The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe: How to Know What's Really Real in a World Increasingly Full of Fake

by Steven Novella

It’s intimidating to realize that we live in a world overflowing with misinformation, bias, myths, deception, and flawed knowledge. We are all children and there are no adults. There are no ultimate authority figures; no one has the secret; there is no revealed knowledge; and there is no place to look up the definitive answers to our questions (not even Google). We are all struggling through this complex universe just like everyone who came before us. Fully realizing this essence of the human condition can make you cynical, denying all knowledge. That, however, is just another bias, another narrative to help us deal with the chaos. Cynicism is also cheap—it’s easy just to doubt or deny everything. But it doesn’t get you or society anywhere. Skepticism goes beyond cynicism. While it may start with doubt, that’s the beginning, not the end. There isn’t any definitive or ultimate knowledge (no Truth with a capital T), but we can grind out knowledge about the world that is sufficiently reliable for us to treat it as provisionally true and act upon it.