Scientific Facts have a Half-Life - Life is Poker not Chess 4

Abridged and adapted from Thinking in Bets by Annie Duke

The Half-Life of Facts, by Samuel Arbesman, is a great read about how practically every fact we’ve ever known has been subject to revision or reversal. The book talks about the extinction of the coelacanth, a fish from the Late Cretaceous period. This was the period that also saw the extinction of dinosaurs and other species. In the late 1930s and independently in the mid 1950s, coelacanths were found alive and well. Arbesman quoted a list of 187 species of mammals declared extinct, more than a third of which have subsequently been discovered as un-extinct.

Given that even scientific facts have an expiration date, we would all be well advised to take a good hard look at our beliefs, which are formed and updated in a much more haphazard way than in science.

We would be better served as communicators and decision makers if we thought less about whether we are confident in our beliefs and more about how confident we are about each of our beliefs. What if, in addition to expressing what we believe, we also rated our level of confidence about the accuracy of our belief on a scale of zero to ten? Zero would mean we are certain a belief is not true. Ten would mean we are certain that our belief is true. Forcing ourselves to express how sure we are of our beliefs brings to plain sight the probabilistic nature of those beliefs, that we believe is almost never 100% or 0% accurate but, rather, somewhere in between.

Incorporating uncertainty in the way we think about what we believe creates open-mindedness, moving us closer to a more objective stance towards information that disagrees with us. We are less likely to succumb to motivated reasoning since it feels better to make small adjustments in degrees of certainty instead of having to grossly downgrade from ‘right’ to ‘’wrong’. This shifts us away from treating information that disagrees with us as a threat, as something we have to defend against, making us better able to truthseek.

There is no sin in finding out there is evidence that contradicts what we believe. The only sin is in not using that evidence as objectively as possible to refine that belief going forward. By saying, ‘I’m 80%’ and thereby communicating we aren’t sure, we open the door for others to tell us what they know. They realise they can contribute without having to confront us by saying or implying, ‘You’re wrong’. Admitting we are not sure is an invitation for help in refining our beliefs and that will make our beliefs more accurate over time as we are more likely to gather relevant information.

Acknowledging that decisions are bets based on our beliefs, getting comfortable with uncertainty and redefining right and wrong are integral to a good overall approach to decision making.