Today, I think, science is the common worldview.

Right?

We are encouraged to test and examine and only point to observable “facts.”

But is it really so simple? Aren’t many things unobservable?

I mean, after much fanfare, they found out that black swans – literally – do exist.

And science is not everything, after all.

The issue may be that armed with a particular worldview and a little confirmation bias, most people can believe just about anything.

While I am certain that “facts” and “truth” exist, getting at them for most might be a little more sticky than we had hoped.

How else can the same set of facts definitively tell two different groups of people two completely different things?

Are you even conscious of your own philosophy?

The common worldview, shared by most humans, is that there is one objective reality, and we humans can understand that reality through a rigorous application of facts and reason. This view of the world imagines that some people have already achieved a fact-based type of enlightenment that is compatible with science and logic, and they are trying to help the rest of us see the world the “right” way. As far as I can tell, most people share that interpretation of the world. The only wrinkle with that worldview is that we all think we are the enlightened ones. And we assume the people who disagree with us just need better facts, and perhaps better brains, in order to agree with us. That filter on life makes most of us happy—because we see ourselves as the smart ones—and it does a good job of predicting the future, but only because confirmation bias (our tendency to interpret data as supporting our views) will make the future look any way we want it to look, within reason.

-Scott Adams, Win Bigly