Episode 51: Was Karl Popper Dogmatic?

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Transcript

[00:00:09]  Bruce: Welcome to the Theory of Anything Podcast. Today, we're going to talk about the ultimate question, was Karl Popper dogmatic? Many people find the idea of Karl Popper, who was the enemy of dogmatism, that it's ironic that he had such a strong reputation for being dogmatic. And I came across an article that I thought was rather funny, called The Paradox of Karl Popper, published in Scientific American by John Horgan in August 22nd, 2018. And he interviewed Popper back in the 90s, and this article is about his experience interviewing Popper. And he talks about and portrays Popper as being a dogmatic philosopher. And I thought that it was really interesting, so I sent it to everybody and we've all had a chance to read it. And so we're going to be discussing that, as well as talking more about just dogmatism in general. The thing that actually led to this discussion was in a pre-show, Cameo and Peter were having a discussion about if I was dogmatic or not.

[00:01:12]  Bruce: And I wanted to ask, how can they tell? Now, I don't mean they can or can't tell, but clearly we feel like we can measure somebody's dogmatism. What is it we're doing when we're doing that? When we're determining if someone is being dogmatic or not, what do we believe the tells to be? How are we going about determining if that person has fallen into dogmatism or not? I honestly find that a really difficult question. And I actually mean that as a serious question for everybody else as well. I've spent some time trying to study this, and it turns out there's not an easy answer to the question. At least none that I've been able to find. So welcome, everybody. We got Peter and Cameo here today.

[00:01:55]  Peter: Hi, Bruce.

[00:01:56]  Unidentified speaker: Hi there.

[00:01:57]  Bruce: So, okay, tell me your thoughts about the article. Let's start with that from John Horgan about Karl Popper.

[00:02:04]  Peter: Well, first of all, I loved the article. I would recommend anyone interested in Popper to read it. Like there's just a gold mine of great quotes in there. He comes off as a, I think he was 90 in the article, and he comes off as a good-natured person, obviously speaking to a sympathetic audience. But yeah, a little prickly, we'll say that even in his old age. I think that if you look at Popper's behavior in his life, at least from what which seems to be supported by this article, that he was, the answer in short is that he was dogmatic in his own way. I mean, it seems like a fair way to describe him. I mean, he was kicking students out of class. And this whole intellectual milieu, it seems like he came from, at least my understanding, these guys were trying to destroy each other's reputation. And this is something discussed on that Karl Popper podcast.

[00:03:27]  Peter: In at least a few of the episodes where these guys will, I mean, they were just cutthroat, stealing each other's ideas and friends not speaking to each other over some slight thing. But then again, I guess that's not the way I think is best to behave in this world. And it's not really what I get from Karl Popper's philosophy personally. I mean, when I hear something like, we are all equal in our infinite ignorance, I look at that as more like, or his thing about the quote about a conversation being a search for truth. I look at that as something to—just informs my almost interpersonal relationships with people online and in real life. I just try to look at every conversation as a search for truth. But at the same time, I'm not a great philosopher. I didn't solve the problem of induction. When he comes from this intellectual, cutthroat intellectual environment, maybe when he says that we should let our ideas do our fighting and dying, he doesn't mean that our ideas should politely go out for tea together.

[00:04:52]  Peter: I mean, it really does mean that our ideas should do our fighting and dying. And maybe that's why he's so great. So take home point. Yes, dogmatic, but maybe there's some utility to that.

[00:05:08]  Bruce: All right, Cameo, your thoughts?

[00:05:10]  Cameo: Well, I like how you pointed out the age, because he definitely comes across a little like a cantankerous, get these kids off my lawn. There is that feeling. And so I wish I had been able to read an interview done when he was 60 or slightly younger, because I believe that in general, people get more dogmatic as they get older. And they get more kind of firmly entrenched in their ideas and less willing to even entertain outside opinions. And that is really how he comes across. These decisions have been made. We don't need to keep discussing them. So I thought it was very interesting how little... He definitely comes across as dogmatic. That's what I'll say.

[00:06:07]  Peter: But it's interesting about the age thing, though. Who is more dogmatic than a teenager, in a sense? But they change their opinions every year, though, too.

[00:06:16]  Unidentified speaker: So I don't know.

[00:06:17]  Peter: But then again, they act dogmatically. So I don't know.

[00:06:20]  Cameo: But teenagers and old people actually have a lot of similarity when it comes to dogmatism. The old people don't change their opinions as frequently. But there is certainly like this, everybody else is stupid because we've already answered this question. Or I personally understand this better than anybody else. That both groups seem to have very strong opinions about.

[00:06:53]  Bruce: A thought that came to my mind when I was just thinking about dogmatism and all this, we always tend to think of the other guy as dogmatic and ourselves as rationally open-minded individuals that have carefully tested our ideas. So one thing that I have thought about is that if you pronounce yourself non-dogmatic, you're literally like everybody else. It seems like the really smart thing would be to just admit upfront that you are in fact dogmatic and that you have no idea how dogmatic you are.

[00:07:22]  Cameo: Interesting.

[00:07:23]  Bruce: So and one of the things that we're going to discuss this in the episode, but I know Peter and I have been discussing this kind of offline, is dogmatism is not all bad. And maybe it's okay to embrace our dogmatism to some degree. I know that's anathema to a lot of people, but I'm going to make a case for it. And I'm going to show that Popper made a case for it. I'm going to take the stance that dogmatism isn't all bad. Surely, it can be bad. And I'm not suggesting otherwise. But to some degree, we benefit from at least some degree of dogmatism in the system.

[00:08:00]  Peter: Well, it seems to go along with his whole idea about observations being theory-laden and the whole central conjectures and refutations idea in the sense that to really test out an idea, it seems to me, or at least one pretty good method for a lot of things is you kind of have to believe in that idea and maybe be a little bit dogmatic about it.

[00:08:24]  Bruce: That's really kind of Popper's argument. That we benefit from the fact that scientists are individually dogmatic, or people are individually dogmatic. The system benefits from the fact that that forces us to take their ideas seriously enough. It's fairly typical for wrong ideas to have verisimilitude, have true things in them. We mine out the truth by having that dogmatic element that's part of the system. I got great quotes from Popper. We'll get to them, but the overview is individual scientists don't have to be non-dogmatic. You pay attention to the way scientists talk about science as a kind of authority. This is scientism at its best. They always talk about, and I've seen this on even on Facebook, people put up the scientific worldview, the rational worldview, and they'll talk about how you have to be ready personally to change your mind based on the evidence.

[00:09:23]  Bruce: And they always list these things out. And that just isn't how science actually works. If you had no rationally minded scientists in the system, science would still work because it's a community, and the community level is different than the individual level. With the right institutions in place, you'll still have that Popperian filter that allows the good ideas to rise to the surface and the bad ideas to die, even if every individual in the system is dogmatic.

[00:09:52]  Peter: Yeah, I actually have come to a rather maybe even more extreme view than what Popper says about this. I mean, I think even the crazies perform a valuable service to science in a way, because for another thing, it helps the people who are more rational push back. It gives them something to push back against, and so much of the history of science is made more solid by having to push against pseudoscience. And sometimes the crazies are right, too. Sometimes the guy who says, wait, wait, think about the many worlds interpretation, whatever it is, or something like that, ends up being right.

[00:10:35]  Bruce: You can't always tell the difference between an actual crazy and someone who's just got a novel idea that happens to be right.

[00:10:43]  Peter: Yeah, yeah, fair enough.

[00:10:45]  Cameo: I think it comes down to learning, and both how readily you're willing to question your own philosophy or your own theory once you start to gather evidence. And it is not uncommon for people to be presented with evidence, even a substantial amount of evidence, that is directly [in conflict] with something they are being dogmatic about, and they will ignore it. They will question it. And that's really, really common, even for scientists.

[00:11:25]  Bruce: I agree. In fact, I think it is completely ubiquitous that dogmatism is part of who we are. And that if you try to... Popper took exception to Francis Bacon's point of view that you just need to observe without prejudice. And his objection was, because then you might think you had succeeded. I think dogmatism is the same way. That if you try to remove dogmatism from your mind, the danger is that you might think you succeeded. And maybe that's not even the best way to go about it, by trying to be undogmatic.

[00:12:07]  Peter: I just love the way you put that.

[00:12:09]  Bruce: It may be that dealing with your dogmatism is much better by embracing it to some degree. Admitting, yeah, this is kind of the way we are. There is no easy way to be undogmatic. But I'm going to be part of the system that allows myself to get challenged. Maybe even for dogmatic reasons. Maybe the reason why I'm allowing myself to be challenged is so I can... Because I know I'm right. And so I'm going to refine my arguments to be better by understanding the counter arguments and defeating them all. And that's probably the path to eventually undoing your dogmatism while being dogmatic every step of the way.

[00:12:51]  Peter: Yeah, that just makes... It just seems to me so much psychological truth in what you just said. Kind of the pessimistic [glass] half full view of humans is that we are just hopelessly dogmatic. We're just the... What is the Jonathan Haidt analogy? We're just a rider on an elephant trying haphazardly to control it. But then again, what is the alternative to someone who has no dogmatism, someone who just changes their mind five times during the course of a conversation? I mean, that's a crazy person. You have to be...

[00:13:30]  Bruce: There's probably good survival value in the fact that our ideas are sticky. Otherwise, it wouldn't be that way.

[00:13:37]  Peter: You have to try to... I know in my own life, I've had to try to accept... If something makes sense to me, sometimes I just kind of have to accept it dogmatically and go with it a while. And maybe I find that there's a voice inside my head somewhere saying that, you know what, this just doesn't really make sense what you're saying. And kind of, you know, over time, your opinions change. And I think that changing your mind is actually more common than a lot of people seem to suggest. It's just not something that happens quickly or easily. But, you know, as long as we, I mean, obviously, you don't want to be too dogmatic, but you can, we should always strive to try to falsify our opinions. And, you know, as Popper advocated for. But part of that process is some dogmatism too, for sure.

[00:14:36]  Bruce: So let me just, I've got a ton of these great quotes from Popper. I'm going to just, because we're talking about this, I'm going to throw a couple of good ones in and we'll come back to more later. But this is from Popper in Objective Knowledge, page 24. It was first in children, later also in adults, that I observed the immensely powerful need for regularity. The need which makes them seek for regularities, which makes them sometimes experience regularities even when there are none, which makes them cling to their expectations dogmatically. Later on in the same book, he says, I also later realized the opposite, the value of dogmatic attitude. Somebody had to defend a theory against criticism, or it would succumb too easily, and before it had been able to make its contributions to the growth of science. And then another one that's great is he says, our propensity to look out for regularities and to impose them upon nature leads to the psychological phenomena of dogmatic thinking, or more generally, dogmatic behavior.

[00:15:32]  Bruce: This dogmatism is to some extent necessary. Moreover, this dogmatism allows us to approach a good theory in stages by way of approximations. If we accept defeat too early, we may prevent ourselves from finding that we were even nearly right. He goes on to talk about, and this is from Conjecture and Refutation, page 64. He says he gives examples of mental illness and like a limb that won't move because it hurts, because it got hurt in the past and now you're having a hard time moving your limb. He would consider that a physical example of dogmatism and how it is kind of built into our system. And it's there for a reason. I actually think there's a great deal of beauty in this. It allows me to, I mean, nobody likes it when their opponent is dogmatic, right? And nobody likes it when that dogmatic group is creating a problem for you. Okay, so it's understandable that we have problems with dogmatism.

[00:16:32]  Peter: I guess everyone kind of thinks of their, dogmatically thinks of their opponents as dogmatic.

[00:16:37]  Bruce: That's right. On the other hand, there is a kind of beauty to it. The fact that it's just not all bad, that in the right kind of system, an open society, a scientific community, it actually serves a purpose. Since almost every idea is wrong, since every idea in every scientific theory is presumably wrong, the fact that we dogmatically cling to it's probably a necessity to be able to get the value out of it, right? And to force it as far as we can take it before finally we have to come up with a new conjecture that replaces it. So because of this, let me take the stance. This is my own view of the article now, that I've got no problem with the idea that Popper was dogmatic. In fact, I really, really hope Popper was a deeply dogmatic person, because I think that that would just be great. I think that that would be lovely to find one of the biggest opponents of dogmatism was himself dogmatic, thereby proving that, hey, it's okay.

[00:17:37]  Bruce: Yeah, we're going to fight against it, and we're going to be it, and it's kind of both at the same time.

[00:17:42]  Cameo: Do you think it does, in fact, make it okay, or is that just... You know, how would Karl Popper, who was 45, view Karl Popper, who was 90, and justifying his dogmatism?

[00:17:57]  Bruce: I don't know the answer to that question, and that's a good question. Well, if you say it's okay, I should probably say it can be okay, because clearly it can also be bad.

[00:18:06]  Peter: I think he may have been worse when he was younger, actually.

[00:18:12]  Bruce: Let me take a stance that I don't actually feel that Karl Popper comes across dogmatic to me in this. Now, you've both expressed that you feel he does, and I'm actually not necessarily disagreeing with you.

[00:18:23]  Unidentified speaker: Yeah.

[00:18:24]  Bruce: To some degree, it depends on what you mean by dogmatic.

[00:18:27]  Peter: Sure, sure, I agree.

[00:18:28]  Bruce: But let me give some of the quotes for the people listening from the article, where the writer does a very good job of kind of calling out. The writer is being very subtle. He's a good writer. He never says, Karl Popper is dogmatic for this reason. He just simply gives examples and lets you draw your own conclusion. So he says, Popper's falsification principle has been used to attack string and multiverse theories, which cannot be empirically tested. Defenders of string and multiverse—versus—deride critics as Popperazzi. I thought that was cute.

[00:19:01]  Cameo: Popperazzi. That is cute.

[00:19:04]  Bruce: By the way, that may be for those who came to Popper through David Deutsch, they may be surprised that critical rationalism has primarily been used to attack the many worlds interpretation of quantum physics and that Deutsch as a Popperian actually sees it as defending it. That is something that's interesting that needs to be probably discussed in a separate podcast, not this one.

[00:19:27]  Peter: I would love to talk to you about that. I mean, that's one of the quotes that I really love from this article, and this is completely, I'm sorry if this is getting on a tangent, but where he talks about, jeez, where is that, where he talks about his idea of falsification being more of a guideline, a rule of thumb, sometimes helpful, sometimes not, which is, you know, the more I get into Popper, the more I realize that the thing that he is known for, for 99% of the population, has even heard of him, I'm not even sure he actually took that seriously. I mean, is that fair to say? It was kind of like, yeah, sort of a useful thing for differentiating between the science of Marxism and Freudism and, you know, the science of relativity, but it's not like something he took super, super seriously. Is that fair to say?

[00:20:25]  Bruce: I have a somewhat different opinion than you.

[00:20:28]  Unidentified speaker: Okay, okay.

[00:20:29]  Bruce: Let me get the actual quote, because one of the things that's really cool about this article is that he pulls out of Popper certain things that I don't think were completely understood about Popper. That he kind of adds to our knowledge of Popper through this interview, including the one you just mentioned. He says in the article, I decided to launch my big question. Is his falsification concept falsifiable? Popper glared at me. Then his expression softened and he placed his hand on mine. I don't want to hurt you, he said gently. But it is a silly question. Peering searchingly into my eyes, he asked if one of his critics had persuaded me to pose the question. Yes, I lied. Exactly, he said. Looking pleased. The first thing you do in a philosophy seminar when somebody proposes an idea is that you say it doesn't satisfy its own criteria. It's one of the most idiotic criticisms one can imagine.

[00:21:29]  Bruce: His falsification concept, he said, is a criterion for distinguishing between empirical and non-empirical modes of knowledge. Falsification itself is decidedly unempirical. It belongs not to science, but to philosophy or meta-science and does not even apply to all of science. Popper seems to be admitting that his critics were right. Falsification is a mere guideline, a rule of thumb, sometimes helpful, sometimes not. As someone who has actually studied this deeply, reading Popper's stuff, this author is wrong.

[00:22:03]  Unidentified speaker: Oh, okay.

[00:22:04]  Bruce: He has misunderstood what Popper is saying. What Popper actually says in the quotes is correct, but he has misunderstood. Let me explain briefly what Popper's actual stance was. I think most Popperians are just not aware of this. I think it's understandable that people aren't sure about this. Popper came to his epistemology very specifically through trying to understand the difference between empirical theories and non-empirical theories. Why were empirical theories special, and what constituted an empirical theory, and what did not constitute an empirical theory? A lot of this came because of political needs. Communism was on the rise, it claimed to be a scientific empirical theory, and he wanted to point out that it wasn't. Freudianism was very popular, and it was obviously, at least certain aspects of the theory were Freud's stance that if you disagreed with his theory, if you as a man didn't remember being in love with your mother when you were a kid, it was because you were repressing it.

[00:23:04]  Bruce: I mean, these are clearly examples of trying to make sure you've immunized your theory against falsification.

[00:23:11]  Peter: He says that if the theory explains everything, it explains nothing.

[00:23:15]  Bruce: Yes.

[00:23:15]  Peter: Whereas Freudism and Marxism sort of they can explain everything. So they explain nothing.

[00:23:21]  Bruce: So the first thing you have to understand is that people misunderstand Popper when he talks about the boundary between science and non-science. He's really talking about the boundary between empirical theories and non-empirical theories. He's usually pretty careful to say empirical science rather than science, but he's not he not always. I found some quotes where he says science and he clearly actually means empirical science. I think you have to remember Popper was English as a second language person. He was from German. The words in German were more clear from what I understand than in English. To him, to Popper, the set of scientific theories, at least the most important paradigm theories, to borrow Kuhn's term, those were always empirical theories. When he talks about the boundary between science and non-science, he really, really doesn't mean the boundary between science and non-science as a whole.

[00:24:21]  Bruce: He means between empirical scientific theories and metaphysical theories or theories that are not empirical. Falsification in Popper's mind, very specifically, is when you have an observation that goes against your theory and thereby shows that there's something wrong with your theory. Now, we've talked in past podcasts, what it really falsifies is the combination of the theory and the background knowledge, not the theory itself. But that's sufficient. Once you've falsified that combination of the theory plus the background knowledge, you then know where to go test next. You can decide to test your instruments. You can decide to test your background assumptions. You can decide, you know what, I've done that. I still can't find anything. Maybe there's something wrong with the theory. It allows you to go through a virtuous cycle of starting to test the parts of your knowledge until you figure out which part to change so that you no longer have a problem.

[00:25:18]  Bruce: And it was entirely based on observation. So falsification is very specifically the term for when you're using observations to refute a theory, that combination of theory plus background knowledge. So it is the boundary by definition. It is tautologically the boundary between empirical and non-empirical theories. Exactly like Popper said it was. And for exactly the reasons Popper said it was. Once you realize that's the case, then you can loosen up on the word science. The word science can include non-empirical theories. There's nothing wrong with that, right? There's tons of non-empirical theories in science.

[00:25:57]  Unidentified speaker: String theory, [unclear].

[00:25:58]  Bruce: Yes. Popper's not trying to denigrate string theory. He didn't know about string theory, obviously. But he would never be trying to denigrate string theory. String theory is a legitimate research project within science. And every scientist knows the goal is to make it empirical at some point, or it's not going to survive as a scientific theory, right? And certainly, even though it's our best theory right now for trying to unify quantum physics and general relativity, nobody sees it as replacing quantum physics or general relativity, because it's not yet an empirical theory. So Popper's falsification is spot on. It is. And he was completely right, and he really got it. It's really us that have misunderstood falsification since then.

[00:26:45]  Peter: So what I'm kind of getting that you're pushing back against the idea that it's more of a guideline or a rule of thumb.

[00:26:54]  Bruce: Yes.

[00:26:54]  Peter: As the author says, you feel he was talking about something very specific.

[00:27:00]  Bruce: He was.

[00:27:01]  Peter: In the empirical versus non-empirical modes of science. But he, as probably, like I said, 99% of the people think he's saying all science should be falsifiable. And you're saying that's not what he was saying.

[00:27:17]  Bruce: That's not true. He's simply describing what the goal of science is, which is to get empirical theories. Science just does not rest on its laurels.

[00:27:26]  Peter: I mean, it makes a heck of a lot of sense.

[00:27:28]  Bruce: Yes. Once you understand that, a lot of the anger over Popper, you know, people will say multiverse theory isn't scientific because it's not empirical, you know, or you'll hear these things. Sean Carroll did a whole episode on, well, part of an episode on why Popper was wrong because, you know, you can, in principle, test some of these non-empirical theories because you might, by chance, find something, right? None of that's wrong, but it doesn't really have anything to do with what Popper was actually saying.

[00:27:59]  Peter: It just kind of just promotes more of this myth about Popper.

[00:28:06]  Bruce: So it really is wrong to say that Popper found the boundary between science and non-science. It was really between the boundary of empirical and non-empirical theories, and he did so correctly, from what I can tell. Okay. So yes, it's not a mere rule of thumb. Now, having said that, what is this author actually getting correct out of Popper here? Popper is openly admitting that his own theory of falsification is not an empirical theory. This is an important point. By the way, I disagree with Popper on that. I actually think there are, by today, ways in which we could talk about how his theory is in fact testable and empirical. But I don't think that that was known back then. We know more now than we do. And by the way, even though I say that, it's probably only barely qualifies today as an empirical theory. It's not a very empirical theory.

[00:28:59]  Bruce: So I still mostly agree with Popper on this, that he intended his falsification theory to be a metaphysical theory. Therefore, it is not subject to the concept of falsification because he was never claiming that you could falsify a metaphysical theory. So that's why it's a silly question, is because he's never made the claim this is a scientific theory, an empirical scientific theory that can be tested through observation. Now, one of the reasons why this gets confusing is because as I demonstrated in my Popper Without Refutation podcast episodes a few podcasts ago, David Deutsch understands the word falsification and refutation differently than Popper. And he has started to use those terms in a more general sense of criticism, showing any sort of critical problem with a theory. Now, there's nothing wrong with that. Popper himself talked about generalizing critical rationalism to not only be about empirical theories and about observations.

[00:29:59]  Bruce: But that is not the way Popper intended those terms. When he talks about refutation, he always, always means an observation that goes against the prediction of a theory. He does not mean general criticism. When he talks about falsification, he always, always means empirical theories being falsified by an observation. You will never find a counter example in Popper, at least I have, and I haven't read everything, so maybe he made a mistake somewhere. But he makes this very clear. And in my papers on this, I quote him to make it clear. This is what he meant. By the way, thanks to Danny Frederick for pointing this out to me that led me down this path. So Danny Frederick had that correct. Yes, you can then take those terms, falsification and refutation, and you can generalize them. You can say, well, you can criticize Popper's theory, even if you can't get an observation of it being wrong.

[00:30:52]  Bruce: And therefore you can falsify it or refute it in that sense. Sure. But that just isn't what Popper meant, right? There's nothing wrong with using words in that way or trying to generalize Popper's epistemology in that way. That's something we should do. We should look at how to generalize Popper's epistemology. But that is just clearly not what Popper meant when he used those terms. And we need to at least keep that separated in our minds or confusion does result. That makes sense that the words refutation and falsification can have more than one meaning. And that's fine. And Peter and I were having a discussion about essentialism versus nominalism. This is a good example. Get used to the idea that words have multiple meanings. That's a great way to learn to understand things and to break down your own dogmatism, by the way. So, OK, so this was actually, though, something that I did find interesting.

[00:31:42]  Bruce: I believe what Popper is actually saying here is I've never really said like what he talks about is how it doesn't always apply to science. He's right. But what he means is science contains non-empirical theories. And I've never really claimed it was the boundary between all of science and non-science. I really meant empirical science. That's what Popper is really saying here.

[00:32:04]  Peter: OK, that's really interesting. I'm afraid my comment may have led us down a tangent here.

[00:32:11]  Bruce: That's OK. That's OK. I actually had written that down because I wanted to call that one out. So it's probably good that you raised it.

[00:32:18]  Cameo: We don't like comments that lead us down a rabbit hole here.

[00:32:25]  Bruce: We've never had comments that lead us down a rabbit hole. This is the first time that's happened. OK, from the article again, I began to discern the paradox lurking at the heart of Karl Popper's career when prior to interviewing him in 1992, I asked other philosophers about him. Queries of this kind usually elicit dull, generic praise. But not in Popper's case. Everyone said that this opponent of dogmatism was almost pathologically dogmatic. There was an old joke about Popper. The open society and its enemies should have been titled the open society by one of its enemies. So he sets up this article upfront with this idea. I'm going to demonstrate that Karl Popper was dogmatic. And the rest of the article does a very good job of, as we've seen, well, Peter and Cameo felt that he was quite, comes across quite dogmatic throughout the article.

[00:33:19]  Bruce: And this is the setup, though, is that he's trying to set it up, that there's this paradox of Karl Popper, that he was an enemy of dogmatism, and yet he was himself dogmatic. Now, I've already quoted Karl Popper. He actually wasn't an enemy of dogmatism in any straightforward sense. That itself is a misunderstanding of Karl Popper. He saw value in dogmatism. However, I think it's probably safe to say that in general, Karl Popper spoke out against being too dogmatic. So I'm sure that's the Steelman version of this, that he was an enemy of dogmatism in the more general sense. I also love, by the way, even though this is completely irrelevant to anything else we're talking about, this quote is just great. When I asked for directions from a nearby train station, Mrs. Mew assured me that all the cab drivers knew where Sir Karl lived. He's quite famous.

[00:34:08]  Bruce: Sir Karl Popper's house, please, I said as I climbed into a cab at the train station. Who? The cab driver asked. Sir Karl Popper, the famous philosopher? Never heard of him, the driver said. He knew the street on which Popper lived, however, and we found Popper's home, a two-story cottage surrounded by neatly trimmed lawns and shrubs with little difficulty. Outside, a black cab pulled into the driveway. I thanked Popper—and this is when he's leaving—Mrs. Mew for their hospitality and took my leave. As the cab pulled away, I asked the driver if he knew whose house this was. No, someone famous, was it? Yes, Sir Karl Popper. Who? Karl Popper, I replied. One of the greatest philosophers of the 20th century. “Is that right,” murmured the driver.

[00:34:53]  Peter: That was a very amusing way to start in the article. This guy, John Horgan, right? Horgan?

[00:34:59]  Bruce: Yeah, Horgan.

[00:35:00]  Peter: He's a very, very good writer, like you said. And I know he has a conversation with David Deutsch online, which I recall being quite good, and maybe I should actually read one of his books.

[00:35:13]  Bruce: So let's get into some of the examples of dogmatism that are used throughout the article. One of them is that Karl Popper, he demonstrates Karl Popper had very strong opinions. So Popper brandished an article I had written for Scientific American about how quantum mechanics is raising questions about the objectivity of physics. I don't believe a word of it, he declared in a German-accented growl. Subjectivism has no place in physics, quantum or otherwise, he informed me. Physics, he exclaimed, grabbing a book from a table and slamming it down is that. This is the first opening example of Karl Popper's dogmatism, that he had very strong opinions upfront. He doesn't even come across a little bit open on this subject. Do you agree with me? That's really kind of what he's trying to show here.

[00:36:02]  Peter: I think that's fair, yeah. I mean, you know, I guess you can have strong opinions and not be dogmatic. I mean, it's just, but yeah, I agree.

[00:36:14]  Bruce: And then there's the fact that Karl Popper won't let him talk. Words poured from him so rapidly and with so much momentum that I began to lose hope that I could ask my prepared questions. I'm over 90 and I can still think, he declared, as if I doubted it. Popper emphasized that he had known all the titans of the 20th century science. Einstein, Schrodinger, Heisenberg. Popper blamed Bohr, whom he knew very well, for having introduced subjectivism into physics. Bohr was a marvelous physicist, one of the greatest of all times, but he was a miserable philosopher and one couldn't talk to him. He was talking all the time, allowing practically only one or two words to you and then at once cutting in. The irony of this, of course, is that Popper is here talking about how Bohr won't let in a word edgewise, right as the interviewer is not being allowed in a word edgewise.

[00:37:10]  Peter: But, you know, I just have more sympathy for someone who acts like that, who is one of the most greatest philosophers ever, who solved the problem of induction and, you know, had just all these amazing ideas versus, like, just an average Joe who acts like that, I guess. It's like, if you look at someone like, I don't know, someone like Christopher Hitchens, who comes, or versus, you know, even if you don't like him, he's a pretty smart guy and great writer. If you look at the way he behaves versus, like, one of his followers trying to imitate that style of rhetoric, which is just the most cringey thing ever. So I think that, you know, I kind of am more sympathetic to someone who's, I mean, maybe ultimately it's not the best way for anyone to behave, or we should all try to be humble and open to other people's ideas, but I don't know, I'm sympathetic to that.

[00:38:10]  Bruce: So I'd have to agree with you. It is way more cringey when somebody acts this way and they haven't really, I feel very differently about David Deutsch saying some things than some of his followers saying the same things, who maybe haven't really earned the knowledge, or earned the right for me to look up to them. So I can understand where you're coming from on that. I never thought of Christopher Hitchens, but that's a good example right there. And Popper's someone who I would want to listen to, right? Maybe he would have been a pain to try to argue with.

[00:38:49]  Bruce: By the way, you mentioned the Popperian podcast, which is an excellent podcast. It actually interviews a lot of Karl Popper's students, people who knew Karl Popper. It's interesting that in two of the episodes, two of his students say, oh yes, Karl Popper was quite dogmatic. But one of his students said, no, he wasn't. He was actually quite good at listening to criticism. His real problem was how he reacted if you misrepresented him.

[00:39:14]  Peter: Well, that Joseph Agassi, I can't quite remember his name. I think he called Popper a spoiled brat, even. He seemed to like Popper, but he was quite, quite negative about his personality.

[00:39:27]  Bruce: Yes. But by the way, I feel whenever I'm listening to him, I love listening to him, but whenever I'm listening to him, I swear I'm listening to Gilderoy Harry Potter, Gilderoy Lockhart.

[00:39:38]  Unidentified speaker: Oh, how funny.

[00:39:41]  Bruce: He'll suddenly, out of the blue, say things like, I've created two whole branches of philosophy and never got credit for it. He just sounds exactly like Gilderoy.

[00:39:51]  Unidentified speaker: Oh, funny.

[00:39:54]  Bruce: From Harry Potter.

[00:39:57]  Cameo: How funny.

[00:39:58]  Bruce: It might be true, for all I know, right? But when you're listening to it, I swear that's exactly how I envisioned Gilderoy. So it is interesting that so many of Popper's students didn't get along with Popper by the end. And I do think that's a bad sign. Other than maybe David Miller, who seems to have gotten along with him to the very end, it seems like most of the children of Popper went away from him and kind of went off and made their own version of critical rationalism that they took in a different direction and stopped talking to Popper. Like, they would bicker to the point where they would stop talking to each other, seems to have been quite common.

[00:40:37]  Peter: Oh, yeah. Yeah, he was talking, the way he made it sound is like people were ghosting each other left and right, and, you know, he said, oh, I think he even said that he would go into the same room as Popper and Popper would pretend like he wasn't even there.

[00:40:53]  Bruce: Okay, another one from the article. Go ahead.

[00:40:55]  Cameo: Well, I think just that, I think, combined with just that perception I had in this article of this kind of cantankerous old man, if that was progressing throughout his career, where the longer it went, people were kind of backing away from him, in a way, to me, that does indicate, like, you know, even if we don't want to call it dogmatic-ness or ism, if he's increasingly kind of abusive with people who don't agree with him, whether or not he's willing to change his opinion about things, you know, it's hard to have a reputation of having an open mind or an open perspective when you're out calling everybody an idiot. And, like, whether or not your intent in your heart is to be open, if your language that you're presenting out to the world is dismissive of other people, how can you not come across as dogmatic? It's like you've eliminated empathy from your playbook, and so even if ultimately you're willing to listen, like, if you're out kind of bragging about how you disagree with everyone, I don't know.

[00:42:11]  Cameo: It's just interesting to me that throughout his career, he did lose people who had been close to him.

[00:42:19]  Bruce: You know, this is actually where I was going with this, Cameo. You've gotten to it. I don't know the word dogmatism is the right word for Popper. I think he was unempathetic, and I think he had a problem with that. And because of that, he couldn't get along with people. He may have also been dogmatic. I don't actually know. All I'm really saying is the examples in this article, I'm going to argue, aren't actually examples of dogmatism. They're examples of something. I'm just not sure they're dogmatism.

[00:42:47]  Cameo: I can get behind that.

[00:42:49]  Bruce: And therefore, it leaves the question somewhat open in my mind. I think that the problem is that your opponents are often dogmatic, and it's easy to get angry with them over that fact. I suspect that's what actually happened with Popper, is he was on to something, and people often intentionally misunderstood him. They chat-botted him, like from our last episode. He was chat-botted like you wouldn't believe. Now, I've argued that some of this was his own fault for the way he worded things, that my Popper without refutation is a good example of that. I think the very word refutation lends itself so strongly to misunderstandings of what he actually intended, that it was inevitable that even people who love him, like David Deutsch, were going to misunderstand him. And they weren't going to realize, oh, he means specifically an observation and nothing else.

[00:43:42]  Bruce: Because it just doesn't, and he doesn't mean that it actually definitively refutes anything. It just refutes the theory plus the background knowledge. You can see why he chose these words, and it makes sense, but I do think it led to a number of misunderstandings. On the other hand, I think his opponents did rather intentionally chatbot him once they started not agreeing with him. He was over and over again called a positivist, even though he was adamantly against positivism.

[00:44:14]  Peter: That's got to be one of the other big misunderstandings about him.

[00:44:18]  Bruce: And this one's really easy, like he definitely wasn't a positivist, like not even close, right?

[00:44:23]  Peter: And yet one of his big things was pushing back against these guys. I mean, that like half his career or something.

[00:44:29]  Bruce: So I think you got a weird combination of some of it was Popper's fault. He didn't word things as well as he could have, probably because of this English as a second language problem. On the other hand, I think that his opponents did not like what he was saying because it was ruining their philosophies and that they actively started to become dogmatic and to misrepresent him. And I think that does something to a person when you're when you're chat-botted over and over again, right? And I think that's what I see is that a lot of cases when we talk about him being dogmatic, it was more that he got angry when people were misunderstanding him. This is my weakness, by the way, so I understand where he's coming from. And by the way, I think that's why Cameo is probably right to say maybe I come across too dogmatic sometimes. I have a real problem with people chat-botting me, right?

[00:45:20]  Bruce: So I think I've got Popper's problem, and I understand where he's coming from. I don't think it's quite the same as dogmatism, but I do think it is a problem, right? That you really do have to ultimately put people first, even when...

[00:45:33]  Peter: Yeah, I think it's a good thing to keep in mind. But I think the more sympathetic way to think of it is that you're just someone who takes your ideas very seriously, and you want to defend these ideas. And ultimately, like I said, the kind of environment where Popper was coming up in was an environment where people took their ideas very, very seriously, and maybe not perfectly. But maybe it's better in a way from the perspective of truth seeking to have that kind of environment [unclear comparison] where people are just too nice to each other. I mean, it crosses my mind that maybe dogmatist is just sort of a fancy word for asshole.

[00:46:22]  Unidentified speaker: I hope it's okay to say that on the podcast.

[00:46:29]  Peter: But I even think about the many worlds of David Deutsch group that I started on Facebook. Well, people are really nice there. In the Sam Harris group, we had no shortage of assholes. And they would almost serve a valuable function in a way. So they would stir up the conversation. People would get a little ticked off. But you had conversations that would at least sometimes be quite productive. Whereas in the many worlds of David Deutsch group, people seem to be maybe too nice. So I think we could use a few more assholes or dogmatists in that group.

[00:47:11]  Bruce: I actually agree with you. For one thing, if you want to be successful on the web, the whole trainwreck thing is how you do it.

[00:47:19]  Unidentified speaker: Well, but it's not the only way to do it.

[00:47:22]  Bruce: That's true. That is true.

[00:47:24]  Peter: I mean, I'm kind of—my personal philosophy…

[00:47:27]  Bruce: How you do it in the comments.

[00:47:29]  Peter: If things get emotional, if things get even vaguely veering towards personal attacks, I just bow out. For my own personal psychological health, it's just not worth it to me. I don't mind it when other people act that way too much, so I guess.

[00:47:46]  Cameo: Well, when we had this kind of going way back in the archives, but we did the episode early on about Shiri's scissors.

[00:47:54]  Bruce: Yeah.

[00:47:54]  Cameo: And going through life, essentially using the equivalent of a Shiri, that scissor to shut people down or to trigger them so much as to eliminate. It's like Bruce says, it's being a chat bot to each other. It, while it might, I think, sometimes stir up conversations and keep things from being too nice, on behalf of the people who do that, it also means that they never can have true, honest conversation.

[00:48:28]  Unidentified speaker: Yeah.

[00:48:30]  Bruce: I think there's a really subtle point here, which I might describe as if you are, even if you are ultimately not, it's not that you're being dogmatic, it's that you're right. If you're a little too strong on it, the net result will be that you eventually end up in an echo chamber because nobody wants to be around you, and you'll have cut off your own error correction, process of error correction. I know a guy who tried very hard to set up a community that was based around Popper's philosophy, where they were openly critical, which to them ultimately meant being jerks to each other. And the net result was that he ended up in a really serious echo chamber and with zero error, something like zero error correction going on, some of the worst I've ever seen on the internet, to where they could not even introduce, they had tons of false ideas, really obviously false ideas, and they were unable to correct them because they would be a jerk to anyone who had an alternative idea and the person would leave.

[00:49:28]  Bruce: I think that if you really, one of the things that makes the scientific community work is the fact that you just can't bow out like a political conversation, right? Sometimes scientists do hate each other. They do chat bot each other. They do dogmatically cling to their ideas. But the fact that you have to actually, at the end of the day, to be successful in that community due to the way its institutions are set up and the incentives are set up, means you have to decide that in your paper, you're not going to tear down your opponent personally. You're going to actually address the substance of their claims. It has more to do with the way the community is set up in its institutions than the individuals, I think. But at the end of the day, that's the nature of that network of people and their institutions. That's not the way the internet works, right?

[00:50:17]  Bruce: It's not the way social media works. By the way, a great book on this is John Rauch's The Constitution of Knowledge, an excellent book about this.

[00:50:24]  Peter: I loved his first one on free speech. I [unclear] his newer one.

[00:50:29]  Bruce: Okay, a couple more quotes from the article that I thought were really good. Example of Popper not tolerating criticism. Since Popper seems so agreeable, I mentioned that one of his former students had accused him of not tolerating criticism of his own ideas. Popper's eyes blazed. It's completely untrue. I was happy when I got criticism. Of course, not when I would answer the criticism like I've answered—it would—when you gave it to me, and the person would still go on with it. That's the thing I found uninteresting and would not tolerate. In this case, and then this is from the author, in this case, Popper would throw the student out of his class.

[00:51:05]  Bruce: I do want to point out that last sentence is not part of a quote from Popper. So this is the author's opinion. I don't know. I mean, did Popper throw students out of his class? Maybe yes.

[00:51:16]  Peter: Could have been something that happened one time.

[00:51:20]  Bruce: I don't know enough from this article to make a judgment on that. I think throwing students out of your class sometimes has to happen for legitimate reasons, and sometimes it's a sign of dogmatism. And I don't know enough to assess, which it would be in this case. But I do think it's really funny the way Popper puts that. You know, it's completely untrue that he didn't accept criticism, but he's so strong about it. The moment that this is a criticism being leveled against him, he's not trying to address it. He's just denying it, right? Arrogance. I slipped into my final question. Why in his autobiography did Popper say that he is the happiest philosopher he knows? Most philosophers are really deeply depressed, he replied, because they can't produce anything worthwhile. Looking pleased with himself, Popper glanced over at Mrs. Mew, who wore an expression of horror.

[00:52:08]  Bruce: Popper's smile faded. It would be better not to write that, he said to me. I have enough enemies, and I better not answer them in this way. He stood a moment and added, but it is so.

[00:52:21]  Peter: I think it probably is. I mean, that's one of the things I love about Popper, is that he is so focused on actually solving problems in a very convincing way. I mean, so much of philosophy, kind of like what we were saying before the podcast started, is just philosophers sort of defining knowledge out of existence and playing sort of word games. Whereas is Popper is the real deal.

[00:52:50]  Bruce: Actually making progress. Okay, a couple last quotes from the article that I thought were good. Example, Popper not being able to admit he was wrong. This one is probably one of the most controversial statements. When Popper died two years later, The Economist hailed him as having, quote, the best known and most widely read, being among the most best known and widely read living philosophers. But the obituary noted that Popper's treatment of induction, the basis for his falsification scheme, had been rejected by later philosophers. Quote, according to his own theories, Popper would have welcomed this fact, the economist noted. Quote, but he could not bring himself to do so. The irony is that here Popper could not admit he was wrong. And then the author ends with, can a skeptic avoid self-contradiction? And if he doesn't, if he arrogantly preaches intellectual humility, does that negate his work?

[00:53:43]  Bruce: Not at all. Such paradoxes actually corroborate the skeptic's point that the quest for truth is endless, twisty and riddled with pitfalls, into which even the greatest thinkers tumble. In our infinite ignorance, we are all equal. So let me give my opinion now. I've kind of hinted at it already. I don't think any of these are examples of dogmatism. Is a strong opinion the same as being dogmatic? I think we detect, it's a tell to us. When we say someone's being dogmatic, we may mean they hold an opinion strongly. But I don't think that those are, I don't think those could ever be the same thing. And here's why. What if you're actually right? How do you give ground if you're right? If there's a battle of ideas going on, and your idea is actually the right one, and the others are actually wrong, you're going to end up with a strong opinion. It's not just a matter of form.

[00:54:36]  Bruce: You can probably try to take a better form and try to show you're trying to be open, but at the end of the day, it becomes a lie at some point. If you really know, look, I've already dealt with that criticism. I know exactly how to deal with that criticism. You haven't thought this through as well as I have, which is something I'm sure Popper is thinking because he was in many cases, that was the case in many cases. I don't actually think that the mere existence of a strong opinion could therefore ever actually be a sign of dogmatism. Not tolerating criticism: I noted that the final sentence is not from Popper, so we don't know why he threw somebody out of the class. Could it have been for a legitimate reason? And I mentioned the idea that Popper specifically says, I had a hard time where when I responded to the person, if they then held the idea still, it became uninteresting to me and I didn't tolerate that.

[00:55:29]  Bruce: So that may sound bad as a single statement out of context, but really stop and think about this for a second. Let's say that you actually have a student where they ask a question, you start to explain to them the answer, a correct answer, let's say, and it's fairly clear that they're just chatbotting you, that they're not really paying attention to what you say. What is the appropriate response? Okay, it may be at some point to kick the student out of class if they're too dogmatic in their ideas. I don't know, I'm not saying that that would be good or bad. I'm just saying you would expect it to not be necessarily a tolerant response if the person is chatbotting you. So we don't really know from that either if he was dogmatic or not. The idea of arrogance, what if you're right? What if you actually have, as I believe Popper did, solve a bunch of problems that are still considered problems of philosophy, but you've actually solved them.

[00:56:28]  Bruce: And so you're happy and you're therefore better off than those, you see yourself as better off than those other philosophers who are still holding on to the problem of induction when it's actually been solved. Something along those lines is what I have in mind. Is that a sign of dogmatism? I don't think it is. You cannot tell just because the person comes across a little too arrogant that they're therefore dogmatic. And then there's the idea that Popper can't admit he was wrong. They're doing this based on the fact that inductivism is actually correct. But is it? I don't think it is, right? I mean, I think that the people writing that article were the ones who were wrong. So I don't think it's a sign of dogmatism either.

[00:57:07]  Peter: Well, in the spirit of anti-dogmatism, I just want to say you've changed my mind, Bruce. Popper was not dogmatic. Maybe a bit of an asshole sometimes.

[00:57:19]  Bruce: Yeah. As we all are.

[00:57:20]  Unidentified speaker: As we all are.

[00:57:21]  Peter: But thank you.

[00:57:24]  Bruce: So yeah, I do think that there's a subtle difference there. And I think that comes a lot with how you're being treated yourself. And that is one of the things that I know I've struggled with. And when a person, I feel like a person's just chatbotting me, I don't always react the best to it. And I think that Popper had a weakness in that way, one that was severe enough that it led to the breakdown of relationships with people, and ultimately was not a good thing. But I'm not sure, and maybe he was in fact dogmatic. I'm just really just saying these examples of dogmatism in this article don't strike me as examples of dogmatism. It does make me wonder though, is it possible that that was really Popper's problem, that he was a jerk, rather than that he was truly dogmatic? It's possible. I don't know. I can't tell enough from just this article here.

[00:58:14]  Bruce: So I'm not suggesting Popper didn't have a problem, but I think maybe it's an open question, whether it was specifically dogmatism he had a problem with. I'm leaving that an open door though, and I'm not really necessarily like these people who knew Popper, in many ways it would make more sense to believe them than me. I don't know how else to say that, right? I mean, if you're listening to people who are students of Popper, and they're saying he was dogmatic, that's got to mean something, right? So anyhow, that was kind of my thoughts on the article. I found it interesting that it does present him as rather cantankerous, but it's less clear if he was dogmatic. But I think it says something interesting about how we judge dogmatism. The fact that the things we use to judge dogmatism would get set off, the tells that we use for dogmatism would get also set off if the person is simply correct.

[00:59:09]  Bruce: And I think that's the problem. That's why it's so hard to tell when a person is or isn't being dogmatic. And it's hard to know if you're the one being dogmatic or not. If you're being dogmatic, but you're convinced you've thought this through, but really you're just practicing confirmation bias, of course your opponent comes across to you as dogmatic. How do you know which one you are? Or maybe you're both being dogmatic. Let's be honest, if dogmatism is a natural part of all of us, that's probably the most common scenario, is that both sides are being dogmatic. Certainly in political conversations, I would dare say that the fact that both sides are being dogmatic is the complete norm. I mean, you almost never see exceptions in a political debate where one side is being dogmatic and the other one isn't. This is why I feel like it's a struggle.

[01:00:03]  Bruce: Trying to even just assess your own dogmatism is just hard. Because we base it so much on form and not the content of the arguments. And because we have our own natural blind spots with our own ideas, you never really know, is that person being dogmatic or are they right? And I think it's humbling to some degree to realize that fact.

[01:00:32]  Peter: Yeah, I love how you put that.

[01:00:35]  Bruce: All right, thank you, everybody.

[01:00:36]  Unidentified speaker: Okay.

[01:00:37]  Unidentified speaker: All right.

[01:00:37]  Unidentified speaker: Bye.

[01:00:38]  Unidentified speaker: Bye, Cameo.

[01:00:39]  Peter: Bye, Bruce.

[01:00:42]  Bruce: The Theory of Anything podcast could use your help. We have a small but loyal audience and we'd like to get the word out about the podcast to others so others can enjoy it as well. To the best of our knowledge, we're the only podcast that covers all four strands of David Deutsch's philosophy as well as other interesting subjects. If you're enjoying this podcast, please give us a five-star rating on Apple podcasts. This can usually be done right inside your podcast player. Or you can Google The Theory of Anything Podcast Apple or something like that. Some players have their own rating system and giving us a five-star rating on any rating system would be helpful. If you enjoy a particular episode, please consider tweeting about us or linking to us on Facebook or other social media to help get the word out. If you are interested in financially supporting the podcast, we have two ways to do that.

[01:01:27]  Bruce: The first is via our podcast host site, Anchor. Just go to anchor.fm slash four dash strands, F-O-U-R dash S-T-R-A-N-D-S. There's a support button available that allows you to do reoccurring donations. If you want to make a one-time donation, go to our blog, which is four strands dot org. There is a donation button there that uses PayPal. Thank you.

[01:02:00]  Bruce: The Theory of Anything podcast could use your help. We have a small but loyal audience, and we'd like to get the word out about the podcast to others so others can enjoy it as well. To the best of our knowledge, we're the only podcast that covers all four strands of David Deutsch's philosophy as well as other interesting subjects. If you're enjoying this podcast, please give us a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts. This can usually be done right inside your podcast player. Or you can Google The Theory of Anything podcast Apple or something like that. Some players have their own rating system, and giving us a five-star rating on any rating system would be helpful. If you enjoy a particular episode, please consider tweeting about us or linking to us on Facebook or other social media to help get the word out. If you are interested in financially supporting the podcast, we have two ways to do that.

[01:02:46]  Bruce: The first is via our podcast host site, Anchor. Just go to anchor.fm slash four dash strands, F-O-U-R dash S-T-R-A-N-D-S. There's a support button available that allows you to do reoccurring donations. If you want to make a one-time donation, go to our blog, which is four strands dot org. There is a donation button there that uses PayPal. Thank you.