Don’t worry, I am not going to subject you all to my endless gushing on about how awesome My Little Pony : Friendship Is Magic is today. This time, I am only using it as a jumping off point.
The episode in question is Feeling Pinkie Keen, the fifteenth episode of the first season. Briefly, in it, a somewhat nutty character named Pinkie Pie demonstrates repeatedly that her random twiches and flutters have amazingly accurate predictive powers. Twilight Sparkle, who despite being super magical does not believe in Pinkie’s powers (because magic makes sense and random twitch prognostication does not) and embarks upon an episode-long quest to prove that Pinkie’s powers are just random chance and not real, becoming quiet obsessive about it in a comedic way.
Of course, by the end of the episode, she finally breaks down and admits that Pinkie’s powers really do work. And I am fine with that. But the moral at the end was sort of vague and didn’t really make it clear what the true lesson from the episode is, so I thought I would clarify.
Furthermore, a little research and a lot of virtual banging my head against the wall and saying ARGH later, I have accidentally learned that the episode is hugely controversial in some quarters, especially the asshole atheist demographic who considered it an attack on logic and rationality, and flipped the fucking out over it, because apparently they get to say whatever they want but if something even looks like an attack on one of their sacred beliefs, it’s a national fucking tragedy.
Because of course they did. My lack of God, I hate those people. Doesn’t it always seem like those who claim to love a virtue most understand it the least? Because these people clearly did not understand the episode and do not understand how science, reason, and logic really work.
So here is the basic lesson for today, kids : science, logic, and reason are based on evidence. The evidence is king, always, forever, in all circumstances, period.
And if your theory does not fit the evidence, it is your theory that must change. Rejecting evidence a priori because it does not fit your existing philosophy is the exact opposite of reason and science. It is rank prejudice, an argument made out of ignorance instead of knowledge, and intellectual hubris of the worst possible sort.
Twilight Sparkle’s mistake was in ignoring the evidence. Sure, one or two accurate predictions might be coincidence, but in the episode Pinkie Pie makes at least a dozen, and a real scientist does not reject the evidence simply because it does not make sense to her. The entirety of science depends on us finding things that do not make sense to us, and figuring out how they work. It always starts with something that does not currently make sense. That is one of the greatest joys of the science and the pursuit of knowledge : explaining the previously inexplicable.
Instead of obsessively rejecting the very clear pattern in the available evidence, Twilight Sparkle should have simply treated Pinkie’s powers as the fascinating new phenomena they were, and studied them with an open mind.
I can see what pissed people off, though. Here is the moral of the episode :
No, no, no. It’s not about choosing to believe things. It’s about being open to the evidence. Reality doesn’t give a crap what we want to believe or choose to believe. Something is either true or it isn’t, period. Twilight Sparkle had no choice but to believe in Pinkie Pie’s powers because that’s the hypothesis supported by the evidence.
The choice lies in choosing to ignore the evidence because you don’t want to have to change your mind about something, not in finally bowing to the evidence. One of the bedrock principles of all forms of the rational pursuit of knowledge is that you are absolutely helpless before the evidence. You are a slave to reality. In order to be a truly rational person, you have to leave your mind open to being completely changed by new evidence.
Otherwise, all you are doing is putting a tinfoil halo on your own ignorance and prejudice.
The pursuit of reason and truth is not easy. The philosopher’s road has never been a smooth one. You have to remain steadfast in your belief in uncertainty, and be absolutely convinced of the need for doubt. Ignorance and prejudice can creep into even the most regimented of minds, and therefore you must be ever-vigilant in policing your own thoughts.
And you can never, ever, ever let yourself fall prey to the delusion that error and prejudice are something that happens to other people. You are as human as the rest of us, and just as fallible. One of the worst and most persistent delusions known to humanity is the delusion that you are logical.
Like hell you are. You’re an irrational, emotional, instinctual animal just like the rest of the grunting, mating, squatting creatures on the Earth. We human beings are lucky in that we are capable of using logic and the scientific method as the powerful tools they are, but they are only that : tools. And we are not our tools.
No amount of enlightenment can change the fundamental nature of human existence. Despite its hubris, reason and the right hand side of the brain can not eliminate the rest of our natures, and when we let arrogant rationality fool us into believing that this has happened, we only leave ourselves at the mercy of forces we refuse to even acknowledge exist.
True rationality comes from understanding and accepting our fundamentally animal natures, and embracing them when we can and working with them in mind when we cannot.
Otherwise, you’re just another smug delusional egotist completely sure they have all the answers, just like any other bigot, religious or otherwise.
Well that’s it from me for today, nice people. Sorry to get all ranty there, but this kind of thing pisses me off.
I get really angry about logic!
See you tomorrow, folks!