Unveiling the Complexity

Navigating Beliefs, Bias, and the Quest for Truth

You cannot take in new information without making use of prior understandings, beliefs, and biases, if you wish. You cannot interpret evidence without depending upon your existing mental framework. This existing framework will, in all likelihood, contain information that is incorrect. The new information, including evidence, perhaps firsthand, perhaps several times removed, may be right or it may be wrong. You may never have all of the germane evidence on a topic in any case.

This is a fundamental problem and maybe a problem unrecognized for the most part since people easily become wedded to their beliefs and do not spend a lot of energy questioning them.

Perhaps the most fundamental problem is knowing what to believe.