In the world we live in, even the simplest assumptions are not certainty. Scientists today are even studying whether the colors we observe are subjective to different people.
Is my red your red? Is your blue the same blue I see? The funny thing is that the way people learn is through socialization. Therefore even if we all saw the same color as "red", we may all be consistently seeing the same color, but that color may be different to everyone. If every time I think of a warm color I think of blues and greens and purple, but just call them red, orange and yellow, I would never know because that is simply what I am conditioned to associate with it.
The analogy sheds to light how unreliable our developed ideas can be. How certain we are of them really plays no role in truth. So how do we decide things to be true?
The answer is we determine our own definition of truth.
A scientific theory in reference to the scientific community is different than the laymen term, "theory" as people understand it.
A "scientific theory" is not merely a guess.
A scientific theory is the best possible explanation in consideration of all the available evidence.
That means that a scientific theory can potentially be wrong. So why believe it?
It is difficult to understand the weight of a scientific theory until you understand that absolutely nothing we claim to know, no matter how simple, can be proven without a possibility of error.
It is quite possible that the sky is not blue. That the entirety of reality as we know it is some form of simulation. But we don't believe these things because proving something beyond a possibility of error is not how we determine what to believe.
We determine what to believe based on whether or not we have good reason to believe it.
Nothing more, nothing less.
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How to Think Rationally
Non-FictionAn unbiased mindset of rationality and logic anyone can subscribe to. Will add chapters as necessary as time goes on.
