Rationable

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How I became a skeptic in 5 steps

Abhijit Chanda

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How I became a skeptic in 5 steps Abhijit

This last decade I’ve gone from being as gullible as they come to becoming a skeptic writer and science communicator.

The benefits of being skeptical are indispensable and there’s no going back. It’s like seeing the world with new eyes that can see scams, pseudoscience and misinformation from miles away. The first step to becoming a skeptic, as I discovered, was through testing your beliefs with evidence. Finding out you were wrong about something isn’t a comfortable feeling. But, if you want to build armour against con artists, fake news and charlatans, it has to be done.

It’s been an incredibly humbling journey over the last ten years. Here is how it all went down.

1. Evolution

This was where it all began a bit more than a decade ago. A creationist friend of mine told me the theory of evolution was bullshit. I did a double-take so hard, I thought I'd crack my neck. 

During those conversations, I realised that I had taken evolution for granted and had gaping holes in my knowledge. Hell, I was 27 years old, and I didn't even know the word, "creationist". Talk about sheltered living! 

So I started digging. After reading Scientific American special edition on evolution, I went online. I searched for all the reliable science sources I could find. Of course, they all supported evolution, while all the religious ones supported creationism.

What does this have to do with skepticism? I was forced to re-evaluate how I thought about evolution and investigate if it was true or not. Questioning one's own deeply held beliefs and biases is a cornerstone of critical thinking. It gives us a reality check on what we believe and how we think. 

When your head cools from the debating and your bloodshot eyes blink towards normalcy, it's essential to stop questioning your opponent and examine your own beliefs. Take a breath. Accept the mistakes you have made and understand the facts about what is being discussed. If the evidence supports your views, excellent! Now your teeth are sharper like mine had become. If they prove you wrong, have the humility to tuck your tail firmly between your legs, hold your head high and admit you were wrong. Then, alter your beliefs according to the evidence.

2. Ancient technology and aliens

Then, I went to study professional writing in the UK. I wanted to write a part of a science fiction novel for my final dissertation as I was a total sci-fi nerd since I was 12.

My tutor gave me the idea of a first contact story with a twist - the aliens we would meet would be human. We've gotten used to aliens looking like us from shows like Star Trek, but aliens would probably look nothing like us or anything else on this planet. 

The premise would be that humans had discovered space travel millennia ago and had fled the earth before their civilisation got wiped out and forgotten, like the legends of Atlantis. 

This got me doing research on ancient technology since I wanted to write a hard science novel, so I wanted it to be on evidence-based findings. The problem was, I always had kind of believed that ancient civilisations did have high technology. Hey, I grew up on movies like Stargate and the Mahabharata and Ramayana for Indian Television that gave everyone the idea that ancient Indians had developed planes and missiles.

My family also had books by Erich Von Daniken like Chariots of the Gods. We sometimes discussed his claims that we had been visited and helped by aliens thousands of years ago. The Incans, Mayans and Egyptians might have all had help from aliens. After all, they didn't have the tech back then to make those pyramids themselves, did they?

So I thought I'd definitely find some ancient alien stuff in my research. Yeah, not so much. 

I found absolutely no evidence for any ancient alien or technological artefacts. A couple of points stuck with me that shattered my beliefs. 

  1. If high technology existed thousands of years ago, we can assume sophisticated metal and alloys would have been made, which are durable but lighter than stone. These wouldn't just decay or disappear. But we've found no such metals, plastics, circuitry, or computational tech of any sort.

  2. Humans have always been just as ingenious then as we are now. They could also solve big problems with sophisticated solutions. It's not crazy to think that, given the time and manpower, the rocks that made the pyramids or Stonehenge could have been moved into place using the engineering capabilities of the period. It is well documented and even demonstrated! There's no mystery here. There's no need to credit aliens when humans are evidently capable of accomplishing these fantastic feats of engineering.

For sci-fi though, these ideas have inspired a crazy number of stories. So, technically, I suppose I still could have used it. But when I learned the truth about the absolute absence of ancient tech and ancient aliens, my world was shaken. I had to abandon it and think of something else to write about. 

3. Alternative medicine

I was also towards the beginning of this decade that I discovered what alternative medicine was and why it didn't work.

I watched a snippet of a Richard Dawkins documentary that spoke of homoeopathy and how little sense it made, and that it didn't do anything.  

I had been brought up to believe homoeopathy and Ayurveda were legitimate forms of medicine. I had even had treatments as a child. My parents and my whole family swore by it. Most of India swore by it all and just assumed that they worked. Even mainstream doctors in India don't hesitate in recommending alternative therapies to their patients. How could they all be so wrong?

So I went to as many reliable medical websites as I could. All of them agreed that homoeopathy had been studied hundreds of times but shown not to work better than a placebo for any condition. I've written a lot more about what I found in my article so I won't go on about it too much here.

This was my first domino in medicine. Other forms of So-called Complementary and Alternative Medicine (SCAM) like acupuncture, chiropractic and naturopathy followed soon after. 

I realised that the ideology behind alternative medicine drives people away from mainstream medicine and puts them in harm's way, and that's something I can't tolerate. That's why alternative medicine has a special place in Rationable.

4. Diets

I have been chubby since the age of 10. Still, thanks to my athletically inclined brother and father, I had a pretty common sense approach to fitness – theoretically at least. Eat less, move more was the usual mantra. And I did that every now and then. Never enough to make much of a difference, though. 

Then I went to study in the UK. I got introduced to The 4 Hour Body by Timothy Ferris by a friend. This was the first time I had read a book this thorough on dieting and weight loss (at least one part of it). 

So in the section about weight loss, it minimises the amount of exercise one needs to do in exchange for changing one's diet. To grossly oversimplify the book's recommendations, I had to: 

1) Cut out all white carbs, including dairy, for 6 days a week

2) Include 30 g of protein per meal

3) The remaining day, I could eat whatever I wanted

It worked! To an extent. But it wasn't sustainable or affordable, so I had to stop. One idea stuck with me - that carbs made one fat, but fat didn't. I could just blame carbs for making me fat! I was already thinking critically at this time, but I couldn't find much science refuting it. I actually would search for things like “ketogenic diet science” and “the keto diet is wrong” in Google. Instead, I was getting pushed towards keto and paleo. I don't know why that was, but this could be Google just keeping me in my echo chamber. More about this side of the story here.

When I diversified my search on platforms I had just started to use, like Audible, evidence-based sources on nutrition started popping up. Then I tried podcasts. That’s when I began finding real evidence and science-based diet advice. I realised nothing was magic. Just carbs or just fat didn’t make me fat. Eating too many calories – whether from carbs, fats or all of them – made me put on weight. My view has also changed from becoming completely anti-keto to a moderate perspective that the best diet for you is the one you can stick to for life! This is because the topic is filled with context and nuance, just like anything else.

As for me, I've taken to eating fewer meals and tracking my macros. This definitely works...for me. 

5. Functional Fitness

I've always been trying to figure out how to lose weight. I succeeded once when I was 20, when I would spend up to two and a half hours in the gym, 6 days a week. I've never had that kind of time again. Long story short, I've never managed to find a fitness programme I connected with...until now. But more on that later. 

Back in the day, (6 or so years ago, I think) I came across a channel on Youtube called Functional Patterns. The host, Naudi Aguilar, seemed to know a lot of stuff about human anatomy and could make some seriously crazy moves and balancing acts. I was instantly curious. 

He's a big promoter of myofascial release techniques – basically a way to massage your muscles yourself to release tightness. He was also obsessed about how an anterior pelvic tilt was one of the main reasons for back pain. His techniques worked wonders for my back pain, posture and gait. 

He also kept talking about functional fitness incorporating how the body had evolved to move. Did someone say evolution? I was in! I was a fan! 

However, I could only find a little science to support it. Foam rolling and myofascial release has some evidence that suggests it can lead to faster recovery, improved rehabilitation after an injury and improved mobility in some cases.

The first red flag was the fact that Naudi didn't refer to any scientific literature. He just had a few obscure books he recommended for further reading. So where was he getting all these ideas relating to human anatomy and evolution? I couldn't find anything substantial. No scientific papers, no articles in science magazines, nothing. He didn't reply to my questions about them either. 

Another similar channel on Youtube, called GorillaZen Training, did answer my questions. He said some things are too cutting edge for science to catch up with. 

Then, more red flags started piling up. Naudi was dead against mainstream weightlifting and said so in many of his videos. The first time I found out that was probably a disingenuous stance was when I read a book called Bigger, Leaner, Stronger by Mike Matthews. It was solidly based in science and gave context to the applications of heavy resistance training for weight loss and overall health. Then, channels like those of Bret Contreras and Shredded Sports Science taught me that weight training had lower risks of injury than some of the exercises Functional Patterns and similar channels recommended. Exercise scientists like Brad Schoenfeld has also done a massive amount of research in the field of weight training.

It’s from these guys that I learned that bodybuilding can also have amazing results in terms of posture, athleticism and endurance. Squats, deadlifts, hip thrusts and bench presses were actually perfectly functional movements that were also what we had evolved to do. There was nothing inherently unnatural or dangerous about any of them, unless you do them wrong, of course. But that’s with pretty much anything in life.

Then I found Naudi swearing by cryotherapy. Soon after that, I watched the videos of him badmouthing Bret Contreras and the whole practice of traditional resistance training. That was the last functional straw. I strongly believe in rational, reasonable discourse if there’s a disagreement. Swearing, arrogance and trolling do nothing to change minds or move any discussion forward. That’s why I promote being Rationable. 

Fitness and nutrition are particularly hard to test over long periods, and we have a long way to go, but there has been a lot of headway made. Researchers like Brad Schoenfeld, Alan Aragon, Layne Norton, Kevin Bass, Bret Contreras and many others have worked hard to put science into fitness. Go check them out on social media. It’s through science that we now understand which exercises are harmful, beneficial, and their nuances and contexts. 

So-called functional fitness, which has now saturated Youtube and Instagram, has none of that but rather depend on the spectacle - like doing barbell squats on a gym ball. These can be downright dangerous for most people!

Don’t get me wrong though. There are movements in functional training that can be very beneficial if worked into your regime. Like I’ve heard some say, it’s movement training. It may be helpful in some sports too. But it’s not magical and it’s not this or that. My main problem with functional training is that many promoters of it have little to no concern for science and depend solely on their own and their clients anecdotes. Plus, for getting views and follows, many give such horrible advice and recommend such dangerous exercises that they just might, or already have, hurt some of their followers.

Conclusion

At the beginning of this decade, I was as gullible as anyone could be. Still, a couple of strange situations turned me onto a path that has led me here. I started actively seeking out evidence to prove or disprove my beliefs. I think this is the most crucial first step as a critical thinker. I doubled back to look at my views with more scrutiny because I wanted to know the truth, regardless of my biases. 

Falsification is an essential aspect of science and life. The best way to test a theory, a hypothesis or a belief, is to try to prove it wrong. If there’s something you can’t prove wrong, there’s a good chance you can’t prove it right either.

If I start with a premise that I believe is true like only carbs make you fat, and keep looking for ways to confirm it, I would quickly find plenty. If I try to find ways to disprove it, there’s a better chance I’ll find out the truth, which is precisely what happened. 

If you hold a belief, keep testing it, keep trying to disprove it. If it continues to hold up to scrutiny, keep believing. If it breaks, then it’s time to change your beliefs to align with the evidence. 

This is something we must all do with everything we believe – the more critical the belief is to us, the more we need to test it. Whether you believe in God, Ayurveda, human-caused climate change, intermittent fasting, touching wood, marriage or whatever, examine your beliefs. Look for the science behind it all. Look for evidence. 

Prove yourself wrong, as I did and continue to do, and you will learn something new and beautiful that just may change your life. 

So, what’s your story? Have you had any of your beliefs challenged and proven wrong? Did you do it yourself? Tell me the story in the comments below.

Also, do you want me to do a deep dive on any of the topics I’ve mentioned? I’ve already done it for homoeopathy and the keto diet. Let me know if there’s anything else you want me to investigate.

References and Resources that guided me