May 18, 2026 10:04 PM
(This post was last modified: May 18, 2026 11:00 PM by Magical Realist.)
Certainty is not correlative to objective truth or factuality. In fact it is a very subjective feeling state that has very little to do with knowledge or reality. We know this from observing so many fellow humans believing outrageous things and staking their life on it. Generally this is referred to as religion and politics. It is also true that mental illness can create a powerful sense of certainty regarding many delusions. Have you ever tried arguing with a manic or schizophrenic person? It is my suspicion that in the future they will isolate a neurotransmitter that stimulates the feeling of certainty in the brain and that the overly certain, like the religious or the political or the scientific or the mathematical, will all have to take medications to remedy this chemical imbalance. Texts and speech that foster this imbalance of certitude will all be banned, leaving us a society of habitual doubters and nihilists.
That was tongue-in-cheek. But it highlights my point that certainty and delusion seem to go hand in hand. Which is why we have fanatics flying planes into buildings and bombing abortion clinics and propagating all kinds of hate and intolerance in our society. What makes certainty anything more than the ability to delude oneself? Why would evolution favor certainty when it only seems to fixate us on one idea or belief and so cease from learning and encountering new ideas? I guess because feeling you know THE truth is a good feeling and elevates you to the status of one favored by the gods. But socially speaking, that's not a very survival-enhancing or even sexually-attractive state. After all, nobody likes a know-it-all.
"My own opinion is that belief is the death of intelligence. As soon as one believes a doctrine of any sort, or assumes certitude, one stops thinking about that aspect of existence. The more certitude one assumes, the less there is left to think about, and a person sure of everything would never have any need to think about anything and might be considered clinically dead under current medical standards, where the absence of brain activity is taken to mean that life has ended."---Robert Anton Wilson
That was tongue-in-cheek. But it highlights my point that certainty and delusion seem to go hand in hand. Which is why we have fanatics flying planes into buildings and bombing abortion clinics and propagating all kinds of hate and intolerance in our society. What makes certainty anything more than the ability to delude oneself? Why would evolution favor certainty when it only seems to fixate us on one idea or belief and so cease from learning and encountering new ideas? I guess because feeling you know THE truth is a good feeling and elevates you to the status of one favored by the gods. But socially speaking, that's not a very survival-enhancing or even sexually-attractive state. After all, nobody likes a know-it-all.
"My own opinion is that belief is the death of intelligence. As soon as one believes a doctrine of any sort, or assumes certitude, one stops thinking about that aspect of existence. The more certitude one assumes, the less there is left to think about, and a person sure of everything would never have any need to think about anything and might be considered clinically dead under current medical standards, where the absence of brain activity is taken to mean that life has ended."---Robert Anton Wilson
