This week’s episode is the first in anew six-part serieson the topic of Intellectual Humility. Over the course of the series, we’ll examine intellectual humility in a variety of contexts. How do we humbly disagree with one another? How do our cognitive biases short circuit intellectual humility? Can religious faith and intellectual humility be reconciled? Does science have all the answers? And how can we promote greater intellectual humility in public discourse online?

In this week’s opening episode, “Knowing What We Know …. And What We Don’t Know,” we tackle the foundational question of whether we can know what we do and don’t know, since knowing what you do and don’t know is the first step to true intellectual humility.

Ask yourself which is worse—thinking that you know MORE than you do? Or thinking that you know LESS than you do? How can we avoid both the arrogance of dogmatism and the paralysis of doubt? Clearly, people who are so cocksure they know everything, come across as intellectually arrogant. Who wants to be that person? But is it better to be so lacking in conviction that you never stand your ground?

It’s okay, it seems to me, to be confident, but not so confident that you become dogmatic. It’s also okay to be humble. But you shouldn’t be so humble that you become defeatist. The trick, I think, is strike a balance, to find a middle ground between excessive humility and excessive arrogance. That will enable you to avoid both a rigid dogmatism and a wimpy defeatism. Knowing what you know and what you don’t know is the key to finding that middle way.

The problem is that for most of us, that is much easier said than done. People tend to do everything they can to hold onto their beliefs. We shut ourselves off from opposing points of view. We dismiss sources of evidence that challenge or undermine our beliefs. We surround ourselves with like-minded people. That’s all a recipe for groupthink. That’s why we should seek out dissenting voices. We all need to have even our most firmly held beliefs challenged from time to time.

另一方面，对于你所相信的几乎任何事情，无论有多么充分的根据，你都能找到一些人，他们不仅不同意你的观点，而且会想尽一切办法散播怀疑。想想那些否认气候变化的人。现在，你可能会认为这些人只是狡猾的骗子，是被收买的“可疑商人”。你可能会说你没有理由听他们的。但是，你究竟如何将这种想法与切断自己与对立观点的联系是危险的这一观点相协调呢?

I’m not saying that we should necessarily listen to every single skeptic or naysayer, no matter how spurious their arguments. It makes sense to try and separate out genuine grounds for skepticism from spurious grounds for skepticism. But that is, again, something easier said than done. The problem is that almost nothing that we know is truly certain. I believe in climate change, for example, but I am not absolutely certain of it.

你可能会问，为什么要执着于确定性?死亡、税收和小熊队不能赢得世界大赛，也许是生活中唯一确定的事情。但即使在我们缺乏确定性的地方，我们也可以有基于充分基础的信念。在大多数情况下，有充分根据的信念就足够了。

The problem is that it’s precisely in the gap between well-grounded belief and absolute certainty that doubt lives. Once you admit that you are not certain, you’ve opened the door to doubt—whether it’s from paid merchants of doubt or from sources more to your liking. And it’s not clear that you’re rationally allowed to shut the door on the doubters until they’ve had their full say.

但真正的怀疑者从来没有“充分的发言权”。他们从不停止怀疑。他们会无休无止地争论不休，使你纠缠不清。从某种意义上说，你必须和他们断绝关系，然后继续下去。虽然这在我看来是对的，但我还是不太清楚这和不排斥相反的观点是否一致。我想说的是，你只需要知道如何达到正确的平衡。怀疑太少，你就会变得死板和教条。太多的怀疑，你会变成一个优柔寡断的失败主义者，谁也不会有立场。

But that raises the question of whether there’s a formula for achieving such balance. It would be nice if there were. But I think there probably is not. The world is sometimes painted in shades of gray, rather than in clear strokes of black and white.

Perhaps by listening to our six-part series, you’ll gain greater skill at navigating between excessive skepticism and excessive dogmatism.

Listen below to our first episode, and then catch all the other episodes as they are released here://www.f8r7.com/intellectual-humility