Doubt is the stepping stone to truth

I was so sure that I was right. It turned out that I was wrong. But after finding this out, I was able to get on the road to rightness.

What got me facing in the right direction was doubt. Thank you, doubt! If it weren't for you, I'd have headed in the wrong direction for quite a bit longer.

I'm not talking about a religious belief, though I could be.

The lesson I learned last week is universal: don't be completely, absolutely, 100% sure about anything. Even when we're super confident that we're correct, it's important to leave open the door of doubt. Truth of which we're unaware might be on the other side.

My wife, Laurel, was trying to add TrafficLive to the Navigon GPS app on her iPhone.

She was heading from Salem to Gig Harbor, Washington to pick up a rescue dog that we were going to adopt. This would take her through Tacoma. Laurel wanted a way to tell if there were major traffic problems on the unfamiliar big city freeways she'd be traveling on. 

Every time we tried to purchase this add-on from inside the app, we got a message saying that Navigon needed to be purchased before TrafficLive could be bought.

But Laurel obviously had already purchased Navigon for her iPhone, or we wouldn't be trying to buy TrafficLive via a Navigon "extras" option. So I entered into my righteous indignation mood after Laurel left for Gig Harbor, TrafficLive'less.

I emailed Navigon customer support about our problem. Soon a reply arrived from Germany, where Navigon is headquartered.

Dear Valued NAVIGON Customer

Thank you for your inquiry. This error often shows up if you use a different iTunes ID to buy in-app content instead using the one which you bought the NAVIGON app. Please make sure that you use the same ID.

That message only fueled my righteous indignation. Those fools, those idiots at Navigon! This crappy response was all they could come up with??!! I knew, for sure, that my wife had always used the same iTunes username. 

I began composing an irritated reply. However, thankfully I had enough critical thinking neurons still working in my brain to say "almost completely sure" and "virtually 100% certain" rather than simply "sure" and "certain."

The same iTunes ID was used. I'm almost completely sure of this, because my wife's Navigon app was purchased via her iPhone, and she hasn't changed her iTunes ID since she started using Apple products. Do you have another suggestion for buying the TrafficLive option? I've thought about uninstalling the Navigon app and then reinstalling it, but am concerned this wouldn't work.

Again, I'm virtually 100% certain that my wife used the same iTunes ID to buy the core Navigon app, as to attempt her buy of the in-app TrafficLive.

Perhaps my adding those qualifying words helped prime my brain for what happened next. Almost immediately after I pressed the send button which flashed my reply to Navigon, a seed of doubt began sprouting in my psyche.

Suddenly I wasn't so sure. No longer was I "almost completely" sure, or "virtually 100%" certain. I didn't know why I felt that way. But some mental urging was pushing me to dig deeper into my wife's iTunes account.

Doubt was doing its thing.

No longer was I supremely confident that a Navigon glitch was at fault here. Indeed, it turned out that customer support was completely correct. I found that my wife had two iTunes usernames, each with the same password. 

When I logged out of one iTunes account on her iPhone, and logged into the other account, I had no problem purchasing TrafficLive. Time for another message to Navigon.

Oops. i'm glad I said "almost completely sure" and "virtually 100% certain." 

I did some more thinking, and checked my wife's iTunes account. After upgrading the operating system, I saw that she now had a me.com email address. When I changed it back to her gmail.com address, and logged into the old gmail iTunes account, I was able to purchase TrafficLive. 

I was wrong. You were right. Thanks for the advice.

I've told this story partly because I want to make sure that the lesson of it is burned as deeply as possible into the operating system of my own brain: 

Always leave room for doubt. Never be absolutely certain. Even when every fiber of your being is screaming, "I'm right," keep "I could be wrong" alive in a corner of your mind.

This is how science operates. Every theory, no matter how well founded, is viewed as falsifiable. The probability of such happening might be very small. But it isn't zero.

By contrast, religions encourage followers to have unwavering faith in the teachings, even when evidence is lacking; to suppress doubts about dogma, even when skepticism is justified; to persevere on a delineated spiritual path, even when roadblocks, pitfalls, and dead ends are evident.

Doubt is good. Certainty is bad. I'm almost 100% sure of this.

Comments

[Brian from Colorado]

Churchless one - what can I say?

Of some things, I am utterly certain. But while I lack no evidence whatsoever, it's mine alone, and you must find your own or do without.

There are some things in life that brook no fence-straddling, amigo!

[jimbot]

Hey Brians,

I suspect you've watched the ultimate Christian and revolutionary movie parody, Life of Brian, by Monty Python, but I post it here just in case you missed it.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0079470/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPmU_qLJVjg

[Brian from Colorado]

Careful jimbot, the People's Judean Front own the copyrights on those.

[jimbot]

"Careful jimbot, the People's Judean Front own the copyrights on those."

Haha, I know, those bastards!

As for "Doubt is good. Certainty is bad.", I disagree.
I wrote about the ego here:

http://hinessight.blogs.com/church_of_the_churchless/2012/02/does-religious-familiarity-breed-contempt.html?cid=6a00d83451c0aa69e20168e82df5a6970c#comment-6a00d83451c0aa69e20168e82df5a6970c

I think that there is a strong connection between ego-certainty and humility-uncertainty, in that the more certain people are, the more egoistic they are, and the more uncertain, the more humble. Therefore what I said about ego, hold for certainty as well.

For example, had Newton not been certain in the scientific method, in that mathematics could describe the physical laws of motion, in that there was a force governing free fall, he would never had discovered gravity and we would still be living in the Dark Ages. But there is more. It is this certainty, this blind faith in science and in himself, that made him uncertain, made him doubt everything, made him produce results.

Speaking of Newton, Newton's Third Law states that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. The stronger the action, the stronger the reaction. How true. This seems to be the case for materialistic forces of nature, as well as for anything else. And from the autocracy, absolutism and religious dogmatic beliefs of the Dark Ages, Enlightenment was born. Would Enlightenment exist had it not been for the cruelty, the attrocities, the certainty of the Church? I doubt it.

Although certainty led scientists, inventors, philosophers into discovering new knowledge and thus improving life conditions for everyone, this was not always the case. Hitler is an example of a man imbued with certainty. He was certain that Jews were responsible for all world's problems and was determined to exterminate them all. He was certain for other things as well, such as German nationalism, the Aryan race, distrust in capitalism and communism. These certainties resulted in the Second World War. How he managed to convince the german people to follow him is something worth of great attention. In contrast, Che Guevara was yet another example of a "certain" man. He was certain that imperialism was to blame for everything, vowed to destroy it at all costs, decided that the only solution would be "world revolution" and devoted his whole life in bringing about this revolution. Without asking. He wouldn't stop at anything, as he stated, he would fire nuclear missiles towards the US without the slightest hesitation, if he had the chance. He believed that the death and suffering of millions of people were necessary and a small price to pay for world peace. Imperialism was an evil that needed to be rooted out. He had absolute faith in an egalitarian society. However, it is this society that he personally failed to build in Cuba, after the cuban revolution. How angry, how desperate he must have felt then. He set off to organize other revolutions elsewhere. How better was he than Hitler? Why is he so much revered? Why people are so certain that he was 'good'? Were people manipulated to think that way? Does all this have anything to do with religious dogmatic beliefs?

Bottom line: Just be certain to be uncertain, and vice versa.