IDEOLOGY UBER ALLES:
The “Nietzsche Thesis”: Why we don’t really care about truth (Jonny Thomson, 3/22/25, Big Think)
There are two strands to the argument for epistemic vigilance. The first is that adults are constantly calibrating how reliable we consider others to be. We tend to be a “truth default” species, which means we assume most people at least start out as being honest. Over time, if someone tells a lie or gets something wrong, we calibrate our epistemic vigilance. We say, “Okay, Alex clearly knows nothing about soccer, so I’m not going to ask him again.”
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The second observation is that children learn very early whom to trust or not trust. The psychologist Pascal Boyer observed that infants “seem to be sensitive to the difference between expert and novice agents. Later, toddlers use cues of competence to judge different individuals’ utterances, and mistrust those who have been wrong in previous instances, or those who seem determined to exploit others.”The argument therefore goes that humans are born with a certain skill or vigilance for seeking truth over falsity. We have epistemic vigilance. […]
So, we are left with two facts. We are vigilant about what people are saying, but our vigilance is not based on epistemic grounds. So, what kind of vigilance is it?
For that, Shieber coined the expression “The Nietzsche Thesis.” He argues that “our goal in conversation is not primarily to acquire truthful information… [but] self-presentation.” In other words, we accept or reject statements based on utilitarian goals, not on their truthfulness. In Nietzsche’s words, we will accept and look for truth only when it has “pleasant, life-preserving consequences.” Conversely, we are hostile “to potentially harmful and destructive truths.” We do not have epistemic vigilance, but a Machiavellian one.
There is one important observation about modern society that might lend credence to Shiber’s ideas: the popularity of conspiracy theories and echo-chamber nonsense. If epistemic vigilance were true, we would all be fact-checking and dismissing conspiracists all the time. But we don’t.
The heck with truth, just confirm my prejudices!