Being right about one thing

Every so often, I read about a person who, against all odds, is “right about one thing”.

They are shown to have reliably bad ideas about most things, but are suggested to have crucial insights about something.

It is known that they do not follow reliable processes for establishing the truth. They may well be consistently anti-scientific, biased, or corrupt.

Yet we seem to abandon any prior emphasis on the process of establishing truth, in favour of the far more seductive prospect of an accidental truth.

This often reveals that we don’t apply expectations of rigour evenly . We depend on science for A, but our intuition about B. And then we think: this person could be onto something about the toxins in those Bs.

So we begin to wonder whether there are hidden truths in demonstrable errors. If they could be right about B, maybe they weren’t wrong about A. All the while, there is little reason to believe they are right about B.

When not at work or study, who really wants to be rigorous. It’s nice to think that we can luck into a correct opinion without needing to show our method or any record of applying it reliably.

But we need to expect more of people with profound influence over the lives of others, as well as those who endeavour to explain what those people actually know and do not know.