Capitol Punishment

The other virus plaguing our society

Taken in the Cannon House Building in 2017

Wonder Woman’s Lasso of Truth. Snape’s Veritaserum. That Disguise spell from Onward that the brothers use to appear as their mom’s centaur police boyfriend, but that breaks as Ian starts to lie.

I thought about such fantastical tools while watching senators lie on my computer screen late in the evening, even by my time zone’s standards, R code running on another monitor, photos of the mob infiltration of the Capitol earlier that day on yet another monitor, and remembered that below the foundation I thought I would be writing about at the start of 2021, moral epistemology, is an even more essential and fragile bedrock: intellectual honesty.

The difference is this: two groups can be genuinely confused about what is true about the world, or reasoning with different assumptions and biases, and I believe that in many such cases, the most valuable tool for reconciling differences is the scientific method, applied more willingly and persistently in our moral spheres of debate. Agree on observable facts which would need to be correct for our beliefs to hold true, and let the evidence bring our beliefs into convergence. But what if somebody is lying about their beliefs? Then, epistemology is besides the point. Throw your bag of reasoning tricks out the window. The most valuable tool is a good ol’ lie…