Great article. It unpacks some of the denser aspects of beliefs and our alignment with them.
However, I couldn’t help but notice that the essay also unapologetically brushes off the utilitarian alue of such a position. It doesn’t go further enough to ask—Why might someone claim or decide to believe in X, despite knowing it can’t be proven logically?
In other words—Is there any utilitarian value in claiming to believe something, despite knowing all the logical pitfalls and unanswered questions about the belief itself?
In a public debate between Jordan Peterson and Sam Harris a few years ago, the idea of “metaphorical truth” came up. The notion is this—Some concepts are literally false (i.e., falsifiable through science or logic like our proverbial dragon here), but if you behaved as if they were true, you would end up better off than if you behaved as if they were false. To call these things simply “false” is, therefore, an error. In effect, the universe has “left them true” in a sense that is not purely literal. In this paradigm, the belief in a dragon can potentially fall into this class of “useful fictions” depending on the utility that it is serving.
Say I own a gun. Common sense (and basic firearm safety) tells me to treat every gun as if it is loaded, and to check every single time I handle it. So what do I do?
a) Pull back the slide
b) Drop the magazine
c) Check the chamber—repeatedly and redundantly.
Now, to an outsider, this might look performative or obsessive. But if I hand the gun over to you, and you know anything about gun safety, you would repeat the same checks after watching me. Then if you hand it back to me, I’d do it all over again even though we both know there’s no real ammunition nearby.
So, at the level of explicit knowledge, this seems illogical. And yet, it’s absolutely necessary to act this way.
Now, take it a notch higher. Imagine there’s a casino across the street. In the middle of this discussion, a third party says, “There’s a casino over there that will take bets on whether or not our guns are loaded.”
Obviously, I would bet a million dollars on “My gun is not loaded” every time—because I know it’s not. So here we are with a literal truth (the gun is not loaded), and a metaphorical truth (we act as if it is).
In this case, the metaphorical truth (useful fiction) is actually more practical than the literal truth. But the only way to appreciate that utility is by understanding it in contrast to the literal truth.
So perhaps it isn’t always ego or fear that drives belief in belief. Sometimes, it’s just a useful fiction we choose to live by.
Great article. It unpacks some of the denser aspects of beliefs and our alignment with them.
However, I couldn’t help but notice that the essay also unapologetically brushes off the utilitarian alue of such a position. It doesn’t go further enough to ask—Why might someone claim or decide to believe in X, despite knowing it can’t be proven logically?
In other words—Is there any utilitarian value in claiming to believe something, despite knowing all the logical pitfalls and unanswered questions about the belief itself?
In a public debate between Jordan Peterson and Sam Harris a few years ago, the idea of “metaphorical truth” came up. The notion is this—Some concepts are literally false (i.e., falsifiable through science or logic like our proverbial dragon here), but if you behaved as if they were true, you would end up better off than if you behaved as if they were false. To call these things simply “false” is, therefore, an error. In effect, the universe has “left them true” in a sense that is not purely literal. In this paradigm, the belief in a dragon can potentially fall into this class of “useful fictions” depending on the utility that it is serving.
Say I own a gun. Common sense (and basic firearm safety) tells me to treat every gun as if it is loaded, and to check every single time I handle it. So what do I do?
a) Pull back the slide
b) Drop the magazine
c) Check the chamber—repeatedly and redundantly.
Now, to an outsider, this might look performative or obsessive. But if I hand the gun over to you, and you know anything about gun safety, you would repeat the same checks after watching me. Then if you hand it back to me, I’d do it all over again even though we both know there’s no real ammunition nearby.
So, at the level of explicit knowledge, this seems illogical. And yet, it’s absolutely necessary to act this way.
Now, take it a notch higher. Imagine there’s a casino across the street. In the middle of this discussion, a third party says, “There’s a casino over there that will take bets on whether or not our guns are loaded.”
Obviously, I would bet a million dollars on “My gun is not loaded” every time—because I know it’s not. So here we are with a literal truth (the gun is not loaded), and a metaphorical truth (we act as if it is).
In this case, the metaphorical truth (useful fiction) is actually more practical than the literal truth. But the only way to appreciate that utility is by understanding it in contrast to the literal truth.
So perhaps it isn’t always ego or fear that drives belief in belief. Sometimes, it’s just a useful fiction we choose to live by.