Make Truth Great Again

I am teaching a first-year seminar this semester and my chosen course title is “Think.” We also weave a “big question” into our course. My big question is “What is truth?” I am not alone in pondering this question. Truth has recently received attention from RJ writers, including Steve Mathonnet-VanderWell’s reflection on political truth vs. Gospel hope this summer. More recently, Jeff Munroe showed us that truth can be fragile in domains as innocent as baseball.

Patrick Laughlin, the late social psychologist at the University of Illinois, spent his career exploring truth in a way that seems pertinent to our current struggles to understand one another. Perhaps the smartest person I ever met, Laughlin was broadly read, wise, and rigorously logical, dispositions that he credited to the training he received as an undergraduate and seminarian at Loyola University. When he left the Jesuits in Chicago for a career in psychological science, he left behind his search for big-T Truth and instead studied how groups solve problems and determine truth. His framework helps me understand why I find it difficult to talk to some of my Christian friends. Laughlin proposed that there are three different ways that groups arrive at the truth, depending on the type of problem they are trying to solve.[1]

Type 1: Knowledge Problems—Truth-supported Wins

One knowledge problem is inductive reasoning, such as gathering evidence over time—imagine multiple scientists conducting research in different laboratories exploring the same question. A parlor-game example would be to figure out the rule that describes this sequence of numbers:

3          5          7

Only the “host” of the game knows the rule/truth. Players try to solve the problem by making guesses and getting feedback. Possible guesses include increasing by 2 or increasing odd numbers by 2. There are many plausible guesses at the outset, but eventually we get closer to the truth by testing different sequences. For example, we could select:

4          6          8

This triplet would be an example of the rule increasing by 2 but not an example of odd numbers increasing by 2. The host of the game tells us if 4-6-8 is or is not an example of the rule, thus helping to narrow our search for truth. The process continues until the rule/truth is identified.

Laughlin called the process by which groups arrive at truth with knowledge problems “truth-supported wins.” Specifically, if at least two members of a group propose an answer, the rest of the group will agree. If you are playing this game with a group of friends, you are more likely to accept the answer if two friends suggest it.

In inductive-reasoning problems, such as collecting scientific information, the discovery of truth can take time. But ultimately the truth emerges and most group members agree. For example, 88% of US adults believe the benefits of childhood vaccines outweigh the risks, a number that is unchanged since 2016. With different research labs gathering data, scientists have derived the answer and the public recognizes the veracity of the scientific claim (in this case, vaccines work).

Type 2: Judgment Problems—Majority Wins

Examples of judgment problems are jury duty, hiring decisions, and ethical dilemmas. For judgment problems, research has shown that a majority or super-majority is needed before a group arrives at the truth. In judgment problems, unlike knowledge problems, truth takes on a different quality. Truth is what the group declares it to be—an emergence of social consensus based on the evidence. Those of us who have served on a jury might recognize the process of weighing equivocal evidence. It is not surprising that, in the presence of ambiguity, majority opinion will have a greater influence than one or two experts.

I believe that judgment problems are less common in public discourse now than even the recent past. Media outlets provide less coverage about capital gains tax rates or ethanol subsidies or how to negotiate with North Korea. I contend that one reason for this decline is because of the unhelpful change in understanding the third type of problem.

Type 3: Demonstrable Problems—Truth Wins

Math and logic problems are demonstrable. In this case, truth is intellectually apparent such that only one person with the correct answer is needed for the group to arrive at the truth (a process Laughlin called “truth wins”). If one person knows the answer, then the others can be shown the truth. For Laughlin, a problem is demonstrable if four conditions are met:

1) consensus on a system (usually verbal or mathematical rules);

2) sufficient information is available to solve the problem;

3) a willing group memberwho can explain the answer to other group members;

4) group members who can recognize the truth when it is shown to them.

For example, if a group is asked to solve a problem in an agreed-upon domain like algebra (condition 1) with enough information to solve it (condition 2), and if a group member who knows the solution shows the solution to the other members (condition 3), and if the other group members know enough about algebra to recognize a correct solution (condition 4), then the group will reach an agreement.

Of course, algebra is not politics or theology or ethics. Most problems that we face are complex and multi-layered, viewed with sin-filled eyes and hearts. For most of us, judgment problems fill our daily lives. And we should be grateful, for such problems stimulate our minds and give us meaning and purpose. It is part of our Reformed understanding of loving God with our minds.

I had four CRCNA grandparents, but I didn’t learn much about the Reformed tradition until college, which allowed me to come to it more by choice than birthright. I was drawn to how Reformed people face complex problems with a keen intellect and consensus-building mindset. We do our research and build consensus and disagree with keen minds and caring spirits. In speaking about her university’s current struggles in an interview with Inside Higher Education, RJ contributor Deb Rienstra summarized a Reformed way to understand the truth-seeking process by noting that her university “has always held in this beautiful tension a serious and devout approach to faith as well as intellectual rigor and curiosity.”

The Reformed tradition has a sophisticated understanding of what constitutes truth in various domains. We have a proud history of wrestling with complex questions in our churches and also to contributing to dialog in the public square. One reason we do this well, in my view, is because we don’t debate the undebatable. Some things are axiomatic. We have a shared understanding of facts (knowledge problems and demonstrable problems). And based on those facts we strive for collective wisdom on the most difficult questions (judgment problems).

What Happened?

Unfortunately, some of what I just described no longer applies. What we used to treat as demonstrable or knowledge problems are now considered judgment problems. For example, in a July 2023 poll, the percentage of Republican and Republican-leaning voters who believed that the 2020 presidential election was illegitimate was a staggering 69%, eclipsed only by 72% support in summer 2021. That same survey showed that 39% of respondents believed that there was “solid evidence” that the election was illegitimate. I’m not sure what is more disquieting—that 4 in 10 believe that there is evidence (when there is none) or that 3 in 10 believe the claim even though there is no evidence. Either way, it is a discouraging example of how a demonstrable problem has become a judgment problem.

When everything becomes a judgment problem, dialog becomes very difficult. We now find ourselves in debates with friends, many of them Christians, about non-debatable issues. Consider a few: President Obama was born in Kenya; “I was named ‘Man of the Year[2]’ in Michigan;” “in Springfield, they’re eating the dogs;” “that was the largest crowd to witness an inauguration. Period.” The claims are so outrageous and numerous that they have become the nearly singular cottage industry of late-night comedy. They serve as comedic fodder because the statements are clearly falsifiable based on the four criteria of Laughlin’s demonstrability. And yet, people believe them. One of the tragic results is that we spend so much time debunking claims that it leaves us exhausted and demoralized. We lack a common understanding of facts that are tantamount to meaningful discussion.

In a country as diverse as the US, even the strangest ideas will be believed by someone. But the magnitude of these numbers is troubling, starting with roughly a 50-50 American electorate. And other numbers also spell trouble for truth, especially among younger respondents. A 2022 survey by the University of New Hampshire found that 10 – 15% of millennials and Gen Zs believe some crazy stuff—the COVID vaccine has a microchip in it, the earth is flat, and NASA did not land on the moon. Interestingly, zero percent of the silent and early-boomer generations believe in a flat earth and low single digits believe in vaccine microchips and fake moon landings. This generational difference suggests another haunting realization—younger Americans are more likely to have a much different understanding of truth. One respondent in a 2023 Pew Research Center study highlights how everything has become a judgment problem:

“[Doctors are] not very credible because, again, that’s the personal opinion of the doctor. So if this doctor believes in it and this doctor doesn’t, and you go see this doctor and I go see this one, then we’ve got two different information. Everybody has, like I said, their formed opinions.” — Woman, age 25-34, Phoenix, Arizona

What are possible explanations to explain that 48 percent of Americans and 82 percent of white Evangelicals support a candidate who has made tens of thousands of demonstrably false statements and thereby sown doubt about the fundamentals of knowledge? A non-exhaustive list is that people are: 1) unaware that the claims are false, 2) aware that the claims are false and still eager to promote them, 3) aware that the claims are false but view the perceived advantages of the lying candidate to still outweigh the other candidate, 4) view the claims not as true-false but rather opinions.

I find all of these explanations troubling, but number four suggests that truth has been bent beyond recognition. I wonder if the truth genie can be put back in the bottle. To answer this question, we might revisit Laughlin’s four conditions for demonstrability.

1) consensus on a system (usually verbal or mathematical rules);

2) sufficient information is available to solve the problem;

3) a willing group memberwho can explain the answer to other group members;

4) group members who can recognize the truth when it is shown to them.

I would contend that the second and third conditions (sufficient information and explain) seem intact. The information age provides ample evidence to verify/reject claims (condition 2) and many of us are very willing to explain the truth to our extended family and social media friends (condition 3). Unfortunately, the above conditions will be meaningless in the absence of the first and fourth conditions, which have been tragically diminished. The first condition (consensus) has eroded, as noted by the quote above. For her, there is no consensus among health scientists, but rather doctors simply “have opinions,” an idea that must haunt everyone working in medical education. This lack of consensus is accompanied by an erosion of condition four—many do not recognize factual information as veridical, despite being presented with indisputable quantitative, visual, or historical evidence.

We face significant barriers if we can’t agree on the fundamentals of knowledge. Perhaps when (and if) the lair of liars is removed from media’s mainstream and extracted from public consciousness, we could begin to talk to each other again. But it is also possible that the damage has already been done. We have built the permission structures to allow truth to lose its meaning. But as Christians we must be truth-tellers above all else. In so doing we can have the mind of Christ, the ultimate truth-teller. Our task is clear, albeit daunting. 

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[1] Laughlin, P.R. & Ellis, A.R. (1986). Demonstrability and social combination processes on mathematical intellective tasks. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 22, 179-189. https://doi.org/10.1016/0022-1031(86)90022-3

[2] An award that he not only didn’t win, but an award that doesn’t even exist.