Jonathan Rauch

This is an excellent work defending the search for truth, via mutual criticism, as ideally used in all academic disciplines, along with journalism, and, for some people some of the time, daily life. The idea is that human beings all have blind spots, biases, etc., but we can get closer to truth by getting input from as many others as possible - the more diverse the better - as their biases and blind spots may differ. Hence we have the scientific method, ideally proceeding via peer review, show more replication, and the whole apparatus many of us learned about in school. But we also have the critical methods of history, astronomy, and many other fields which lack the ability to perform controlled experiments.

The book offers an extended analogy to the way a good democratic political system is designed to work. Ideally no one group can dominate, and there's a never-ending tug-of-war between numerous interests, generally winding up with policies somewhere in between what each extreme would like - and rarely static, as the balance of interests change, or deals are made between them. Hence the title.

It also devotes long chapters to two currently prominent ways that this search for truth is being derailed, complete with many current examples. On the one hand, you have the spewing out and amplification of convenient rubbish, with no concern for truth - whether for lolz, political advantage, or to destabilize a foreign power. On the other hand, you have the requirement that all communication be 100% unoffensive to any possible complainant - or at least any complainant deemed credible by Twitter mobs, university bureaucracy, or groups of eager de-platformers. (Yes, I've bent over backwards not to use the usual labels for these behaviours, as those tend to trigger knee-jerk reactions.)

Perhaps unusually, this author retains epistemic humility, at least in writing. The methods he describes take time to work - sometimes generations. We don't know now what faux truths all the best members of the truth seeking communities all agree upon, so certain that they neglect to consider any criticism they encounter. etc. etc. Like democracy, these methods are presented as better than any alternatives which have been tried, rather than as perfect.

I liked the book so much that I really really wanted to improve it, by talking to the author about what appear to me to be some of his blind spots. Sadly, I imagine that my input would be filtered out, because on the one hand, most of the responses he receives are probably from crackpots, and on the other hand, it would be trivially easy to pattern match my prime concerns with those of more articulate members of one of the groups of trouble maker. (My point would be that these methods may not in fact be best for people in certain situations, who most likely turn up disproportionately represented in one of these groups. The 'constitution of knowledge' needs to adapt to handle what I see as their quite legitimate complaints - or adopt other methods, such as censorship, to shut them up while thereby simultaneously undermining their own claimed goals.) show less

The bizarre world we currently inhabit—a world about as far removed from “the age of reason” as one could possibly imagine—is a world where “28% of Americans believe that Bill Gates wants to use vaccines to implant microchips in people,” according to a recent YouGov poll. And as if that weren’t cause for concern enough, roughly the same percentage of Americans (26%) believe that the sun revolves around the earth, and not the other way around, according to a 2012 National show more Science Foundation survey.

Clearly, we have an issue if, out of every 10 people you meet, on average two or three of them will believe that the earth is the center of the universe or that the government is using the COVID-19 pandemic as cover to implant microchips in the population. If we ever needed a defense of truth, the time is now.

In The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth, author, journalist, and activist Jonathan Rauch provides this much-needed defense, showing us how the Enlightenment thinkers of the 17th- and 18th-centuries created the foundations for “The Constitution of Knowledge,” a set of norms, practices, and institutions that seek to peacefully transform conflict and disagreement into knowledge and order, just as the US Constitution provides the foundations for the peaceful resolution of political disagreement.

Rauch begins with a discussion of Theaetetus, Plato’s dialogue exploring the nature of knowledge. As Plato’s greatest work of epistemology, it leaves the reader with an unsatisfying conclusion: in the search for the foundations of certain knowledge, there are none. Socrates and his interlocutor discover that knowledge is elusive, and that it cannot be grounded in either perception (as perception varies) or on feelings of subjective certainty (because we are often wrong about beliefs we were once certain about). However one tries to ground knowledge, it seems that certainty is impossible to attain.

That this dialogue is considered Plato’s greatest work in epistemology may seem puzzling, as it ostensibly leads to nowhere. But, as Rauch notes, it teaches us a far more valuable lesson: that rigor and humility are the foundations of the truth-seeking attitude and that acquiring knowledge is a conversation, not a destination. Knowledge is something that we pursue collectively, not individually, and that we attain provisionally, not indefinitely. That’s why the five words that end the dialogue are the most important: Let us meet here again.

Rauch, formally trained as a journalist, knows firsthand the power of institutions to check the biases and inaccuracies of the individual. From gathering facts from sources and interviews to the fact-checking and copy-editing process to expert review and challenges from within and outside the newsroom, journalism, as an institution, is a collaborative profession that cannot be performed in isolation (unlike creating conspiracy theories on YouTube, which essentially anyone is qualified to do). While it would take years to develop the necessary expertise to write a credible, respectable story in a mainstream media outlet (which is subject to the criticism of experts), you can launch a YouTube channel tomorrow and find plenty of people gullible enough to believe that the White House is being run by lizard overlords.

So while the field of journalism is not perfect—bias and error of course still creep in—as an institution it at least provides the checks and balances, decentralization, and layers of accountability and review that keep it relatively honest. While we would be unwise to place all of our trust in any single journalist or news outlet operating independently, it would be vastly more misguided to reject the entire journalistic community and instead place our trust in a single demagogic politician or a small group of self-published conspiracists.

And this is the main message of the book: in addition to the uncertainty of all knowledge, as individuals we are biased and fallible and oftentimes completely blind to our own distorted thinking. It is only when we enter into a “reality-based community”—subjecting our beliefs to the critical scrutiny of those who may disagree with us—that we can have any hope of achieving a correspondence between our beliefs and reality.

Journalism is one such reality-based community. Science, academia, and the courts are the other prominent examples. Each community is decentralized, with no single individual ruling from the top-down; each has a series of checks and balances; each has procedures for review and criticism and layers of appeal; and each abides by the two rules of what Rauch refers to as “liberal science”: (1) no one gets final say, and (2) no one has personal authority.

Societies and communities that operate according to these rules—the foundations of the Constitution of Knowledge—are in general freer, more peaceful, and more accurate in their collective beliefs. Liberal science, in this way, transforms disagreement and pluralism (which is unavoidable) into depersonalized and civil dialogue to achieve reconciliation and, eventually, provisional knowledge. Since no one has final say, a diversity of viewpoints (pluralism) is encouraged, and since no one has personal authority to decree the truth by force or coercion, arguments are evaluated according to their own merits. This is the model of science, and where it is followed, progress in knowledge and morality is achieved.

But as Rauch points out, just as the country could not long survive if the US Constitution were to be ignored by the people, the truth-seeking process itself will not long survive if the Constitution of Knowledge is likewise ignored or rejected.

The enemies of the truth-seeking process in the contemporary world—cancel culture on the far left and troll culture on the far right—violate the Constitution of Knowledge and attack its underlying institutions on a daily basis. Whether shouting down or deplatforming speakers (cancel culture) or spreading misinformation and creating chaos and confusion (far right troll culture), reality in either camp is thought to mean whoever has the personal authority and power to decree it as the final truth. Mirror-images of each, the radical wings of the left and right similarly reject “humanity’s greatest invention”: the outsourcing of reality to social networks that depersonalize arguments and evaluate claims based on evidence and reason.

The dangers of far-right troll culture need little elaborating, but Rauch, a long-time gay rights activist, has even less patience for cancel culture. Understanding that homosexuals have, throughout most of the twentieth century, been canceled or otherwise discredited and silenced, Rauch writes that “we did not spend the last half century fighting against it [canceling] so that we could turn the tables and make pariahs of others.”

The very idea that minorities need to be “protected” from speech is itself patronizing. As Rauch wrote:

“[Emotional safetyism] assumes that we want to be ‘safe’ from words or ideas; that we will wilt in the heat of an argument; that we need protection from ‘assaultive’ words and should run to the authorities to get it. Homosexuals were stereotyped as weak...African Americans as childish, women as delicate. Gay people and other minorities fought for legal equality by joining arguments and winning them, and we fought for cultural equality by defeating the sterotype of weakness. The last thing we need is to resuscitate it. Thanks, but keep your emotional ‘protection.’”

One interesting point to keep in mind is that “cancel culture” has historically been a phenomenon of the right (in ways, it still is; look what happens when Republicans speak out against Trump). From the Catholic Church’s “list of prohibited books” and persecution of scientists and atheists to the early twentieth-century battles by conservatives to prevent the teaching of evolution in schools, liberals have historically been on the side of free speech and open inquiry. Now, ironically enough, a good number of those on the left have embraced the very tactics they have spent the greater part of the last 400 years opposing.

In either case, when our truth-seeking institutions are attacked, what are we left with? If we completely lose trust in the media, in government, in science, and in academia, where are we supposed to turn for the truth? We are encouraged to turn to exactly where the enemies of these institutions want us to turn: to them. That gives them the individual coercive power that institutions are specifically set up to deny, and so it’s no wonder why they are under constant assault. It’s time we start doing a better job of defending the institutions of democracy and recovering some semblance of collective sanity. Otherwise, we let the trolls win, and on a larger scale than could have ever been imagined. show less

A very smart friend told me to read this book. When very smart friends do that, I listen. I was rewarded for my obeisance. The book actually contained revelations to scores of questions I had on the broad topic and several of its particulars. The 2nd chapter was the most eye-opening for me of all: a philosophical treatise on how we know what is correct and right and what is incorrect and wrong. It whetted my appetite for more philosophy and to revisit the philosophy books that I put down show more when I was younger, to wait for some personal maturity before I could retackle them. I can't give it the full 5 stars though, because even though I find his overall opinion to be absolutely correct, it is nevertheless appropriate to practice some tact with what emanates from our mouths. I don't feel it should be a free-for-all. There is discretion in life. show less

9 stars: Super, couldn't put it down

From the back cover: Why does happiness get harder in your 40s? Why do you feel in a slump when you’re successful? Where does this malaise come from? And, most importantly, will it ever end?

Drawing on cutting-edge research, award-winning journalist Jonathan Rauch answers all these questions. He shows that from our 20s into our 40s, happiness follows a U-shaped trajectory, a “happiness curve,” declining from the optimism of youth into what’s often a show more long, low slump in middle age, before starting to rise again in our 50s.

This isn’t a midlife crisis, though. Rauch reveals that this slump is instead a natural stage of life―and an essential one. By shifting priorities away from competition and toward compassion, it equips you with new tools for wisdom and gratitude to win the third period of life.

And Rauch can testify to this personally because it was his own slump, despite acclaim as a journalist and commentator that compelled him to investigate the happiness curve. His own story and the stories of many others from all walks of life―from a steelworker and a limo driver to a telecoms executive and a philanthropist―show how the ordeal of midlife malaise reboots our values and even our brains for a rebirth of gratitude.

Full of insights and data and featuring many ways to endure the slump and avoid its perils and traps, The Happiness Curve doesn’t just show you the dark forest of midlife, it helps you find a path through the trees. It also demonstrates how we can―and why we must―do more to help each other through the woods. Midlife is a journey we mustn’t walk alone.

--------------

This book was recommended to me by a psychologist who knows my story well, with the preface "You know this already". Well, that wasn't quite correct. It is true that my own trough of the happiness curve was about 10 years earlier (at 42 vs. my current 52) However the reasons for this, the idea that the "curve" is universal across cultures and economic status (and on some levels, primate species), and the specific shifting from personal focus to larger societal / village focus, was new information for me. I found this book very helpful, insightful, and have recommended both the book and its concepts to a number of people. I certainly recommended to many parts of Rauch's story and the anecdotes he shares. I'm sure it is one I will refer to many times.

Some sections I would like to remember:

The post midlife upturn is no mere transient change in mood: it is a change in our values and sources of satisfaction, a change in *who we are*. It often brings unexpected contentment that extends into old age and, yes even into frailty and illness.

In my own forties, my life satisfaction was low, and much lower than I thought it should be, but my mood was usually not a problem. That was partof the reason I did not believe I was a candidate for medical care. I did not have a mood disorder. I had a contentment disorder.

I would not for a moment say there was anything desirable about Mary Ann's bruising trials, but her encounters with mortality and suffering may have boiled off unrealistic optimism which otherwise would have taken longer to leach away. Her family's crises seem to have taken her on a shortcut to mature realism of the latter portion of the expectations curve. [This resonates. I feel my trough was a decade earlier than average and few around me would say otherwise].

What if social lives of seniors were not withering but being pruned? What if age brought a shift in emotional priorities? What people were saying is that they're very interested in the people that they care about and the ones they really love. But they're not interested in just any person whom one could sit in front of them, or they were much less interested than when they were younger. And that was the selectivity theory. Emotions stay intact, but people make increasingly careful decisions about what they invest in and in whom they invest."

Popular culture tells us that youth is vibrant and happy, the best time of life, and midlife will bring "crisis" and then old age will bring functional and emotional decline. When the reality is that youth tends to be a time of challenging emotional extremes, middle age a time of grinding but productive adjustment, and the gray years are generally the happiest of all.

The older you get, you'll have more physical problems, but you'll have a lot of knowledge. YOu're also going to come to find yourself with the freedom to care about what matters most to you, and pursue those goals and not the goals that other people say should matter to you.

As I interviewed people about their midlife transitions, and their lives afterward...always suggesting a reorientation of personal values away from ambition and toward connection.... The transition has a direction: Something you could even call a purpose. The upslope of the happiness curve has an emotional direction, which is toward positivity. But it also has a relational direction, which is toward community. In other words, this is a social story.

Earlier in life, Christine had imagined holding big, important roles that make a dent in the world's problems.... Had her ideals collapsed? Not exactly. "I can't save the world. I can save my little corner of it." The ambition and idealism were still there but she had scoped them to fit her ambit of control. She was less invested in the abstract and general, more in the concrete and specific. ... we discern elements of growing wisdom: movement toward equanimity, toward pragmatic problem solving and reflection, toward other directed priorites.

It does seem that by the time people are in their 40s they have achieved a lot of what they had hoped to achieve so there's this grand question of "Now what? Is this it? In the 40s there still seems to be great energy ... One of the things I see as a therapist is people constantly comparing their relationships and situations to other people. As they get into their 60s and 70s they are much more accepting.

Self help is valuable. Self help is important... however necessary, it is incomplete and in some ways missing the point. The larger, yet mostly neglected, portion of the answer lies outside ourselves. ... We need social channels and a U friendly environment. We need institutions and public norms that ease the way, instead of institutions that ignore the happiness curve and public norms that mock it [midlife 'crisis']. We need a story about what we are experiencing which assumes we are normal, not broken.

Most people do not experience acute depression. They experience chronic dissatisfaction, which is very different. Their values and their lives are in tension and their achievement and fulfillment are out of sync, neither of which is a medical problem.

Although adolescence and the trough of the happiness curve are not at all the same biologically, emotionally or socially, they are alike in that they are challenging and distinctive transitions which are commonplace, predictable, and nonpathological. But one of them has a supportive environment whereas the other has... red sports cars.

By telling a story about normalcy that is at odds with reality, we manufacture dismay and shame about a perfectly normal transition. By expecting people to exhibit maximum mastery in midlife, we leave them to their own devices if they feel adrift and vulnerable. ... we increase their isolation and therefore unhappiness. By telling them that their best years are behind them at age 50, we make them gloomy about the future. In all those ways, by telling the wrong story about adult development, we bait and set the midlife trap.

Homosexuality stopped being abnormal in large part [because people started talking openly about it. People accepted and connected.] I have seen again and again...the relief people feel when they can have a nonjudgemental, fact based conversation about midlife malaise. I see the surprise and smiles when they hear that the happiness curve is normal and seen around the world, even among apes.

If I had to explain the upside of the U in just three words, the worlds I would use are these: Gratitude comes easier. That is the hidden gift of the happiness curve. show less