What is the greatest problem of our time? A few candidates consistently appear: epistemology (what people believe), tribalism, attention hijack, lack of shared values, and digital media. The more we look, the more these problems seem interconnected.

The book “Constitution of Knowledge” (abbreviated below as CK) by Johnathan Rauch tackles epistemology and truth – but also – touches all these topics.

Below is a summary of the book, followed by a group discussion.

A Brief History

Rauch starts by covering these major jumps in human history:

• Before language and modern civilization, early humans relied largely on physical coercion to establish order in the world and survive in small tribes.
• Gradually humans developed the capacity reason and persuade. This was preferable to physical force – more efficient and less costly. Importantly though, “reasoning” and “truth” are not the same thing. Reasoning is a shortcut of the human mind to explain the world – which is flawed and fallible. Even so, reasoning is “close enough” to help us survive and get what we want.
• As civilization grows, the pressure for “reasoning” to align with “objective truth” increases. In other words, the world works better if we agree upon certain things – more precise truth maximizes our ability to cooperate across very large groups. The Enlightenment period (1700s) marked major leaps toward “objective truth” across large groups – giving rise to modern institutions of science, journalism, law, academic research, and modern systems of government (1800s-1900s). This network of truth-making is what Johnathan Rauch labels the “Constitution of Knowledge”.
• Today (2000s-Present), the CK is struggling to keep up with A) the volume of information in the world and B) the speed and manner that information moves. Further, trust in the CK (science, research, government) is declining. Anecdotally, tribalism is high, facts are fungible, and people feel anxious.

Here is a closer look at the CK, starting with the “marketplace of ideas”.

The Marketplace of Ideas

The “Marketplace of Ideas” is a well-known metaphor representing all ideas in human existence. Imagine an infinitely large (and exponentially growing) warehouse of full of shelves. Every idea in human history sits on one of these shelves.

In a free society, a healthy marketplace should tolerate all ideas, even ones we don’t like.

Within this marketplace, some items are helpful, some are harmful, some are fun, some are noise, some are emotionally triggering, some are viral, some are boring, some are objectively wrong. The point is, each of us has limited capacity to consider and understand these ideas, and yet they all compete for our attention.

Given this vast supply and limited attention, how can we find what is most trustworthy, for both individual and collective reasons?

This is where the CK shines.

The CK

Imagine we dump the entire marketplace into a large filtering system. The filter identifies what is most true and most relevant, and spits out what matters most.

This filtering system really exists – and is what Johnathan Rauch calls the “Constitution of Knowledge”. It is based on two major rules. 1) We accept that our individual reasoning is fallible. 2) We accept that every truth claim must be checkable by others.

These rules emerged during the Enlightenment period in the 1700s, and slowly formalized into the modern institutions we know today: science, academia, democratic law, and government.

The major feature of the CK is it relies on a diverse network of experts to make claims and verify what is true, rather than relying on opinion, speculation, or a single authority.

The CK protects against flaws of human nature and allows society find truth.

The CK Is Struggling

Today there are two major problems with the CK:

First, the internet and digital media have significantly increased marketplace’s size and how people access it. Today, information regularly bypasses the CK’s filter. For example, pre-internet, people would primarily get information through major news networks, which largely adhered to the CK’s filters. Today we consume information through a labyrinth of internet and social media feeds, where sources and agendas are less clear.

Second, trust in the CK’s institutions (science, traditional journalism, law, and government) has been declining for decades. People feel betrayed by a mix of corruption, misinformation, and special interests.

For these reasons, the CK has lost relevance in most people’s lives. As a consequence, the burden of figuring out what is true and relevant falls more on us individually. People feel disoriented and confused.

Today’s environment has been called an “epistemic (or epistemological) crisis”.

“If we do not have the capacity to distinguish what’s true from what’s false, then by definition the marketplace of ideas doesn’t work. And by definition our democracy doesn’t work. We are entering into an epistemological crisis.”

Barack Obama, 2020

Summary

Everything thus far is merely context for our discussion below.

Perhaps the chief accomplishment of Rauch’s book is it meticulously lays out this history, these variables, and the state of the world today.

But, what are any of us supposed to do? This is where our discussion begins.

Group Discussion

The Golden age of the CK

To launch the conversation, we discussed the period from approximately 1940s – 1990s. Rauch labels this a golden age in terms of good journalism, high trust in information, and healthy civil discourse even across opposing viewpoints. Not that this period was flawless, but it was relatively stable. We can contrast this with today. How have things shifted, and why?

What Is “Shared Reality”?

The term “shared reality” often surfaces in these conversations. But what does this mean? The group agreed it cannot (or should not) mean everybody seeing the world the same way, which would imply a popularity battle over which view is right. Instead, it should mean people appreciating the nature of truth, how it is essential for cooperative society, and finally, the process and values of establishing truth: free speech, humility, curiosity, skepticism, empiricism, peer review, civility, and so on.

How Can the CK Regain Trust?

The group acknowledged one problem that undermines the CK is money and power. As one example, large tech companies can pay academics to publish research that supports their commercial interests. These “thumbs on the scale” aren’t really visible to the general public. We need experts in their respective domains to spot and defend against this bias.

How Can the Average Person Cope?

How can the average person survive today’s overwhelming and often manipulative information environment?

A couple things surfaced:

First is Self-Investigation. By understanding how our own mind can be shaped and manipulated, how our beliefs form, and how our own output might contribute to the problem – it feels like a protection and counterbalance of some kind.

Second (again), is the emphasis on values. If we understand the nature of truth, why truth is important for cooperation, the methodology and values for finding truth, we can be better consumers, shepherds, and defenders of truth.

How Can Truth-Based Values Spread?

The group felt very uncertain about this.

We acknowledged the power of exactly what we were doing in the moment – having face-to-face conversation (even if via zoom), and were supportive of more.

What Will Force The Epistemic Landscape to Improve?

A couple things came to mind:

One, a critical mass of people are sufficiently confused and hopeless about our information landscape. If enough people are concerned they can cooperate on change. (We agreed this threshold is arguably passed – anecdotally it does feel like people agree that things feel very confusing right now).

Two, a major event such as a revolution, or a crisis, like war or societal collapse.

Things Could Be Worse

As much as the CK struggles to keep up, and as chaotic as things feel, we acknowledged it can be worse in other parts of the world – where free speech and truth are not priorities.

Summary

As much as this book is about truth and how the CK maintains it, the group found itself returning to values as equally important and influential.

In other words, for the CK to function, a majority of the population needs to care about objective truth, why it is essential for democratic society, and how we can uphold it together. The CK ultimately relies on this basic concern to exist and function properly.

The group spent some time discussing the CK’s flaws and how they might be addressed – an important and complex question in its own right. But the conversation returned to a more basic issue: regardless of how well the CK is functioning, people need to understand and value the nature of objective truth in the first place.

As for how to reinforce and spread this shared value of truth, the group was uncertain, but agreed that conversations like this one play an important role.

In a 90-minute discussion, we barely scratched the surface. The conversation will continue in a second round.

Discussion

This is posted to reddit for voting and discussion.

Constitution of Knowledge: Part I
byu/JesseNof1 inSelfInvestigation