How to question: A world built on epistemology | Nalin Pradhan | TEDxLickWilmerdingHS

What if I told you that everything you believe, your opinions, your memories, your very own sense of reality, may be wrong? And I'd be fundamentally misaligned with the world as it actually is. Not because you're unintelligent, but because you're human. When I was first faced with the question, what is the key to a more understanding world? My first instinct was simple. Well, the key to a more understanding world is just a better understanding of the world. It seems simple and almost obvious, but it raises a deeper question. What does understanding the world even mean? And what does understanding mean? Does true understanding come from memorizing facts? Or is it reading, studying? Or is it something deeper that requires that we examine the very roots of knowledge to begin with? That brings us to the hero of this talk. A word that most people have never heard before, but I believe can change the world. Epistemology. The philosophy of knowledge. How we know what we know. How we decide what's real. What to do when we're wrong. And it dares us to ask a terrifying question. What if our entire understanding of reality is a lie? Our knowledge is limited and often unreliable. In Plato's Allegory of the Cave, he shows that most of us only have access to a distorted version of reality. Imagine a group of prisoners chained inside of a cave since birth. They're forced to face a wall and behind them without them knowing. There's a fire, and there's people, who walk behind them, carrying objects, which cast shadows on the wall. And these shadows is all they've seen for their entire lives. Now imagine a prisoner manages to escape. He climbs out of the cave. Blinded by the sunlight. But slowly he comes to realize that he's seeing the true world and that he's been living his entire life a lie. He's eager to come back, share this with other prisoners, but they don't believe him. They mock him and attack him, and they dismiss his ideas as bad. They spend their entire lives staring at shadows, so to them, he's the delusional one. Since they've never seen the real world, they mistake these shadows for reality, believing them to be the only truth. Plato's message is shown. We are those prisoners. We live in our own worlds, in our own caves of social illusions, and even worse, we're comfortable there. So, maybe the problem isn't that we're uninformed, but that we're misinformed. And the problem might not be that we're learning the wrong things, or that we're not learning enough, but the way in which we come to know may be flawed. And in a world where misinformation spreads faster than facts, Plato's cave is far from ancient. It's now. Most of us, and a lot of us, all of us, we rely on appearance and judgment and social conventions to reach truth and knowledge, instead of using reason for things that are more rational. If Plato were alive today, he might argue that most of modern knowledge, if not all, is just another set of shadows on the wall. Suppose you escape this cave. You manage to avoid social illusions. Maybe you make Plato happy. Are you free? No. Rene Descartes would definitely say otherwise. He famously doubted basically everything. He not only doubted social illusions and what was going on around him, but he doubted his own senses and his own reason and logic. Until he reached one undeniable truth that became the first certain foundation of knowledge. I think, therefore, I am. He reached this using a method called radical doubt. He couldn't believe his senses, or he couldn't trust his senses, right, since there's optical illusions. Stick a pencil in water, it looks bent, even though it isn't bent. He couldn't trust his own logic and reasoning, because even careful logic and reasoning could lead to mathematical error. He even distrusted his own perception of reality. He imagined the possibility of some evil demon manipulating everything that he sees. Now, his method in reaching the truth, I think, therefore, I am, is slightly extreme and not practical at all, but you can still learn something from it. He reminds us that even our fiercest convictions may rest on fragile foundations. Memory, judgment, perception, senses, reasoning, logic, they can all fail us. And they're often unreliable. So what he argues is what we need is intellectual humility, the willingness to allow the possibility that we might be wrong and that we might need to check our assumptions. And I'm not saying that all assumptions are wrong and that we should abandon our assumptions. I think assumptions are necessary and they're human nature. But it's crucial to examine the extent to which they govern our lives and it's important to not confuse them with the truth. Next, we turn to pragmatism, a philosophy advanced by William James and John Dewey. Pragmatists believe that knowledge and truth are not some sort of abstract quest for absolute certainty, but rather what works. For example, scientific understanding and knowledge and medicine tend to change over time. Something that was once considered good treatment can be replaced by better methods. Instead of clinging to absolutes, pragmatists remind us to embrace what actually works and find things that actually lead to better outcomes for society. Knowledge, in this view, is not a fixed destination, but a flexible tool, valuable insofar as we navigate problems and flourish. So instead of focusing on who is right, we should prioritize what is right and what will actually lead to better outcomes, and failure to do so, as history shows us, can lead to misunderstanding, division, and even oppression. The goal is not endless debates over abstract truths, but rather practical solutions rooted in evolving evidence-based understanding. If the problem is that our knowledge is limited or unreliable, the solution lies in developing an epistemic mindset. Instead of asking, what do I know? Ask, how do I know what I know? Embrace doubt. Doubt is not weakness. Some of the most thoughtful people are those who are willing to abandon their own uncertainty. Step outside of your cave. Talk to people. Seek out perspectives that might challenge your own. And this doesn't mean accepting everything you hear as true, or denying everything you hear as false, but it means listening with humility. Use knowledge appropriately. Don't just cling to facts and learn to sound smart, but seek knowledge that actually helps. Plato taught us that the way in which we come to know is flawed. Descartes taught us that we should question more. And parenthism shows us that we really need to seek knowledge that actually leads to better outcomes. The key to a more understanding world will not come from the accumulation of more facts or more knowledge alone. It comes from developing an epistemic mindset. To do so, we need epistemic courage. Courage to doubt and to question, and the wisdom to seek what actually helps, rather than just the seeming right. And it's hard to do so in a world where we cling to facts and knowledge, where people want to seem smart. But the next time you find yourself in a disagreement, or you feel certain about something, I encourage you to ask yourself, what if I'm still just seeing shadows? Thank you.