We don't like ignorance. We don't like admitting that we don't know something. So, when we're confronted by a phenomenon we don't understand, we often make up stories to explain it. Just take a look back through history.
What is the sky? Why is it overhead? Why does it seem to touch the earth on the horizon? What is the sun, and why does it follow across the sky every day?
The ancient Egyptians thought that the sky was the body of the goddess Nut, who arched over the earth and protected it and its inhabitants from the outer chaos. She was always touching her husband Geb, the earth, and continually engaged in intercourse with him. Nut gave birth to the sun-god Ra every morning and swallowed him every night after he had crossed the sky.
What about the ocean? What causes its endless swelling, its seemingly capricious storms?
The ancient Greeks looked at it and thought that it must have been directed by a grand consciousness, the sea-god Poseidon. When he was angry, the seas rose in storm; when he was content, they lay calm and glittering under the sun. The same with thundering in the sky — caused the god Zeus, lord of the skies and wielder of the thunderbolt, who had the weather do his bidding.
This sort of storymaking is a deep and abiding aspect of human character. What, for example, about a family who hears creaks and rattling at night in their Victorian home? If the foundation is settling, there are mice living in the walls or it just sways in the wind, the family — ignorant of how houses work — may agree that a ghost haunts it. If there is a macabre story set nearby, so much the better.
What of a man who is on the verge of death, and hovers over his bed for a moment, before being enveloped in a calm white light? When his ailment mysteriously remits, he decides his soul was leaving his body, then his body was healed and he was sent back for some divine purpose.
What do these stories all have in common? They purport to be explanations. They try to make sense of the world around us. But there is one problem, one devastating issue: They don't make predictions. They can't be tested.
If we have a story to make sense of the world and it's not capable of being tested, we can't gain any confidence that it is true. When we write stories to explain phenomena, we are really trying to build a model to predict the phenomena, and building models is the realm of science.
Often, once we make such stories up, we become attached to them. Perhaps we have staked our reputations on telling them. Or perhaps, as a matter of pride, we cannot bear for them to be wrong. Perhaps we have a lot wrapped up in a particular interpretation or outcome — for example, my grandmother's slow mental decline couldn't just be cruel and capricious chance, could it? It must have a purpose.
Switching gears for a moment, the Princeton philosopher Harry Frankfurt wrote a short pamphlet called "On Bullshit." His central thesis is that this type of discourse is entirely unconcerned with truth. It is on the opposite end of the spectrum from truth and lying. Both are concerned with truth, but one seeks to affirm it and one to deny it. If you're doing it, you just don't care what the truth is.
Let me submit this thesis: If you make up a story to explain something you don't understand, you're BS-ing.
The Egyptians were BS-ing when they talked about Nut the sky goddess. The Greeks were BSing when they attributed storms to Poseidon and thunder to Zeus. They were BS-ing when they thought the goddess Ceres controlled the harvest and the Milky Way was created when Hera splashed milk across the sky after suckling Heracles.
Why? They were unconcerned with testing their stories. A hypothesis is true only to the extent it makes accurate, precise predictions. If you don't test it, you have no idea whether it's true or not. Holding to a story you don't test is, simply put, BS.
If you come up against a story to explain something, accept it only tentatively. Test it. And remember: It takes a lot more integrity to admit your ignorance than it does to bluff and BS your way through.
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