Forwarded: The antidote to fake news is to nourish our epistemic wellbeing
Epistēmē is a Greek word that refers to knowledge; giving a Greek name to an abstract concept makes it sound important.
In the book The Black Swan, maestro Nassim Nicholas Taleb introduces the concept of epistemic arrogance - our overconfidence concerning the limits of our own knowledge; our misevaluation of our own knowledge.
As our knowledge grows, it is threatened by greater increases in our confidence about the underlying information. Thus, the act of retrieving more information in order to grow our knowledge indirectly contributes to an increase in confusion and ignorance. In short, Taleb proclaims that “humans are simply not wise enough to be entrusted with knowledge”. Decision making with overconfidence can be as dangerous as (if not more) the decisions made by ignorance, not just for us but also for the people around us - our communities.
As I reflect on this idea, I draw similar conclusions about how my knowledge base grows and the constant struggle to update it as I absorb new information, filtering out the irrelevant (in my personal consideration).
Furthermore, Taleb talks about the self-reinforcing, double-edged effects of our epistemic arrogance:
- We overestimate what we know.
- We underestimate the uncertainty related to our knowledge.
This gap between what people actually know, and how much they think they know, is a fault line in our brains that deepens into an ever-widening valley where overconfidence eventually starts to flow if we are not proactive. Personally, I believe our internal humility and epistemic wellbeing are few of the bridges connecting these two ends of the valley, and bringing some sanity to this over-the-top world we find ourselves in.
This week’s article focuses on our epistemic wellbeing and breaks down few important questions facing the humankind in the face of abuses of social media and information technology.