Skepticism and Cynicism
Dan Murphy, August 25 2023
Skeptic or Cynic?
Skepticism 1: an attitude of doubt or a disposition to incredulity either in general or toward a particular object. 2: the doctrine that true knowledge or knowledge in a particular area is uncertain.
Cynicism 1: contemptuously distrustful of human nature and motives 2: based on or reflecting a belief that human conduct is motivated primarily by self-interest
Skepticism is one of the most powerful tools you can employ as you navigate your daily life. It is the voice of doubt cautioning you against the too-good-to-be-true investment “opportunity”.
It is the uncertainty you feel when a bold, perhaps grandiose, plan is proposed to you by a colleague without a track record of delivering.
Skeptics require evidence to convince them of the worth or validity of novel ideas, to move them from their default stance of doubt.
When I was being taught how to review code one of the more effective tactics shown to me was the skepticism-fueled attempt to break the code. What could you try to make it behave incorrectly or unexpectedly? What could you imagine going wrong? As you try these things out you are gathering evidence that will either help to dispel or cement your doubt.
When done well this technique helps to make the end result better. It catches bugs before they’re released and simplifies convoluted designs before they establish themselves as patterns in the codebase.
This technique extends well to the review of just about anything.
But there is an art to applying it effectively. Very likely the person submitting the thing - whatever it is - has worked hard on it, and perhaps needed to produce a solution under time pressure or in the absence of an established pattern.
The goal is to improve the thing and possibly learn or teach a thing or two along the way. The goal is decidedly not to criticize them personally or to make their experience of putting themselves and their work out into the light of day a negative one.
You want to encourage this person to happily continue to contribute their ideas with an ever greater quality and with a growing perspective on where the potential problems might lay.
In a way it’s a balancing act between skepticism and cynicism. If you unquestioningly accept all that others send your way, then you’re not helping yourself, the other person, or the idea. You should demand some evidence supporting the claim and you should expect to find flaws. If you don’t, you’re passing on the opportunity to learn, to teach, to improve the idea at hand, and to encourage the proposal of more and better ideas in the future.
But if you allow the mere presence of those flaws to convince you that the idea or its creator are of little value then your skepticism has degenerated into cynicism, that “contemptuously distrustful” attitude.
The other person will not learn from you if they feel attacked or as if their idea was cast in the worst possible light with the goal of being dismissed, rather than refined. They certainly won’t feel encouraged to continue bringing ever better versions of their ideas - not to you and perhaps not to anyone else either.
Proposing new ideas, creative endeavors, or solutions to problems is often hard and it’s often scary. It’s unlikely that the idea is in its best possible form the first time it’s pitched and it’s easy for the person who came up with the idea to be blind to some of its shortcomings or tradeoffs.
As Paul Graham has said, it’s far easier to be the critic than the creator:
Another reason people dismiss new ideas is that it’s an easy way to seem sophisticated. When a new idea first emerges, it usually seems pretty feeble. It’s a mere hatchling. Received wisdom is a full-grown eagle by comparison. So it’s easy to launch a devastating attack on a new idea, and anyone who does will seem clever to those who don’t understand this asymmetry.
If you’re nice, as well as wise, you won’t merely resist attacking such people, but encourage them. Having new ideas is a lonely business. Only those who’ve tried it know how lonely. These people need your help. And if you help them, you’ll probably learn something in the process.
What Graham is asking you to consider in that essay is what you might be missing out on when you are too dismissive of new ideas. Even if the idea is crazy sounding, if the person proposing it is reasonable isn’t that interesting?
Even if there are many problems with the idea, isn’t it likely there’s something to be learned even if only by examining those flaws?
If the other person is excited about that idea, even if they are soon to learn of some of the risks or downsides of the idea, isn’t there something beautiful and valuable in that?
What if this flawed idea is just a starting point? Perhaps the starting point for a better idea, perhaps the starting point for that person’s new and improved way of thinking.
While a skeptic can see those things a cynic cannot.
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