The Roots

The undiscerning mind is like the roots of a tree. It absorbs all that it touches, even that which would kill it.

—Master Po, Kung Fu (TV show)

One popular urban myth is the idea of ‘10,000 steps’—that we humans need to walk at least 10,000 steps/day to be healthy. It’s so pervasive it’s built into step counters, phone applications, everything. It turns out that’s not only false, but that it was just a marketing gimmick.

A similar myth: the ‘10,000 hour’ rule. Yep—also not real, despite its popularity.

We’re seduced by facts and figures.

I remember in the COVID times of 2020-2021, ‘We Believe’ lawn signs appeared in my area that included the phrase ‘Science is Real’. The implication was that people who questioned any information about COVID were ‘anti-science’—that they acted as if science was somehow fake.

But ‘belief’ in science is the opposite of science. The fundamental principle of science is that it’s not a set of facts (there is no such thing as ‘settled science’), but rather a way of thinking. And at the core of that way of thinking is to question what you think you know. To challenge beliefs.

This doesn’t mean we can’t feel confident about something—I’m confident gravity is real and that COVID can kill someone, for example—but that science is about being skeptical about beliefs and to never stop asking questions.

This is true in life as in science; if we want to grow, we need to remain open to challenging our beliefs, and to never stop asking questions.

Arguments from authority carry little weight – authorities have made mistakes in the past. They will do so again in the future. Perhaps a better way to say it is that in science there are no authorities; at most, there are experts.

—Carl Sagan