Complexity, Uncertainty, and Skeptical Open-Mindedness

Tolerance of Complexity and Uncertainty

Another crucial intellectual virtue is tolerance for complexity and uncertainty. We live in a complex world, and if we want to understand it accurately, our theories need to be complex enough to do it justice. To put it another way, we live in a high-resolution world, so we need high-resolution minds. But we don’t have them, or not enough of us do. A quick glance at the news or social media reveals how common low-resolution worldviews are. Too many people see the world in simplistic, black and white, us vs. them terms.

I like to call this outlook “cartoon thinking”, and it’s an easy habit to fall into. It’s all too easy to turn complex realities into exaggerated, simplistic caricatures. We like to see people as either heroes or mustache-twirling villains, when in fact most people are neither. We like to see social problems as having one simple, knee-jerk answer, when most of them don’t. If we’re not careful, we see whole groups of people in terms of stereotyped caricatures. All these tendences have caused a lot of pain and misunderstanding in this world. So, if we want to overcome cartoon thinking and the problems it causes, we have to cultivate a higher-resolution outlook. We have to get more comfortable with complexity, because the world is, in fact, complex. 

Because it’s complex, sometimes we simply don’t yet know the answers to certain questions. That’s why we need a tolerance for uncertainty. If we don’t know the answer to a question, then it doesn’t do any good to pretend we do. Consider the question of whether life exists elsewhere in the universe. Some people say, “Yes, absolutely!” Others say, “No, that’s impossible.” But the fact is, we simply don’t know. We don’t yet know the answer to this or many other questions, and until we do, the most honest thing to say is, “We don’t know.”

Skeptical Open-Mindedness

Skeptical open-mindedness might sound like a contradiction in terms. But I don’t think it is, because critical thinking requires both skepticism and open-mindedness. By “skepticism” I don’t mean philosophical skepticism, the school of thought that holds that we can know nothing. I also don’t mean denialism, which is a refusal to believe things that are well-supported by the evidence. Skepticism in the sense I’m using it just means holding off on believing a claim until you see good evidence that it’s true. In that sense, skepticism is the complement of open-mindedness, which is being open enough to new ideas to give them a fair hearing. Open-mindedness and skepticism can really be seen as two sides of the same coin. Neither is sufficient by itself. As the old saying goes, “Have an open mind. But not so open that your brains fall out.”