Local Opinion: Knowledge, not belief, should inform decision-making

Nearly a third of Americans believe the 2020 presidential election was corrupted by widespread fraud. About that same percentage believe the media is the enemy of the people.

Unfortunately, among this group are many of our lawmakers who should know better. Hypocritically, and with the irony lost on but a few, it’s their plan to commit real voter fraud by rigging future elections so their side will always win. This is all the while discrediting and silencing the media who would be reporting on these deeply unethical and unconstitutional shenanigans. If these dishonest and unscrupulous people succeed, our democracy will be in peril.

This morass could be distilled to a single question: Why do people continue to hold beliefs so easily proven false?

While we all have political, cultural, tribal, and religious motivations for our opinions, the answer to this question lies primarily in many humans’ inability to differentiate belief from knowledge.

Personal and group beliefs are often emotionally driven, subjective psychological ideations that should merit introspection and analysis. To ensure beliefs are credible, they must be justified as true. Unworthy ideas ought to be easily falsifiable. Without this process, the truth is difficult to ascertain. Worse, deliberately choosing to not seek out verification—that’s readily available—is willful ignorance. Unvetted beliefs, at their core, are meaningless and should not garner anyone’s support.

If believers truly hope to persuade others, and defend their propositions against attack and criticism, their goal must be to transform their beliefs into knowledge. These standard definitions and their implications will clarify how this transformation can be done:

Belief is an opinion, a fixed idea lacking certainty. If there was certainty, belief would be fact, which it is not.

Justification is argumentation that transforms belief into knowledge. It verifies a belief as true. It is built on logic, evidence, coherence and probability.

Knowledge is therefore justified, true belief. Because it is based on reason, it has the credibility and legitimacy to persuade. To transform belief from mindless acceptance into knowledge demonstrates rationality and intellectual maturity.

Truth—which should be the ultimate goal for every believer—is best described as the correspondence between a proposition and a fact — that which exists independently of a belief.

Because the onus for the justification and falsification of those election and media claims is on the believers, they must provide the evidence to turn those propositions into facts.

Having had many months to furnish the documentation of widespread election fraud and a blatantly corrupt media, nothing has been produced. This is why reasonable people and the courts have not taken these claims seriously.

Some beliefs require no proof. These fall into the category of “beliefs in...” For example, you may believe in the Arizona Wildcats men’s basketball team. You believe it will be the best team in the nation next year. This “belief in” is a hope and requires no evidence other than an honest, personal psychological commitment to the team. It cannot be proved true or false. It also has no measurable impact on others. (That said...Let’s all hold this belief!)

“Beliefs that...”, however, are often mistaken for knowledge. For example, many people believe that Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin are effective treatments for COVID-19. This “belief that” is an assent to an incorrect proposition readily proven false. And sadly, these beliefs put lives at risk.

Personal and group beliefs are value-laden. They often reflect who we are and what we stand for. Accordingly, the need to verify beliefs as true should not be willfully avoided, but be considered an important, required step toward truth.

Especially when our democracy and health are at stake, it is wise to be less invested in, and less protective of, personal beliefs. People who train their minds to justify personal and group beliefs better understand the world they live in and make decisions accordingly.