Examination

When someone forwards an email to me that contains astonishing information that doesn’t seem possible, I search for the title to search for an opinion about its validity. If it is a hoax, I copy the URL of the page where I found the debunk and reply to the person with the correction. If they continue to send me things that are not true, I “reply all” to their mailing list the correction and I am usually removed from the list.

Humans like to find “evidence” that supports our presuppositions. We like to continue not to believe ideas that conflict with what we already believe. We don’t throw away our favorite beliefs easily. We look at things written by people who disagree with us without any intentions of being swayed to change our minds. We listen to evidence that we are wrong with a thousand filters cleaning up the information so that we don’t have to change our minds. We don’t even really listen.

If we tried to prove our accepted beliefs were not true, it might be a good exercise. We would learn how to better defend our point if we actually prove that we were right. We would be able to improve the accuracy of our beliefs system if we find we were even partly wrong.

Humans hate checking their work. We hate having to examine what we believe in order to perform well or state truth. Truth is worth working hard to obtain and to maintain.