“Proof! Some people gonna call you up, tell you something that you already know. Proof, Sane people go crazy on you, say “No man, that’s not the deal we made- I got to go, I got to go” Faith? Faith is an island in the setting sun, oohh but Proof yes, proof is the bottom line for everyone.” Paul Simon, from Rhythm of the Saints
Recently I’ve been getting into a lot of pointless arguments online with people whom I consider intellectual toddlers, from the so-called “Left” and “Right.” Primarily regarding this recent election, we had and whether or not it was rigged/ hacked/ stolen or legitimately won by Drumpf and Musk. (Whither JD? I’ll get to that.) Whenever I express an opinion that goes against the party line (whatever that is at the moment), the pushback I’ve gotten is akin to a thousand whistling tea kettles in tone and substance. {Is steam a substance? Is that mysterious fog from the extra-terrestrials or a worldwide government plot? I don’t know.}
This phenomenon goes beyond social media, although it goes viral much faster there and earns the title of “fact” without merit. As an anthropologist, a type of scientist, I thought I would weigh in on this bad habit of demanding proof right after something happens, or there’s a question of something happening—like, even before there’s a credible investigation that follows protocol and the scientific method.
As students, we learn that Science is but one of many Sense-Making Systems in the world and is on equal footing with the rest. For a long time, anthropology went along with the rest of the European-centric worldview that Science was far superior to any other belief system and that everyone who believed otherwise was “primitive” in their thinking, using “superstition” instead of logic and reason.
This brings me to the point: people no longer understand how evidence is produced. During a truly horrific, social-media-based “trial” of a friend who was wrongly accused of anally raping 62 school children, people chose sides based on their bias and prejudice, not anything resembling rational thought. His accuser was a white woman known to have sketchy ties to Republican operatives, and he happens to be a rising star on the Democratic side; young, brilliant, and black, and therefore a target of local Republicans. Guess who people believed, on the whole? The white woman. She didn’t have a shred of evidence, couldn’t produce any witnesses or actual victims, and her stories just didn’t check out, to say the least. When a mutual friend posted a screed about the accused on her social media, and I commented that he didn’t do those things, she screamed back at me, “WHERE IS YOUR EVIDENCE?”
These days, all-caps are the signal in text for screaming. I asked right back,
"Well, where’s yours?" She said that she had plenty and that whatever I had would pale in comparison. I told her the facts—that there were no witnesses, no victims, nothing credible at all—and of course, she refused to listen and blocked me.
This is how it’s supposed to happen: A crime or an anomaly occurs or is suspected of occurring. An investigation is launched, either publicly or secretly, to find out the cause, the perpetrators, the method, and yes, the Evidence. Evidence comes in many forms, but it doesn’t include hearsay unless it does. Testimonies may be used for context and if anyone agrees to go on record, their testimony can become evidence. All of that is compiled and put together into what resembles a feasible storyline by a prosecutor so that the case can be tried. How do you determine who a suspect is? You look for probable cause, motive, means to accomplish the crime, prior criminal records (if any), and previous behavior. Sometimes you don’t have a shred of physical “proof,” you only have suspects, probable cause, plenty of motives, prior records, etc., and it can still make for a strong case. Sometimes you stumble on proof without really looking for it. And how do you do that? By following your intuition, experience, hunches, your gut, most of the time. You may need a warrant, but any decent law enforcement officer can get that without too much trouble.
Then, in the 1960s, with the Social Revolution, anthropologists finally re-examined their antiquated, sexist, and racist points of view when studying other cultures. And trust me, those views were horrific and deserved to be thrown out. They realized there was no scientific, empirical, or logical basis to presuming that the only Sense Making Systems originating from white, European males were legitimate. Such presumptions and assumptions are the enemy of good science. Science is a pretty darn good SMS, but it’s not infallible- it’s only as solid as the scientists practicing it. E.g., scientists must admit to their biases, privileges, and prejudices, taking all of those into account when formulating a theory and trying to prove it.
Since the Sixties, this new theoretical framework has only grown more universally accepted and nuanced. Indeed, many anthropological studies have been re-done and re-examined, and as a result, quite a few “foundational facts” of humanity’s history have been reversed. For example, the Alpha Male myth of hunting being solely the domain of males? Yeah, it was completely disproven once a new generation of scholars reviewed the evidence. Before the 1960s, academic men operated like they were immune from scrutiny because they generally were. Their white papers were read only by each other and ratified by each other. Aside from some bickering over semantics, they were quickly adopted as academic “law.”
Those days are long gone. In school in the mid-90s, the new paradigm was fully accepted and taught as Anthropology 101. For many people, mostly boys, the news that their perceptions did not equal facts came as a shock, and there was a lot of cognitive dissonance and whining. But most of them got over that in a few weeks or dropped the class and majored in something that didn’t challenge their fragile male egos. (Fill in the blank here- I honestly can’t think of anything).
Now, I’m not a computer scientist, but in archaeology (study of the material culture of humans), there’s a whole lotta data, data analysis, bias checking, more data analysis, honing the theory to get rid of any bias, prejudice, or other encumbrances. It’s relatively un-sexy, non-Indiana Jones-type stuff. If I’d turned in a report with all the inconsistencies, disparities, inexplicable holes, and gaps like the 2024 election results, I would have been laughed out of the lab and told to put down the bong and get back to work.
Continued in Part Dieux