Summary
The Demon-Haunted World
In 1995 Carl Sagan’s The Pale Blue Dot was published by Random House. Though he is not the sole author. Several sections feature Ann Druyan, his wife. In it, they explain the scientific method, and encourage the reader to analyze information in a critical and skeptical way.
Each chapter focuses on a particular issue or situation in which the information being presented may at first prove infallible, but through careful observation and questioning, begin to show cracks beneath that veneer of truth. To me, the two most impactful sections of the book lay out the groundwork to discern for oneself whether something being touted as truth is in fact a misrepresentation or a flat out lie.
In the book, this method of detection is dubbed the “Baloney Detection Kit”. It is a two-part kit that arms the reader with the tools necessary for skeptical thinking. The most important part of this kit is to construct a well-reasoned argument, in which the fallacies of the claim will eventually rise to the surface. While most of the tools presented are what some would dub as “common sense”, it is often the case that this sense is “not too common”. Below are some examples of the tools as described by the book (emphasis mine):
- When possible, the facts presented must be able to be independently confirmed
- If there is a chain in an argument, every link of that chain must be correct
- Can the given hypothesis be false? If it cannot be falsified or tested, then it is not worth consideration
Even in my daily life I continue to struggle with critical thinking surrounding the massive sea of information that is the internet. Hundreds if not thousands of articles are published each day, compounding on top of the hundreds or thousands more that will correct, rebuke and contradict those that came before. It is a Sisyphean Task if there ever was one to correctly identify which of these contain more than even a grain of truth.
A World That Fears Our Own Shadows
Growing up in a small rural community, the types of issues I dealt with or heard of were equally small, mostly ranging from how neighbors were behaving or small public disturbances that happened maybe a few times a year. The facts of an event could fit in a thirty second soundbite, and most people knew about the latest local gossip within days of it happening. Unfortunately, this meant that if you got the story from the wrong person, or if someone felt like buttering up a particular fact in that news, it wouldn’t be completely unheard of for the same story to shift slowly as it was passed from person to person, sometimes growing to preposterous proportions. As I came to learn with age, this not only applied to the local youth disturbing the peace, but it also rang true at the national news level.
Regardless of beliefs or ideologies, it’s not an inaccurate statement to say that government issues have fundamentally changed in a way that inspires constant fear or hatred for the “other”, whatever that may look like. What used to originate as colorful comments from the occasional governmental prospects whose career chances were surely doomed because of it seemed to become the norm in less than a decade. Gone was the need for civility when simply appealing to the reactionary side of people could be the foundation of your argument. Combined with the unfiltered torrent of information that is the modern internet, little care was necessary to sway crowds to your side with what under a magnifying lens could only be called an iota of truth.
Fact checking a fire hose such as this, or even attempting to hold the person handling the hose accountable seems to be an unwinnable battle. To me, the battle of truth versus lies is like David vs. Goliath, except in this battle it does not matter who actually triumphs, but whoever appears to have triumphed from the interaction. In the wake of such blatant lies usually follows the truth, but without the acceptance of the commons, the truth may as well have not surfaced at all. For every instance of a crop circle debunked as bored men with planks of wood and an abundance of free time, there are just as many people willing to ignore that fact in hopes of a more exciting world.
These issues and more are what I believe the focal point of this novel to be. When all is said and done, the truth just isn’t all that exciting. Real life rarely mimics fiction, and given the opportunity, most people would rather believe the lie than accept that fact. When one rises to disprove such a lie, it feels like trying to un-fire a bullet. If this issue was centralized entirely to harmless things like crop circles or Sasquatch sightings, we could simply move on with our day or chuckle at the thought.
However, this line of ignorance has permeated into some of the most important foundations of our society, and the repercussions of it are not being considered nearly as much as they deserve. As the book highlights, this failing of critical thinking is visible at all levels of learning, and all walks of life; and if we cannot learn to teach how to avoid this, or if we ignore it until the consequences are staring us directly in the face, it could be the very thing that undoes everything we strive to protect.
Closing Thoughts
To give some context to my experience of reading this book, I began reading it in earnest around the beginning of the year. I can recall one chapter with specific detail, namely because I was reading it while awaiting a jury selection to begin back in March. My copy’s page count is roughly 400, and while that is certainly not a small read, it proved to be far more difficult than I originally anticipated.
At times life got in the way, and I simply couldn’t find the time. When I did, I was surprised at how frequently I had to stop and analyze just exactly what the point of discussion was, and the effects it could have at every scale previously mentioned. In addition, I found myself stopping to look up entirely new words to me, as with context alone I found I could not exactly infer their meanings. It was a book that quite literally taught me something new with nearly every page.
Not only was my knowledge being challenged with the wordage and impact of the ideas, but my faith in humanity was as well. Quite often I had to take breaks from reading the book simply because it would sour my mood near instantly at times. For a book that was published just a year before my birth, the ideas it highlighted from the history of the 20th century and the projections made from those observations were at times so accurate that I felt no other emotions than embarrassment for our species.
Though demoralizing at times, it did a great deal to imbue me with hope as well. Regardless of the period in which science takes place, it feels as if it is incapable of the poisoning of truth that the rest of society has seemed to become completely diluted by. Sure individual claims may go unopposed for far longer than they should, but in the end the truth of the science will always work its way to the surface, much to the dismay of many.
Additional Ramblings
Throughout the book, I found reason after to reason to recommend it to others. The only real issue one might find with it as I previously mentioned is the difficulty of reading at times due to the language it uses, but that doesn’t detract from the message it is trying to send. It’s worth just as much of a recommendation as it was when it was first published, and I hope anyone that has found this minuscule corner would give it a try sometime. Regardless of one’s passions in life, the ideas laid out by this book should give you food for thought on quite a few issues. Though those thoughts might be unpleasant at times, or it forces you to face parts of your nature that you would rather not look at, for the sake of our race I do hope that you give it a chance.
Apart from that, finishing this book began what I can only describe as an absolute obsession with reading once again. I decided to stick with mostly fiction for a while after reading this book, but I plan to begin reading some biographies once I feel ready for another long-form book. If you’re interested in what my reading tendencies have been, below is a link to my Goodreads account, where every book I can recall reading and every book I intend to read has been cataloged. It’s not as organized as I would like it to be, but I think that is a problem that will work itself out so long as my passion for reading holds strong.