How Do We Decide What to Believe? | The Big History Project

Hi, I'm Bob Bain.

I'm here in beautiful Seattle.

It's a lovely day
and I'm excited

to be talking with you
about Big History.

I'm a friend
of David Christian's,

a longtime colleague.

We've worked together
on many projects

and we're going to work
together here

on the Big History Project.

Like you,
I'm going to be listening

to David's talks
and David's lectures.

Like you, I'm going to be
learning many new things.

Big History is exciting for me

because Big History
makes me think.

It encourages me
to ask new questions.

It helps me rethink
the Universe and the world

and my place in it.

And from time to time,
David has invited me

to talk with you,
to think with you

about some of
the important ideas

that David has done
in the Big History lectures.

For example,
I loved the last lecture

where David talked
about origin stories.

Actually, origin stories
have been important in my life.

My grandmother used to read me
these origin stories

and they were beautiful,
they were wonderful.

And in fact, I'm going to
read them to my grandchildren

as they get a little bit older.

But David told us
that origin stories

do more than
tell a good tale.

They make claims
about the way the world began

and the way it works.

"Claims"--
do you ever use that word?

We historians and scientists
use the word "claims"

to answer questions,
to make assertions,

suggestions about
the way the world works,

in answer to our own puzzles.

Now, "claims" may not be a word
that you use every day,

but you make claims every day.

You're surrounded
by claims every day,

you encounter them every day.

For example, a friend tells you
over the weekend

that they got the flu
and that's why

they didn't call you.

They're making a claim.

If you read a blog
that tells you

that your favorite band
is going to break up,

they're making a claim.

If you tell your parents
that the reason

why you came in late
was because your cell phone died

and you couldn't tell the time,
you're making a claim.

But here's the question:
How would you know

which claims to trust,
which ones to ignore

and which ones
to investigate further?

For example,
would you automatically trust,

trust your friend
when they said,

"I had the flu
over the weekend"?

Would you trust
that blog enough

to repost
your favorite band disbanding,

and what about your parents?

Would they trust that
your cell phone battery died

and that was why
you came in late?

In this course,
in the Big History course,

we're going to ask you
to raise questions

about claims,
to understand how it is

that people make claims

and by what means
we can trust them.

The degree of trust in claims is
a very important question

that we're going to take up
in this course.

So let's take up this question
of how you learn to trust

or how you evaluate claims.

And let's use
an everyday experience,

something I'll bet
that you've had.

Let's imagine that we,
you and me, are going to go look

for a new restaurant,
the Big History Caf￩,

that we've heard
great things about.

The food is exotic,
it's coming from

all over the world,
heck, all over the Universe.

And we hear
the portions are enormous.

Unfortunately, we've gotten
lost on our way there.

But good news.

There's a person who seems
to know their way around

approaching us.

And so you stop them and say,

"Hey, can you tell me
how to get

to the Big History Caf￩?"

And she says, "Of course.

"You head down to the corner,
make a right,

"pass the big department store

"and a little ways
down on the left

you're going to see
the Big History Caf￩."

And so we start down our way
following those directions

but suddenly we stop.

Do we trust her?

Does she really know?

I mean, our intuition,
our gut said,

"She seemed confident.

Let's follow it."

But then we stop and we decide,

"You know, we should probably
check this out."

So we turn back and we say,
"Excuse me.

"Have you ever been
to the Big History Caf￩?

Do you know where it is?"

And she tells us, "Of course.

"It's my favorite restaurant.

I've been going there
for years and years."

So we feel good about this.

She is... seems to be
in authority,

she's been there before
for the last five years

and so we head on our way
to the Big History Caf￩.

But then we stop
and all of a sudden

you realize,
"Wait a second,

"the Big History Caf￩
is a new caf￩.

"It's only a year old.

"She couldn't have been
going for five years.

"There's something wrong here.

"It doesn't make sense.

"It's illogical for her
to have been saying

that she's been going
for five years."

Good news, though.

You remember that we both have
cell phones

and our cell phones have
mapping programs on it.

So you decide, "Let's
map the Big History Caf￩."

And because we both know
that sometimes mapping programs

make mistakes, you decide,
"You map one, I'll map one

and we'll check."

Good news.

We map the Big History Caf￩
and our cell phones agree,

our mapping programs agree.

By the way, we also discover

that she had been telling us
the wrong directions

to the... a different caf￩.

In fact, we find
on our cell phones

that the Little History Caf￩
is exactly

where she said it was
going to be.

The Big History Caf￩
is five blocks

to the other direction.

Confident now
that we have the evidence

that our directions
are now accurate,

we checked it out
in two sources,

we head towards
the Big History Caf￩.

Okay, that was
a pretty simple story

and suspenseful
because we did get eventually

to the restaurant, but I hope
what it did was illuminate

four different ways
that human beings assess claims,

we test claims.

So what were they?

We look for intuition
to test some claims.

Intuition, a gut feeling

like when we just felt
that she was telling us

the right story.

We also use authority.

Now, authority is when we accept
information or data

from a credible source,
a believable source.

We also use logic.

We test claims sometimes

by using our minds
to think about something

to see if these things
make sense.

And then of course
we also test claims

by using evidence.

That's when we're gathering up

available information
about the world.

By the way, "evidence" is
an interesting word

because "evidence"
comes from "evident,"

to be able
to see something.

It's something that we can see,
and in this story

both of us could see it
on different sources

and hence,
we were trusting our evidence.

Of course, we want you to learn,
and more important,

we want you to understand
the claims

that people have been making
about Big History questions.

The most important claims,
the best claims

that we as human beings
can make and answer

to those questions.

But actually we want you
to do something more.

We want you to develop
the skills

to recognize when people
are asking good questions.

We want you to develop
the skills to begin to assess

other people's claims,
to use intuition,

to use authority
and, most importantly,

logic and evidence
to assess claims,

to determine whether or not
they're trustworthy,

to what degree you trust them,
whether or not

you should ignore a claim
or whether or not

claims need further
investigation, new questions.

Why do we want you to do that?

Because actually
that's how Big History works.

That's the engine
that drives Big History.

It's people just like you
that have begun to test

and ask questions
about people's claims,

raising new questions,
finding ways to develop

new evidence and furthering
our collective learning.

Incidentally,
I'm wondering,

did you believe all those claims
that I made about myself?

I didn't tell you
very much actually.

I told you that I'm Bob Bain,

I'm a friend and colleague
of David Christian's,

but I didn't tell you
much more about me.

Did your intuition tell you?

"You know, my gut tells me
I can trust that guy."

Or because I'm on this video,
did that give me the authority

to make these claims
that I've been making?

Did your logic tell you,
"You know, the story he told me

"seemed to make sense

and therefore it was credible
because it was so logical"?

Or did you go online
to discover that actually

I'm a professor
of history and education

at the University of Michigan
in Ann Arbor

and that for 26 years
before that

I was a high school
history teacher?

I'd like you to believe
those claims that I made

but I want you
to be the judge.