Sometimes, it really is just too complicated!

I really struggled with maths as school. I had to work hard to obtain a B at GCSE when I was 16 years old (this is now a ‘6’ in the UK system as I understand it). Maths didn’t come naturally to me then, and it still doesn’t. When I look back at my education, I feel that I achieved what I achieved more through hard work and dedication than I ever did with intellect.I wasn’t the best at my school and my grades are good, not excellent. I’m okay with that.  

There are some things that I will never be good at, but with hard work I believe that I can at least get a grasp of what is needed (I believe we all can). But then, there are those things which I can’t even begin to comprehend and never will. Sometimes, it really is just too complicated!

The IPCC report into climate change that came out during the summer is one such example. The media provided interpretation, explaining what the report showed, and I know which news outlets I trust and those that I don’t. I tried to look at the IPCC report myself but I’m not a climate scientist. The outlines make sense to me, just as it made sense to the journalists – the report was written purposefully to make the outline understandable.

The detail of the science, however, well, that is completely beyond my understanding, and rightly so. It takes years to train as a scientist and a lot of dedication. I am not naturally inclined towards scientific study either.

This brings me to a question; what do you do when you are confronted with information and arguments which are just too complicated for you to ever fully grasp?

My answer is to not even try (unless you plan to spend considerable time and training to master the subject). Instead, do something that will enable you to gain enough understanding and query the source so that you know how trustworthy it is and what the certainties/uncertainties and bias are. Sometimes it is best to trust what someone else is arguing even if you cannot verify it yourself, but you do need to take precautions.

So, what should you do?

Taking knowledge or an argument on trust is essential when its so complex that you need a PhD in the subject to truly understand it, but even if you can’t fully understand, you can and should do your due diligence. This requires finding sources that interpret the data for you in easier words. Your job is to be sure that these sources are reliable and to understand the bias, and uncertainties that lie behind the facts. If you do these things then you limit the possibility of misunderstanding, or falling for lies or inaccuracies, or believing things are certainties when they are in fact possibilities (and conversely, falling for claims that something is less certain than it actually is). 

I feel that some of the big challenges of today exist because some people never do this, they never question or examine the sources, especially in cases where they really don’t (and perhaps never will) understand fully the argument or facts being made. During the EU Referendum campaign in the UK (Brexit), politicians and media outlets began to attack ‘experts’, deriding them because their predictions either conflicted with the argument that they wanted to make, or because past predictions had not always come true (which is of course, the nature of prediction!). In reality, no one knew for certain what the reality of leaving the EU would be. During the Covid pandemic the rise of anti-vaxxers and conspiracy theories suggested that the virus was a hoax to cover up a government/pharmaceutical plan to kill of millions of people or as a way to establish dictatorships. In both cases, rumour and an anti-expert mentality prevailed largely because information and argument were taken at face value, whether the source was trustworthy or not.  

Of course, none of this is easy. Should we trust government or pharmaceutical companies? Should we trust ‘experts’? Of course not, not with out doing our own due diligence first. Who is the expert? What bias do they have and what is their academic background? Are there other experts who agree/disagree? What evidence are they presenting and does it sound realistic? In terms of governments or multinational corporations, what is their track-record like? Do they tend to tell the truth or are they known for manipulating it or for bare-faced lying? Does what they say conflict with others who are outside of that organisation? Who are they and what reputation do they have? These are all questions that we should ask, especially when it comes to things that we can never fully understand.

No one has time to do this for everything, of course, and the nature of social media (in particular), makes verification much harder. There is, quite simply, an information overload out there. However, I try to do what I can to check information, especially when the issue is important. At the very least I hope to have an appreciation of the nuances in an argument, by doing so, rather than just taking something as a given. Do you agree? Do you have any other suggestions which might help? I’d love to hear from you in the comments below.