Boring Things Can Be True
We can't shortcut philosophy with contrarianism.
In my philosophy 101 course, I learned the Correspondence Theory of Truth (CTT). This theory defines truth as that which corresponds to the facts as they actually are. It’s true that the sky is blue if and only if the sky is, in fact, blue. Some philosophers disagree with this theory, and I don’t know enough to speak for it or its alternatives. However, I think I know one alternative that doesn’t work: the Edginess Theory of Truth (ETT). According to ETT, the truth of a proposition relies not on its correspondence to the facts, but on how challenging, edgy, annoying, anti-authoritarian, anti-elite, or contrarian that proposition feels.
This is Everywhere
The ETT knows no political boundaries. On the woker side, I see it in various claims about race and gender. I’ve seen the bizarre claims on Twitter backed by the assurance that such claims undermine patriarchy, white supremacy, or heteronormativity. Research like the 1619 Project and or Okun’s document on white supremacy claim to shake the foundation of our history and institutions. Robin diAngelo’s White Fragility loves to remark on how uncomfortable its content makes the average white person. Nussbaum noted a similar obsession with transgression in academia. In an economic discussion, the left enjoy a liberal deployment of the pejorative “neoliberal.”
Of course, the left isn’t alone. If you take their word for it, the right is constantly owning and triggering their enemies. Tucker Carlson has mastered this genre, sprinkling his monologues with the constant reminder that he’s undermining the nebulous liberal elites. This isn’t new; Thomas Frank’s What’s the Matter with Kansas notes this liberal-elite-owning narrative in Bush Jr’s presidential campaigns. I vaguely recall one conservative figure (maybe Dennis Prager?) arguing that Christianity and Judaism are the true counter-culture. On the other side, the centrist liberals presented themselves as the “resistance” against the autocratic Trump. There’s are also weirdos who will attack you as CIA propagandist if you suggest that China has done something that’s maybe kinda bad in the past fifty years, and corresponding weirdos who will attack you as CCP shills if you suggest that China has done something that’s maybe kinda good in the past fifty years.
Unfortunately, the ETT exists outside of politics. Keto influencers love to remind you that they’re destroying the medical establishment and Big Sugar. Similarly, alleged fitness sites like Vshred advertise themselves as revealing secrets that the fitness industry has hidden. Cryptocurrencies are owning, well, I don’t even know exactly. Discussions about sports often devolve into various conspiracy theories about which teams the team wants to rig the league in favor of. In my brief discussions with 9/11 conspiracy theories, they love to present themselves as free-thinkers questioning the government sheeple. And, yes, vaccines. We’ll have a whole section on that.
It’s Bad Philosophy
I have two issues with this rhetoric. First of all, I don’t think any of it hurts any source of power. The rich are alright. Secondly, and more importantly, edginess doesn’t matter! In philosophy 101, students will see an argument like this.
Premise 1: Socrates is a man
Premise 2: All men are mortal
Conclusion: Socrates is mortal.
If the premises are true, we must accept the conclusion, and the premises are true. It’s a successful argument. On the contrary, the following one does not lead us to an accurate conclusion.
Premise 1: Socrates is a man
Premise 2: It would really own/trigger/transgress the elites if all men rode unicorns
Conclusion: Socrates rode a unicorn.
The truth can be boring. For example, the CDC says arsenic is poisonous. The non-edgy among us probably think they’re right. According to the ETT, however, we can’t trust the government. So, what do I do now? Should I eat arsenic? Well, there’s no shortage of published research about arsenic… but that’s from academia. Those are also the elites! Companies have also reduced their usage of arsenic, but now we’re talking about Big Business. I don’t know what conclusion we reach from the ETT, but I’m gonna refrain from eating arsenic.
The ETT often obfuscates the relevant information. Sure, maybe the financial elites hate crypto, but that doesn’t tell us anything about them. Popular ones like Bitcoin suffer from both high transaction costs and volatility, making them difficult to employ as traditional currency. Yes, the sugar companies do suck, and they probably hate keto, but the evidence for some keto claims remain mixed. Yeah, Trump pissed off a bunch of elites. He also cut their taxes. The 1619 project may have re-written the history books, but maybe it could have re-written a little bit less. I once argued with a commenter who insisted that the NHL favored the Golden Knights in order to promote their newest franchise. We now have an even newer team, and it looks like the “rig game” button broke. Finally, there’s those pesky vaccines.
The Right Answer to the Wrong Question
Do the vaccines work? The hospitalization data answers in the affirmative, but the ETT disagrees. The common refrain against the COVID vaccines looks something like this. Here, psychology professor Jordan Peterson frames his anti-vax rhetoric in opposition to Big Pharma. Robert Malone and his fans also present a vaccine case that’s high on ETT and low on facts. The diatribe against Big Pharma appeals to many, especially to Peterson’s southern neighbors. But, wait, why don’t we like Big Pharma? Is it because their products don’t work? I don’t think that’s it. Rather, we hate those companies because many of the products do work!
Here’s a retort against Big Pharma from Bernie Sanders. In it, he notes that American companies charge absurd prices for insulin, a medical treatment many people need to survive. That’s pretty evil! In fact, the industry engages in a lot of sketchy behavior to keep their prices high. However, that’s a lot different from claiming that insulin won’t help diabetics. In this case, Sander’s concern with Big Pharma stems from access and fairness, not efficacy. The supplements at Whole Foods cost a lot too, but I haven’t seen Sanders talk much about those. He’s not going to propose a Snake Oil For All bill, because nobody needs any of that junk. On this issue, the ETT picks the right villain, but it mischaracterizes his master plan.
The Origins of the ETT
Why do people write like this, and why do we read it? At the macro level, we can cite the usual suspects: alienation, social media algorithms, and lack of trust in traditional institutions. Still, that doesn’t tell us what’s happening at the micro level. Why do I click on the edgy stuff? Why have I produced some of it myself? If I’m permitted a bit of armchair psychoanalysis, I think part of it stems from the frustration of finding the truth.
I obtained my lowest college grade in my physics lab. During one session, the grad assistant asked us to perform a series of measurements that would allow us to estimate the acceleration constant of gravity. As physics, we all knew the figure to be around 9.8m/s/s. I got something like 25. Other groups obtained a figure less than one. Even the more competent groups finished with a number 2 or 3 off. We all tried some science, and we all failed at something basic and elementary. Outside of STEM, we can see the same phenomena when a professor makes an obvious objection to one of our arguments. Philosophy is hard. Science is hard. We would all prefer some shortcut that uncovers the truth with minimal effort, but there isn’t one. We gotta do the difficult stuff.
1. It would be really _cool_ tho if Socrates rode a unicorn. Isn’t that what’s most important here?
2. I love the physics class example.
3. A lot of Big Pharma products do work, especially the old stuff like antibiotics, pain meds, antipsychotics, vaccines, and as you mentioned insulin. I think too, though, that part of the reason people are so mistrustful of Big Pharma is because they hawk a lot of expensive crap that doesn’t work. Statins and antidepressants are a couple of big ones. (Statins maybe bump down your numbers a bit but there’s evidence they do sometimes more harm than good and that most people simply don’t need them. Antidepressants, they usually make people feel “something different” which makes a placebo effect pretty likely —it’s working!— but also, most depression goes away episodically, so you could give people lima beans and their depression would go away after a while.)
I don’t disagree with your point that many drugs work. I’m just adding that it’s no surprise that the “trust problem” we have extends to Big Pharma. If you look at the effect sizes of the new drugs, they’re pretty weak. I saw one recently, a new migraine drug that would cost thousands per month and decrease 1 migraine day per month. Meh. But the market for a new migraine drug is huge.
4. Not eating arsenic has its health benefits, but eating arsenic would totally pwn the CDC.
5. Nobody types “pwn” anymore and that makes me sad. Damn you, autocorrect!
PS thanks for the link….
I think framing the source of this as a theory of truth is in itself a bit overly-provocative. Surely what the edgy among us are after is not the truth so much as attention. Of course, they can sustain that attention better if they believe or successfully pretend to believe their edgy conclusions. Put simply, there's usually less percentage in defending conventional wisdom because believers in conventional wisdom are, by definition, not in short supply. There's much less competition over defending the wacky and outre, and there is definitely a market for the contrarian: people love both the opportunity to mark themselves as superior to the commoner by subscribing to some heterodoxy or to take up the righteous position of an inquisitor of common sense. If you're any good at it, there's a name to be made: philosophers still study Hume and Berkeley and mostly neglect Thomas Reid, even though Hume and Berkeley are mostly wrong and Reid mostly right.