The Truth Is Out There

You might be wondering why I chose the phrase, "And Still It Moves," over the direct, literal translation of Galileo's alleged words - "And yet it moves," as the title of my blog.

Galileo was a pious man. He believed in God, practiced his religion, but also believed in science and empirical discovery. I think it's fairly plausible to believe that he would have empathized with Gillian Anderson's character on the X-Files, Agent Dana Scully, who was also a Roman Catholic, yet yearned to reconcile her religious beliefs with science. It think it's also fair to say that he would have empathized with David Duchovny's character, Agent Fox Mulder, who's 9 season long search for the truth was unrelenting, uncompromising, and driven partly by a hunger for knowledge.

As mentioned earlier, Galileo was forced to recant his belief that the Earth revolved around the Sun by the Inquisition. The conventional wisdom, as purveyed by the Catholic Church at the time, was that the Earth was the static center of the universe and as such, it most certainly could not revolve around Sol. In fact, according to this wisdom, it could not have moved at all. It was not until over 200 years later, in 1835, that the Church's official resistance to Galileo's theories began to dissolve. It took another 100 years for a Pope to publicly acknowledge that Galileo had made excellent contributions to science (Pius XII), and it wasn't until 1992 that the Church finally conceded that the Earth did in fact, move. After 350 years of rolling in his grave, Galileo could at long last rest in peace.

I chose the word still to imply that there are consequences to blindly abiding by the conventional wisdom. What was the Earth doing, those 350 years? Do we think it thought to itself, "Huh. Well the Church must be right. Guess I'll just have to stop spinning and find something else to do with my time." Despite the denial of the Church of this physical fact, the truth remained that the Earth did in fact move. "And yet it moves," was Gallileo's alleged rejection of the conventional wisdom. Part of my choice in using the word still instead of yet, is that all that time, there were a whole host of people who believed a "fact" that was false. The Earth was still revolving around the Sun and spinning on its axis while they followed the conventional wisdom.

With Galileo's example, the consequences on everyday life for the majority of society weren't all that troubling. People's daily lives weren't disrupted, interrupted, or really affected or changed in any tangible way by this particular instance of flawed conventional wisdom prevailing over the truth. So what was the cost? Why was this denial of the truth so damaging?

The opportunity cost of believing a lie can be very steep. While we can't pin down exactly what it was for the people of the 17th century, perhaps science was set back by the church's posturing on the issue, or perhaps all of those banned books on heliocentrism deprived potential young budding scientists of the past from getting an early start. Either way, we can't know for sure. Other conventional wisdom ideas however, are much easier to examine. Take this example from the book, Freakonomics:

"Consider the parents of 8 year old girl named, say Molly. Her two best friends, Amy and Imani, each live nearby. Molly's parents know that Amy's parents keep a gun in their house, so they have forbidden Molly to play there. Instead, Molly spends a lot of time at Imani's house, which has a swimming pool in the backyard. Molly's parents feel good about having made such a smart choice to protect their daughter.

But according to the data, their choice isn't smart at all. The likelihood of death by pool (1 in 11,000) versus death by gun (1 in 1 million-plus) isn't even close."

So there you have it. The cost in the worst case scenario here, could have been 1 child. It's not so much believing the conventional wisdom that harms you - it's blindly following it and ignoring the truth. Hence the use of the word still. It's the fact that pools in the context described by Levitt and Dubner above result in more deaths that is what puts Molly in danger, and not so much the conventional wisdom that homes with guns in them are necessarily always less safe than homes without guns in them. Believing the lie does not stop the truth from being true, and blinds you from the possible consequences of your actions.

Not so coincidentally, at the beginning of the Season 5 episode of the X-Files entitled "Terma", the regular words that appear on screen at the end of the credits, "The Truth Is Out There," have been changed to read, "E Pur Si Muove." Later episodes replace the popular tagline with phrases like, "Believe the Lie," and "All Lies Lead to the Truth." (Yeah, I know, I'm a geek. What of it?) One of the most resonating themes of this hit TV show was the search for the truth. Mulder and Scully spent countless episodes trying to distinguish conventional explanations (whether they were imagined or real) from causal explanations (also, whether they were imagined or real) by relying on good detective work and empirical evidence.

It turns out that Galileo, Agents Mulder and Scully, and myself, all had something in common. Their searches were not dissimilar from my own. Hopefully, at its best, this blog will help to demystify some of the more dubious conventional wisdom explanations out there, and lend an eye to discovering the true causal explanations behind a wide range of economic, political, and social phenomenon. At its worst, I hope it at least will provide you with a fair amount of amusement!

I'll begin by importing a few of my older blogs. The topics range from the peace negotiations on the West Bank to NAFTA's impact on manufacturing jobs in Ohio. I'll eventually come back and edit this to include links to those older articles by topic. All imported blogs are featured in their original form with a short editorial preface.

"To live the lie you have to believe it. We all have our faith - mine is in the truth." Fox Mulder, The X-Files