Fear of Doubt and Fallilbilism

Reading your post and how you  discussed this wave of doubt began to manifest intrigued me greatly. I remembered you were pretty clear and certain on your beliefs back then. I was the same as well, and it wasn't till my first year at my university I took a class on Theories of Knowledge or epistemology; can we know something etc. That class really rocked my philosophical perspective because it begged the question I never thought I'd ask myself, can we really know anything?

Yes, this exactly happened in class.

Sure we know certain things, mostly general concepts like the sky is blue, we need oxygen to breathe etc, but there are obviously things we do not know. Referring back to absolute judgement in my response post, an easy way to know if you know something is through empirical evidence. Your little "Expression of Doubt theory" based on new information regarding the big bang theory annoyed you, but you have doubt because it is the "best" explanation we have. Honestly, I think that is all we can surmise about most things (complex things). I understand how it can annoy someone if they truly don't know something, but it shouldn't be seen as a mark of mental degradation or insanity, it just means we are not 100% on the subject. Now, I know you understand all this, but bear with me. What I'm trying to say is that having doubt should not mean we know nothing, but instead we know something, which is still knowledge. That's why I took up Fallibilism (the epistemological thesis that no belief (theory, view, thesis, and so on) can ever be rationally supported or justified in a conclusive way).

Couldn't find a pic of an infinite book, so this had to do.

Always, there remains a possible doubt as to the truth of the belief. Fallibilism applies that assessment even to science’s best-entrenched claims and to people’s best-loved commonsense views and that many simply think this just implies skepticism. Now, I'm not saying that the Laws of Physics aren't real or that I doubt its significance, I simply mean that we can only know so much in a single lifetime, so truthfully at the individual level we cannot know everything, only some of it. That's why we humans have successors; we pass information to another with an entire life to analyze this information. What we know now is based on centuries of old and new ideas rising and falling; eventually culminating into our knowledge archive today. For me, knowledge is like an infinite book. Ideas and information, or what we know in this Big Book of Infinite Knowledge is marked by a Bookmark that represents us. Throughout the course of human life, we have moved the bookmark forward and it implies that absolute certainty cannot be so. Even with natural laws that confirm absolute certainty and dictates our perceived world, there are still anomalies man has not explained. Theoretical physics is a great example of this as well as unknown anomalies and phenomenons. If anomalies exist, than 100% certainty is challenged because we do not know about it...yet. 99.9999999 is as close as we can ever get to know something and I'm fine with that because, 99.99 is really clucking close. I'm sure this may sound very skeptical, but trust me I'm not just pleading the "IDK" card on anything. I'm only trying to answer a chronic, philosophical problem without choosing sides. Give and take bro.

Empirical Evidence
How can we ascertain which of our ways of thinking are fallible? Both ordinary observation and sophisticated empirical research are usually regarded as able to help us here, by revealing some of the means by which fallibility enters our cognitive lives. I will list several of the seemingly fallible means of belief-formation and belief-maintenance that have been noticed.
(1) Misusing evidence. Apparently, people often misevaluate the strength of their evidence. By taking it to be stronger or weaker support than in fact it is for the truth of a particular belief, a person could easily be led to adopt or retain a false, rather than true, belief. Indeed, there are many possible ways not to use evidence properly. For example, people do not always notice, let alone compare and resolve, conflicting pieces of evidence. They might overlook some of the evidence available to them. There can be inattention to details of their evidence. And so forth.
(2) Unreliable senses. How many of us have wholly reliable — always accurate — senses? Shortsightedness is not so rare. The same is true of long-sightedness. People can have poor hearing, not to mention less-than-perfectly discerning senses of smell, taste, and so on. Sensory illusions and hallucinations affect us, too. The road seems to ripple under the heat of the sun; the stick appears to bend as it enters the glass of water; and so forth. In such cases we will think, upon reflection, that what we seem to sense is something we only seem to sense.
(3) Unreliable memory. At times, people suffer lapses of memory; and they can realize this, experiencing “blanks” as they endeavor to recall something. They can also feel as though they are remembering something, when actually this feeling is inaccurate. (A “false memory” is like that. The event which a person seems to recall, for instance, never actually happened.)
(4) Reasoning fallaciously. To reason in a logically invalid way is to reason in a way which, even given the truth of one’s premises or evidence, can lead to falsity. It is thereby to reason fallibly. Do we often reason like that? Seemingly, yes. Of course, often we and others realize that we are doing so. And we and those others might generally be satisfied with our admittedly fallible reasoning. (But should we ever regard it with satisfaction? Section 10 will consider this kind of question.) There are times, though, when we and others do not notice the fallibility in our reasoning. On those occasions, we are — without realizing this about ourselves — reasoning fallaciously. That is, we are reasoning in ways which are logically invalid but which most people mistakenly, albeit routinely, regard as being logically valid.
(5) Intelligence limitations. Is each of us so intelligent as never to make mistakes which a more intelligent person would be less likely (all else being equal) to make? Presumably none of us escape that limitation. Do we notice people making mistakes due to their exercising (and perhaps possessing) less intelligence than was needed not to make those mistakes? We appear to do so. Sometimes (often too late), we observe this in ourselves, too.
(6) Representational limitations. We use language and thought to represent or describe reality — hopefully, to do this accurately. But people have often, we believe, made mistakes about the world around them because of inadequacies in their representational or descriptive resources. For example, they can have been applying misleading and clumsily constructed concepts — ones which could well be replaced within an improved science. (And this sort of problem — at least to judge by the apparent inescapability of disputes among its practitioners — might be even more acute within such areas of thought as philosophy.)
(7) Situational limitations. It is not uncommon for people to make mistakes of fact because they have biases or prejudices that impede their ability to perceive or represent or reflect accurately upon those facts. Such mistakes may be made when people are manifesting an insufficiently developed awareness of pertinent aspects of the world. Maybe a person’s early upbringing, and how she has subsequently lived her life, has not exposed her to a particularly wide range of ideas. Perhaps she has not encountered what are, as it happens, more accurate ideas or principles than the ones she is applying in her attempts to understand the world. All of this might well prevent her even noticing some relevant aspects of the world. (When both I and a doctor gaze at an X-ray, only one of us notices much of medical relevance.)

So Ty, what I have to say to your onset of increasing doubt is this: It's not as bad as you think. We all doubt. Having doubt allows you to open your mind to other possibilities and the notion of absolute right and wrong fades away. Of course you have to make the ultimate decision of integrating skepticism into a logical comparative and believing in something without justification, or rather prominent evidence.

Response to Ty's Late Night Pondering.

Alright, first off I love Bertrand Russell's quote and I love Bertrand Russell. Mainly due to his large contribution to the analytic philosophy and his views on society. Some points about his "Scientific Society" are quite interesting and logical like a one world government through co-operation and population growth regulations, but ultimately it is too ideal (Ironic in a general sense with his involvement with the British "Revolt Against Idealism"). Anyway continuing on...

My Response
It is a true cliche when you say "history repeats itself" (and yes, I love this cliche because it's fucking true) and the mentality of the American people has only slighted shifted into a "close-enough" attitude. Ever since the US ascended from the scorched ashes of WWII and brought the American citizen the "Golden Age" of American history. And what did those tired and sex-deprived GI's do? Banged their wives and mistresses and produced the infamous Baby Boomer generation. Like you previously stated, "think McCathry" the 2nd Red Scare of 1947-1957 socially declared and associated certain people a political ideology that resonated everything you need to know about that person...they are the bad guys. Terrible, but like I previously stated history repeats itself. Going way back to the Fertile Crescent and the Spanish Inquisition, choosing sides has always been the most efficient social/political/and philosophical tool to unite people and change/reform/fight whatever you like to call "affirmative action" to achieve an ultimate goal. Everyone has something to say, but no one, not even you, wants to listen. Obviously, I agree this kind of mentality needs to just go away. I talk to many outspoken political activists at my university and the ones that do not have much to say in discussions and small talks, tend to have the more interesting perspectives. Funny, this makes me think of when our grade school teachers told us not to be shy and raise our hands even if we didn't have the correct answers; WE LEARNED. People today, either in a diverse, intelligent, and free world or a corrupt, third world nation, communication of beliefs and accepting or better yet to assimilate, is difficult. Not because of cultural and communication barriers, it soley falls on parenthood.  What I mean is that we all begin life in our parent's or family's household; our initial beliefs, perspectives, and values begin with the family and once we leave and adventure out into the world do we form our own beliefs and perceptions and expect to pass this on to the only human being that will listen and follow these teachings...these ideas...children. I'm a big Jeffersonian Republican (and I wish the current Republican Party went back and learned a thing or two form, oh I don't know OUR FOUNDING FATHERS), mostly because it emphasized the common peoples' power, farmers over paid workers, rural vs urban, no national banks and powerful central governments. We have ideas-no will listen-for change to happen-people must accept and often compromise their beliefs-only then can we move forward from this "Stagnation Period" of humanity.

I've always believed, ever since Mr. Price's Current Issues class in high school, that our generation had the potential to do some good in the world and abandon this lazy living, or Feel Good Society (coined by George Soros, for which I completely agree on this Feel Good Society theory of his). I still have that awesome wallpaper on my Facebook account that I think perfectly expresses our generation's frustration with the world today. We've seen it on our parent's faces, they work, sleep, and repeat the whole damn thing everyday. This lie, passed down from one generation to another, has ruined out confidence in our individual potential and our trust with others. This routine, should have been corrected by now, considering our current society believes we have made great leaps as a civilization. Sadly, I have come to the conclusion that this trend of name calling and petty bigotry will always remain constant as long as we continue to cling on to absolute rights and wrongs. Not only do we need to become more open-minded to unknown information, we need to analyze, compare our perceptions, and compromise. It's give and take, as simple as that (something both the Dems and the GOP have completely thrown out the window and look...Congress is not doing shit...sorry I mean important shit {Party Polarization=Bad Times}).

So, how do we truly fix this conundrum? Hard to say, besides the fact that it will be a great undertaking. As I stated previously, 1) the way we raise our children needs to change and that begins with us-the future parents. 2) We also need to reform our Education system to become more involved with their student's future and well being and not just sending kids into the world unprepared, which most of us are. 3) A more intelligent citizenry that can compromise and is not intimidated by a government built to be ruled by the people. 4) Stand up against Big Media and tell them to please STFU and stop delivering commentary news and bring back real journalism. 5) Abandon what is clearly fundamental absolutism in discussions. What I really mean to say Ty is that doubt is ok. It is because of these doubts that people cling to absolute answers. Trust me, it's fucking annoying yet also scary. Thus we must accept compromise in most instances of intrigue or basic communication. Not to say that we can't firmly believe something with sure certainty and that we must always compromise, I only meant that we remain open-minded of other ideas and that we think before we speak. I guess a simplistic term is be a better communicator; have reasons and defend them; and debate with the intent of learning not proving whose right or wrong (under most circumstances).