminology, incommensurable. They are speaking different languages, and, for all intents and purposes, might as well be observing different realities.
And of course, this is not confined to science. In my view, this goes deep into human psychology and describes the very nature of our thinking minds.
We do not independently discover the world each day. If we did, we would be paralyzed at the level of single-celled organisms, reacting to each momentary stimulus. Instead, we economize — we make generalizations, categories, concepts, principles, beliefs, narratives, stories. If something occurs in our life which falls outside our understanding, we do not throw out our beliefs or narratives about the way the world works — we ignore or dismiss the data, or we work it into our framework. It would simply be too costly in terms of time and mental effort to throw away our paradigms every day or to reconstruct our operating principles with every anomaly.
Sticking to our narrative is simple economy.
Language itself, if you think about it, is nothing but an economization trick: it’s a system of shorthand symbols that stand for deeper concepts. It means when you and I try to communicate with one another, we don’t have to start from scratch, grunting and pointing to make ourselves understood. We use shorthand symbols whose meaning we theoretically agree on, so that my generalizations can meet your generalizations and shake hands.
Of course, this often backfires. The difference between a word and the thing it indicates is the difference between a sign indicating a park and the park itself. Between the symbol and the actual meaning lay a vast minefield of potential misunderstandings. Which is why our generalizations often meet and do not shake hands — they clash.
This entire pandemic has been an object lesson in incommensurability. It’s the reason we seem so divided about nearly everything pandemic-related, from the origins of the virus, to the mechanism of spread, to the manner we ought control it, to masking, distancing, treatments, and even in the way people understand science, evidence, and ideas in general.
Notice that on all sides we hear the universal claim that the opponents are “ignoring the science”.
This is a dead giveaway.
If Thomas Kuhn were still alive, he would say: “See what I mean?”
How Humans Actually Form Beliefs
Of course, we all want to think we’re rational beings, and we tell ourselves a little story about how we form beliefs. It goes something like:
I believe a given claim because I suspend judgment on it until I make a thoroughgoing examination of all the evidence, consider all the arguments and counter-claims, sort out the logical contradictions, integrate the claim with everything else I know, and judge it to be true, pending any new information or evidence or convincing counter-arguments. Therefore, at least for now, I believe it.
It’s a great story, and a fine description of rationality. Maybe even something to strive for.
Unfortunately, I doubt whether it describes ten people on the planet. It’s just not true of the typical human being. Vulcans, maybe. Not us.
You know (unless you’re a Vulcan reading this) how humans actually form beliefs:
Someone you like/trust/revere uttered the claim, so you believe it.
Someone you feel unqualified to challenge (i.e., an “authority”) uttered the claim, so you believe it.
The claim agrees with your more general worldview, belief system, or politics, so you believe it.
You read a single article, opinion piece, or saw a news piece on it, and formed a belief on the spot with no further questioning.
You heard the view repeated so often it became “true by repetition”, so you believe it.
The adoption of the belief has some social benefit or secondary gain: it smooths things over with people, doesn’t upset the family, herd, or the tribe, gives you a sense of belonging, gets you attention, increases your sense of importance or significance, or your sense of superiority, involves some financial gain, or prevents some financial loss, or keeps you safe from harm from oppressive gangs or authorities… so you believe it (or at least profess to believe it).
And finally (and I think this is maybe the most obvious one over the past year, driving most humans):
The adoption of the belief gives you some psychological benefit: it allays a deep-seated fear or gives you a feeling of empowerment or certainty or well-being about something, without which you would be terrified, confused, uncertain, or uncomfortable… so you believe it.
Sound familiar?
And germane to our discussion of data, how about the part of the story about being open to revision pending new evidence or convincing counter-arguments?
Does that sound like any humans you know? Are people typically open to further discussion of their beliefs, or examining new data as it becomes available? Do they typically leave open the possibility of changing their position if the data warrants it?
If you’ve been observing humanity over the past year and change, you know the answer to this.
Most people adopt a belief, set it in the unbreakable stone of Certainty, then do everything in their power to justify that belief, including cherry-pick, suppress unfavorable information, ridicule, shame, punish, or even commit outright violence.
And does that also sound familiar?
Does that not exactly characterize our public debate about many things pandemic-related?
This is why, as the Atlantic put it, “Everyone Thinks They’re Right About Masks”.
This is the reason why we can’t have a calm, evidence-based discussion. We can throw data, charts, and studies at each other all day long… none of it will lead to agreement. Our stories will not let that happen.
Stories precede evidence.
With good evolutionary reasons. Consider a charging bear. If we spent time doing a thoroughgoing analysis and considering arguments and counter-arguments and sorting out all the logical contradictions of how to best survive an impending bear attack… the bear kills us.
The story has to come first.
Action, even ill-considered action, is sometimes preferable to careful analysis. Which also, I think, pretty fairly characterizes our pandemic response. We had no evidence, but we acted. This actually makes perfect sense, from a behavioral standpoint.
But what about from an epistemic standpoint? Can we not then question or analyze the story?
Another way of asking this is…
Are We Hopelessly Trapped In Our Stories, Like Flies in Amber?
I don’t think so.
The fact that we are story-oriented creatures does not mean we are story-trapped creatures.
Stories might precede evidence. But they don’t have to preclude it.
Even though we might have a set of operating principles, a paradigm, that helps us survive a bear-attack, that doesn’t mean we have to refuse, on principle, to ever consider or have a future conversation about how to best survive bear attacks. And particularly, it doesn’t mean that anyone who disagrees with, or points out faults in, our paradigm is “pro-bear-death” and wants people horribly mauled and killed.
This has become a fairly commonplace (and blatant) tactic in our society. We characterize anyone who wants to continue to examine the evidence, raise questions, point out falsifying data, or unintended consequences, or suggest alternate approaches, or continue the conversation and the search for truth at all, as villainous. “Clearly, they are in favor of people dying!” we say. “And they need to be suppressed, ridiculed, shamed, scorned, and/or punished!”
Which, of course, is ludicrous. All we’re doing by preventing questions is clinging to our paradigm. Asking questions and conversing about a story, whether it’s a story about how to best survive bear attacks, or a story about how to best survive a virus, is not the same as wanting people to die, and can only benefit everyone as we continue to make further distinctions and discoveries. Characterizing anyone you disagree with as a dangerous lunatic and declaring “end of discussion” might itself be the most dangerous tactic. What if we’ve adopted a faulty paradigm? It will lead to bad actions with poor outcomes.
Given that fact, shouldn’t we constantly be challenging/questioning our paradigms?
Some of us are natural questioners. We will continue the investigation, and the questions, regardless. You can dismiss, deplatform, ridicule, shame, guilt, manipulate all you want. For us, it is never the end of discussion. (Nor, in science, should it ever be.)
In any case, while humans are certainly enjoined to their way of thinking, I don’t think they’re doomed to their way of thinking. If you’ve learned anything about science history you know this: revolutions in thought do happen. The change might be frustratingly slow, but ideas do change over time.
Paradigms shift.
Now, Thomas Kuhn had a somewhat cynical view of this. He said: “a new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.”
I’m sure that’s partly true. Some people do take their ideas to the grave with them. People don’t give up on their worldviews easily, nor do they typically even question them. But, if only our deaths bring about new ideas, then how on Earth did Thomas Kuhn manage to reject the paradigm of paradigmless science?
Also, Kuhn did not live at a time when ideas can spread as rapidly as now. If you were paying attention, something astonishing happened in the early 2010s: the Arab Spring. Due to the rise of social media and the expanding availability of Internet, the Middle East experienced an influx of democratic and anti-authoritarian ideas which were previously unknown in that part of the world. Not accidentally, there were suddenly mass uprisings in highly authoritarian societies like Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Syria, etc. We all witnessed a massive paradigm shift. (It is telling that many of those regimes clamped down on their respective revolutions by clamping down on their citizens’ access to information.)
But you don’t need to look at massive societal uprisings to see evidence of paradigm shifts. Haven’t your operating principles shifted over the course of your own life? I know mine have. As a wee lad, I went to Sunday school in a mildly Protestant church. When I became a teenager I rejected that story — it didn’t work for me. And then, when I got older, I rejected some of the stories I adopted as a teenager… and so on. There have been some common threads running through my intellectual life but I can say with some confidence that my sixteen-year-old mind would not recognize my forty-six-year-old mind if they were trapped together in an elevator. Our worldviews, if not utterly incommensurable, would at least be in friction. And that is cause for hope.
Maybe you’ve had this experience: you express a belief about something and everyone you know, and seemingly your entire society, thinks you’re crazy. Then, five years later, the “fringe” view you held back then is commonplace, mainstream, on the cover of magazines at the grocery store, and on the lips of everyone you meet. Your “crazy” idea has become normalized.
Paradigms take time to shift, yes, and given the intransigent human psychology involved, that is really no surprise. But if we were hopelessly stuck in our inherited stories, we would still be in caves.
We are all capable of questioning, and rejecting, unsatisfying stories.
How to Reach Someone Who Believes in a Different Story
Our paradigms shape what we see and don’t see.
If you run up against someone who can’t see the data you’re trying to show them, or who dismiss it as irrelevant, consider that your clashing stories are causing an incommensurability block which makes that data irrelevant.
I’m not suggesting that data is unimportant or shouldn’t be pursued, or used in argument. What I’m saying is that sometimes, psychologically, presenting data is the wrong approach. You will never reach someone across the chasm of paradigms with data alone.
Instead, consider a story-based approach.
First, get to the bottom of why they believe what they believe. As we analyzed earlier, often the foundation for our beliefs is flimsy: we adopted the belief from someone else, or get some secondary or psychological gain from adopting it, etc. Oftentimes, digging to find the origin of someone’s story will be enough to start the question motors running in their head.
Next, get them to consider whether their story is only one possibility. Aren’t there other stories which fit the facts? They don’t have to believe in those alternate views, but just acknowledge that they exist and that there are other people who believe in them. Again, this act alone might get them to start thinking: “Hmm, I wonder, of the myriad of stories I might have adopted, if mine was the best?”
Thirdly, coach them through arriving at an alternate story. Without yet asserting your own views on the matter, this could be phrased in the form of “What if” questions, as in: “Just consider, for a second, what if x were true? What result would we expect to see in the world?” Again, you’re not telling them they are wrong, or asserting that you are right, or telling them what to believe. You’re simply asking them to use their brains to consider something they might not have considered before.
This is a more Socratic method of debating — rather than telling someone what to believe, you’re trying to get them to question what they believe. Difficult to do, but ultimately more rewarding, I think, since the two people are not merely defending each other’s turf, but actually considering each other’s questions, using their own minds, and trying to understand one another.
Now, one particularly difficult incommensurability block, in my experience, is politics. This is a tough one to get past, on par with religion. As I’ve talked about before, politics is a deeply-skewed, confused, non-rational, fanatical, half-blind way of seeing the world. It’s lizard brain stuff, going deep into the emotional psyche. It puts the spin of groupthink and tribal belonging on everything, and taints everything it touches. It is to our shame that much of science and medicine has become so politicized. Fidelity to party or political philosophy is a direct anathema to fidelity to truth. In fact, in my experience, the pursuit of truth practically requires you to leave political identity far behind, if you really hope to get anywhere.
But even political paradigms shift over time, so I guess we can take some solace in that.
In any case, reaching another mind is difficult, but not impossible. If no two minds could communicate generalizations, we’d still be naked and wielding sticks and rocks, and you wouldn’t be reading these words right now.
Part of our problem is a basic loss of civility.
There is compelling research in psychology about parent-child relationships and how to build trust and effective communication. The more the parent or the child “talks down” to the other, the more mistrust and skepticism grow between them. Eventually they create a rift across which they cannot communicate. Unfortunately, this is more or less the exact tone that public health officials have taken with the public over the course of the pandemic: that of a parent talking down to a child, who, when the child asks for an explanation, the parent responds with “Because I say so.”
It is also the tone of our friends and neighbors and family members who say “Shut up and listen to them. They know best.”
Listen, if I raise questions or express doubts or point to falsifying data, what I’m seeking is your consideration, nothing more. If you dismiss, talk down, and/or ridicule my concerns, you reinforce my ideas and create an enemy.
We can do better.
Above all, we must reject this embrace of silencing one another. Do not shut people down for asking questions and showing data that doesn’t fit your story. Entrenching bad stories is how we keep coming back to the same mistakes over and over. Questioning the status quo is how we deepen our understanding and move past it. We should be marshalling the best and brightest and hearing multiple sides and all of their disagreements. That is how human knowledge progresses. The alternative is “What is true is whatever the authorities say is true”, e.g., Might makes right.
If we allow the conversation to unfold, with time and perspective, our stories will change. We will rise above the schisms and politicization and hate and see that much of the stories we clinged to were wrong. We may even find some common ground. But it will not happen by throwing data and evidence at each other from the trenches of our own stories. It will happen because we questioned the trench we occupied, and decided instead to step out into the light.