Scott Adams, the creator of the Dilbert cartoon series, recently authored a book entitled Loserthink: How Untrained Brains Are Ruining America. I was listening to an interview with Adams on The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish podcast (#70) in which Adams makes the following comment regarding those who purport to write non-fiction books:
People who are writing non-fiction believe they’re telling you what is objectively true in the world, but we don’t have that capability. We all have this illusion that the version of the world we’re seeing is “the one” and that if anyone’s got a different version they must be wrong. It’s sort of the most common illusion that we all have. So if you sit down and say “I’m going to write about reality” - you don’t have that capability! It’s not something you could do, no matter how hard you try, because all you have is a filter on reality. Now, we still label that as non-fiction because somebody is not trying to write fiction… but most of what we regard as fact is some kind of sheltered truth.
I’m confused. If no one has the ability to relay objective truth about reality and the best we can do is have our own filtered reality, then why should I trust Scott Adam’s filtered version of reality over my own? How has he managed to rise above the “most common illusion we all have”?
This is a version of what is called The Elephant And The Blind Men fallacy. You’ve probably heard this story before. A group of four blind men happen upon an elephant. The first blind man touches the elephant’s tail and says “It’s a rope”. The second touches one of the legs and says “No, it’s a tree”. The third touches the side of the elephant and says, “ No, it’s a wall”. The last blind man handles the elephant’s ear and says, “You’re all wrong, it’s a sail.” This story is meant to illustrate that no one can truly know reality and we each only have our limited perspective on the truth. However, it’s the fifth character in the story we need to consider - the Enlightened Observer.
If the group of blind men represents the limited capacity of humanity to know reality, the elephant representing reality, then how is it that the Enlightened Observer can see the entire elephant? How has the one using the story to illustrate humanity’s limitations risen above these same limitations? Many times this story is used in the context of demonstrating that religions only give a portion of the reality about divinity and none of them accurately give “the way things really are”. But to recognize this, the Enlightened Observer somehow has gained a perspective that is larger than everyone else’s perspective which enables him or her to see reality for what it is. Rather a presumptuous claim, isn’t it?
I haven’t read Adam’s non-fiction book, Loserthink, but if I do, I’ll be on the lookout for why he believes he knows the reality he claims none of us can really know.