Bubbles of Certainty and our Triple Witness to ‘Truth’ – Part 1: You & Me

You and I are very adept at noticing when our fellow human beings are getting things wrong. Their opinions and failure to listen to reason might even frustrate or anger us, especially if we believe they should know better. Why can’t they see things as we do, especially when it’s so obvious? We know that we’re right, because the evidence we possess makes perfect sense to us. How can there be any other rational explanation? Are they ‘stupid’ or is someone leading them astray?

It’s all to do with Bubbles of Certainty, and the Triple Witness to ‘Truth’ that all of us rely upon to keep our own bubbles intact.

In Part One of this two part series, we look at why Bubbles of Certainty are so hard to burst, and what our Triple Witness to ‘Truth’ is really telling us.

Bubbles of Certainty reduce chaos and unpredictability

As human beings, we create and maintain Bubbles of Certainty around ourselves as a means to reduce the unpredictability and chaos of life. If we didn’t, we’d be constantly having to figure everything out on the fly, always trying to pick an optimum course from a myriad of potential futures. As long as we stay within our Bubbles of Certainty, most of the work is done for us. We know what to think, what to expect, and how to act across most situations—using a variety of tried and tested rules of thumb, mental models, and scripts.

We use these rules, models and scripts to establish and refine daily routines. We lock our doors each night, even though we have no idea whether anyone’s on the prowl. We flick switches and dispel the darkness with light. We learn how to cross the street safely and which foods can be eaten and which should be avoided. We build friendships with people we know we can trust whilst distancing ourselves from anyone who make us feel uncomfortable. We build order and control into our lives however we can. Doing so minimises the risk of things going wrong or catching us off-guard with something we don’t have an answer for.

The seduction of certainty

But this level of control and certainty also seduces us into believing that everything in life can (and should) be just as predictable and knowable. Providing we stay within our carefully crafted Bubbles of Certainty, this generally remains  true. But maintaining our certainty comes with a price, often requires us to exclude (or ignore) anything and everything that might jeopardise the feeling of contentment and ease when everything just make sense. We’re certain because we feel certain, and we all-too-readily mistake this certainty for ‘truth’.

Our Triple Witness to ‘Truth’

By creating Bubbles of Certainty around ourselves, where everything is predictable and knowable, we succeed in generating a self-perpetuating ‘Triple Witness’ for ourselves that is very hard to override. The Triple Witness keeps us from being too easily persuaded or becoming overly anxious with every new bit of contradictory information.

So what is the Triple Witness, and how does it work?

The Triple Witness consists of three things: Evidence already in our possession, Coherence because all the pieces of the puzzle fit, and Conviction that we have found and know the truth. Let’s look at these in more detail

✅ Witness #1: Evidence already in our possession

We ‘know’ that we’re right because all the evidence we possess remains internally consistent. All the pieces we have fit together. But it’s an artificial consistency, achieved only by continously excluding anything that doesn’t fit within our Bubble of Certainty. It’s like saying “bananas are the only nice fruit” and refusing to taste any other fruit that might update our beliefs because we’ve decided in advance that bananas are the only nice fruit. This exclusion keeps our Bubble of Certainty intact. Psychologists refer to this as our Confirmation Bias.

✅ Witness #2: Coherence — it just feels ‘right’!

The internal consistency that comes from only considering evidence that matches evidence already in our possession generates feelings of ease and coherence that we then mistake for truth. It just feels ‘right’, which means that everything that challenges this feeling of rightness feels wrong and makes us uncomfortable. Psychologists call this discomfort Cognitive Dissonance. Those feelings of rightness-versus-wrongness, however, are an illusion. They’re born of familiarity and the reduced mental effort involved in processing things that we already know. Consider how it can also feel ‘right’ to never leave the house if we’ve not ventured outside for the past five years. Feelings should never be confused with the truth, but frequently they are. And haven’t we always been told to “trust our gut”?

✅ Witness # 3: Conviction – I have found and know the truth

The certainty that arises from the evidence already in our posession, combined with feelings of ease, increases our confidence that we really must have discovered the truth. And now that we’ve discovered it, we must protect it all costs! Not only must we categorically reject anything and everything that challenges the truth (or makes us feel uncomfortable, see 2 above), but now we have a responsibility to spread this truth to others!

Protectors of The Truth

The Triple Witness persuades us that we’re rejecting so-called new evidence because, ultimately, we’re protecting The Truth. Any so-called new evidence must therefore be not-truth. It’s ‘heresy’, ‘misinformation’, ‘disinformation’, ‘fake-news’, ‘propaganda’, ‘gas-lighting’—or whatever other label is fashionable on the day. We warn ourselves not to fall for the lie. Instead, we must double-down on our convictions; it’s up to us to ensure The Truth survives.

We also see ourselves as having a duty to protect others from being unwittingly taken in by its insidious falsity, cautioning them to give a wide berth to any source that even hints there may be some evidence to the contrary. How easily they could be led astray, we remind ourselves. Their convictions aren’t as strong as ours, are they? Thank the Universe we were available to help them realise just how close they came. Mission accomplished.

An unreliable witness

But it turns out that no matter how convincing our Triple Witness might be, we cannot rely upon it to determine whether something is actually true or not.

To understand why, consider an encounter you’ve had with someone who held an opposite view to yourself, on some topic of contention. Someone who was dogmatic in their arguments and wouldn’t listen to reason, even though you were presenting them with your own solid evidence. Chances are that whilst they were rejecting the evidence you wanted to share with them, you were rejecting the evidence they wanted to share with you.

Here we have two individuals, both possessing evidence they consider to be internally consistent and make sense. Both reject the other’s evidence because it doesn’t match their own. Both are confident in their convictions of what is true and what is not. How can you both be convinced you alone have found and know the truth?

Assume for a moment that only one of you can be right. Assume that if one perspective is true then the other one must be false because what you are stating is polar opposite to one another (e.g. “It’s North” vs “It’s South”). Yet both of you are relying on your own Triple Witness to confirm that you alone are right. Why, then, do either of you have need to listen to each other?

Whoever ultimately turns out to be right or wrong, our own Triple Witness to ‘Truth’ has been no help whatsoever in figuring it out. In fact, here the Triple Witness appears to be just as effective at protecting false truth as it is at protecting true truth. What’s going on?

Protecting our beliefs

What our Triple Witness really protects is not the truth per se, but rather our beliefs about what is truth. Sometimes those beliefs about what is true will be correct; sometimes they won’t. Sometimes they’ll be partially correct. But the Triple Witness itself is incapable of judging between what is true and what is not, regardless of how strong our convictions are, or how ‘right’ it may feel. It turns out that our Triple Witness is nothing more or less than a manifestation of our own personal Bubble of Certainty.

Conclusion

We need our Bubbles of Certainty. As highly intelligent, conscious beings we are capable of imagining all manner of potential futures. It could very easily paralyse us with fear or indecision. Likewise, our Triple Witness helps to protect our Bubbles of Certainty so they can keep us from being too easily persuaded or overwhelmed by new information. But our Bubbles of Certainty should never be mistaken for truth. They represent our current beliefs about what is true. This is as true for you as it is for me—and everyone else we might encounter who is convinced by their own Triple Witness.

If you and I wish to grow in wisdom and come closer to knowing truth in all its fullness, we must learn how to temporarily detach ourselves from our own Bubbles of Certainty when we have an opportunity to see things from another perspective. We don’t need to get rid of our bubbles, or go around trying to burst everyone else’s. Remember, they serve a useful purpose.

We must simply be aware that the evidence we already possess may only feel like it’s complete because we’ve been intentionally or unconsciously excluding or ignoring anything that doesn’t fit inside our bubble. No matter how strong our own convictions may be, they are never a reliable indicator of how right we are, only how firmly we believe that we are right.

In Part Two: Us & Them we’ll be looking at how our Bubbles of Certainty work at the group level, how they give rise to camaraderie and a sense of shared purpose, but also how they can reshape society to create institutionalised injustice and inequality that is very hard to override.