by Hugo Mercier
unlikely to be very persuasive. Such a statement is only credible
to the extent that the speaker’s commitment is taken seriously.
In turn, re spect for the speaker’s commitment hinges on whether
we expect them to be good member of the group. In other words,
if we think the speaker will be a good group member, we believe
them when they say so, but if we don’t think they wil , we don’t
believe them. As a result, the statement is useless.
There are many ways for a new recruit to demonstrate their
commitment to being a good group member. For instance, they
can endure an initial phase in which the costs are higher than
the benefits— attending training sessions but remaining on the
bench during matches, say. Another solution is to signal disin-
terest in the alternatives by burning their bridges. If you are a
gifted amateur soccer player who can take your pick from many
soccer teams, the members of any one team might doubt your
loyalty: you could easily change your mind and join one of the
other clubs. If, however, you are really motivated to join a par-
tic u lar club, you could prove your loyalty by publicly disparag-
ing the other clubs.
The statement “I really don’t want to join your group,” made
to members of that group, is quite believable. It is another kind
of self- incriminating statement: Why would someone say some-
thing like this if it were not true? Such statements can easily
become more credible by being insulting. Someone who says,
to their face, “I hate your group and every thing it stands for” is,
w i t c he s ’ c o nf e s si o ns 193
not surprisingly, unlikely to ever be accepted by the members of
that group. By burning your bridges with as many of the com-
peting groups as pos si ble— making you unclubbable, as cogni-
tive scientist Pascal Boyer put it— you credibly signal to the
remaining groups that you’ll be loyal to them, since you don’t
have any other options.46
Some extreme flattery likely stems from the application of a
burning bridges strategy. When a writer suggests that Kim Jong-il
can teleport, he doesn’t expect his audience (least of all Kim
Jong-il) to literally believe that. The point, rather, is to make the
groveling so abject that even other North Koreans find it over
the top. By signaling to other North Koreans that he’s wil ing to
go beyond what’s expected in terms of ridicu lous praises, the
writer is tel ing the audience that he would rather seek Kim Jong-
il’s approval than that of a broader base of more sensible people,
who only say Kim Jong-il can influence the weather, but not tele-
port. As a result, the writer is credibly signaling his loyalty to
Kim Jong-il.
Over- the- top flattery is far from the only way of making one-
self unclubbable. Other statements that make one look incom-
petent to every one except a select group can be used. A phi los-
o pher from Cardiff University recently claimed that evolutionary
biology and ge ne tics were just as (un)scientific as creationism.47
A scholar at Scripps College in the United States argued against
the “human/non- human binary that undergirds . . . biological
conceptions of life” and suggested pandemics weren’t due to the
usual suspects (such as “poor hygiene”) but instead were the re-
sult of “global industrial resource extraction.”48
These views are roundly rejected by the relevant experts in
each domain— indeed, they are rejected by the vast majority of
scholars. As a result, stating them makes one unappealing to most
academic departments. By adopting these positions outside the
194 ch ap t er 12
norm of what is accepted in academia, however, these intellec-
tuals may have sought to enhance their positions within a net-
work of postmodern scholars, who tend to hold relativistic views
about the truth, and who are often opposed by the rest of the
scientific community. In a diff er ent vein, people from modern
socie ties who proudly proclaim the earth is flat are pretty sure
to be ridiculed by most, but also to be seen as loyal members of
the small (but growing!) flat- earther community.
Making statements that the majority find morally repellent is
also a good way of burning bridges. Many are offended by ex-
treme libertarian views, such as saying that taxation is slavery,
or arguing, as does economist Murray Rothbard, that laws
shouldn’t punish parents who starve their children to death.49
Others are shocked by the pronouncements of Holocaust de-
niers.50 Vast audiences have been scandalized by the threats of
ISIS recruits, such as that proffered by a British convert: “When
we descend on the streets of London, Paris and Washington the
taste will be far bitterer, because not only will we spill your blood,
but we will also demolish your statues, erase your history and,
most painfully, convert your children who will then go on to
champion our name and curse their forefathers.”51
How do we know that these extreme positions— from stat-
ing the earth is flat to denying the Holocaust— are a way of burn-
ing bridges? Couldn’t they instead stem from a pro cess of per-
sonal inference ( people see the horizon as flat; they can’t imagine
that something like the Holocaust could happen) or of persua-
sion (seeing YouTube videos defending flat- earth theories, read-
ing a book by a Holocaust denier)?
A first argument in favor of the burning-bridges account is
the sheer extremity of the views being defended. We’re dealing
with positions the vast majority of the population finds either
blatantly stupid or irredeemably evil. Stil , some scientific posi-
w i t c he s ’ c o nf e s si o ns 195
tions might have been perceived in the same way: most people
find intuitively ludicrous the idea that humans are descended
from fish, say. But the burning-bridges strategy adds insult to in-
jury by impugning the intel igence or moral standing of those
who disagree with the beliefs used to burn bridges. Extreme post-
modern thinkers not only appear a little crazy to most but also
suggest that those who fail to agree with their arguments are un-
sophisticated fools. Holocaust deniers make morally repellent
claims but also paint those who disagree as enraged Zionists or
their useful idiots. Holding such positions is a surefire way of
making oneself unclubbable by all but the small clique that de-
fends similar views.
Stil , even in the burning-bridges account, it is not obvious why
any group would find such views palatable in the first place. For
beliefs to work in the burning-bridges scenario, they have to be
extreme. This creates an incentive for new recruits, or even for
members who wish to improve their status in the group, to push
the limit of what the group already finds acceptable. The posi-
tions just mentioned are so extreme because they are the out-
come of a runaway pro cess in which increasingly bizarre view
s
must be defended. When Kim Jong-il was starting to consolidate
his grip on power, someone who claimed he could teleport would
have been seen as cuckoo. It’s only after many rounds of flattery
inflation have led to a group of people who agree that Kim Jong-il
can control the weather that claiming he can teleport makes
some kind of sense (I owe the term flattery inflation to Xavier
Márquez).52 The same goes for al the other positions. No one
jumped from “We might want to rethink the legitimacy of some
legal constraints” to “For instance, why does the law punish par-
ents who starve their children?” or from “Scientific pro gress is
more complex than the typical Whiggish history allows” to
“And so every thing is relative and there is no truth.” In each
196 ch ap t er 12
case, there were many steps before these heights of inanity were
reached, each one making steadily more extreme views more
acceptable.53
It is difficult to believe that people would publicly and con-
fidently profess absurd or repugnant views. But stating our views
publicly and confidently is precisely what is required to become
unclubbable. The groups we want to burn bridges with must
know we hold unpop u lar or offensive views, and the groups we
want to join must know that the other groups know. Being a
closet flat- earther isn’t going to give anyone the keys to the flat-
earther’s country club. By contrast, if people came to hold these
extreme views through other means— personal inference or
persuasion— they would realize going public might reflect
poorly on them, and would be more discreet.
Fi nally, as was the case with most beliefs discussed in the last
two chapters, burning-bridges beliefs are held reflectively. The
person who said Kim Jong-il could teleport would presumably
be very surprised if Kim beamed up in front of him, Star Trek–
style. Postmodern thinkers who believe all truth to be relative
still look at a train timetable before going to the station. People
who hold such beliefs are very vocal, and appear very confident,
not because these are intuitively held beliefs— beliefs they would
let freely guide their inferences and decisions— but because
that’s how you burn bridges.
Defending extreme beliefs as a way of burning bridges isn’t a
failure of open vigilance, as it would be if the defenders of these
beliefs had been talked into intuitively accepting them. Instead,
it reflects a perverse use of open vigilance. We can use our open
vigilance mechanisms to anticipate what messages others will
likely accept. As a rule, if we anticipate rejection, we think twice
before saying something. When we want to burn bridges, we do
the opposite: the more rejection we anticipate— from all but the
w i t c he s ’ c o nf e s si o ns 197
group we would like to join— the more likely we are to voice our
views. This perverse use of open vigilance mechanisms doesn’t
have to be conscious— indeed, in the vast majority of cases I
imagine it isn’t. It appears to be quite effective nonetheless.
What to Do?
Self- incriminating statements are intrinsically credible. Because
they refer to our own beliefs or actions, we’re supposed to know
what we’re talking about. Because they make us look bad, we
would have no reason to lie.
If believing self- incriminating statements is, on the whole, a
good heuristic, it also leads to a series of prob lems. The most
obvious are the false confessions that plague judicial systems. The
answers here are mostly institutional: the law should reduce as
much as pos si ble the pressures put on suspects, and make what-
ever pressures are left as transparent as pos si ble for judges and
jurors to consider. For example, in the United Kingdom, it is il-
legal for the police to lie to suspects, the whole interrogation
has to be taped, and dubious confessions are likely to be sup-
pressed before they reach the jury.54
More generally, we should keep in mind that people might
confess to regain our approval, even if they haven’t done anything
wrong. In such cases, we should believe in the social goals (they
are wil ing to make peace with us) rather than the content (they
have really done the thing they confess to). In the end, it is these
goals that matter the most.
The same logic applies to the self- incriminating statements
that are used for burning bridges. We shouldn’t assume that
people intuitively hold the apparently deranged or evil views they
profess. However, we should take seriously their social goal,
namely, to reject the standard groups that make up the majority
198 ch ap t er 12
of society in favor of a fringe co ali tion. As a result, if we want
them to abandon their silly or offensive views, attempting to con-
vince them of these views’ logical, empirical, or moral failings
is unlikely to work. Instead, we have to consider how to deal with
people who feel their best chance of thriving is to integrate into
groups that have been rejected by most of society.
People aren’t stupid. As a rule, they avoid making self-
incriminating statements for no reason. These statements serve
a purpose, be it to redeem oneself or, on the contrary, to antago-
nize as many people as pos si ble. By considering the function of
self- incriminating statements, we can react to them more
appropriately.
13
FUTILE FAKE NEWS
galen, who went from treating wounded gladiators to
serving Roman emperors, was undoubtedly a bril iant physician
and a skilled surgeon. His dissections (and vivisections) ad-
vanced our understanding of anatomy, and his ideas affected
Arabic and Western medical thought for more than a thousand
years. But Galen was also a staunch supporter of the humoral
theory of disease.1 This theory explains mental and physical dis-
eases as resulting from an imbalance between the four humors
contained in our bodies: blood, yellow bile, black bile, and
phlegm. Blood, because it was thought to contain ele ments of the
other three humors, was considered to be the best leverage to
restore balance between them, and therefore bring back health.2
Since transfusion wasn’t a practical option, bloodletting—
cutting open a vein to let blood flow out— was commonly used
to remove the excess humor. In line with the humoral theory,
Galen was rather generous with his bloodletting prescriptions,
recommending this therapy for gout, arthritis, pleurisy (in-
flammation of the tissues around the lungs), epilepsy, apoplexy,
labored breathing, loss of speech, phrenitis (inflammation of
the brain), lethargy, tremor, depression, coughing blood, and
headache. He even recommended bleeding as a cure for hem-
orrhages.3 Galen’s defense of the humoral theory proved
199
200 ch ap t er 13
widely popu lar, dominating Western medicine from the eleventh
c
entury, when his texts found their way to the nascent Eu ro pean
universities, up to the nineteenth century, when the theory was
fi nally debunked.
Looking back at the accusations against Jewish shop keep ers
that flourished in Orléans in the spring of 1969, we are tempted
to make fun of the people who believed such tall tales. Local
shop keep ers sending young girls to be prostituted in faraway
countries? Please! After all, the rumor didn’t really hurt anyone.
Before Easter 1903, in Kishinev (currently Chișinău, capital of
Moldova), accusations circulated about the local Jewish popu-
lation, rumors that the Jews had murdered a child and drained
him of his blood in a religious ritual.4 If the rumors of blood libel
were as ludicrous as those of Orléans, they appeared more con-
sequential. The inhabitants of Kishinev didn’t just gossip and
glare at the suspects. They struck ferociously, kil ing scores in the
most gruesome fashion, raping dozens of women, pil aging hun-
dreds of stores and houses. The world over, rumors of atrocities,
such as the blood libel, are a prelude to ethnic attacks.5
In 2017, the Collins dictionary designated fake news, informa-
tion that has no basis in fact but is presented as factual, its word
of the year.6 This decision was a reaction to the abuse of fake news
in two events that took place in 2016: the election of Donald
Trump to the U.S. presidency, and the decision made in the
United Kingdom, by referendum, to leave the Eu ro pean Union
(Brexit). In both countries, a large majority of the elites and the
traditional media, surprised and dismayed by people’s choices,
searched for explanations. Fake news was a common answer.
“Fake News Handed Brexiteers the Referendum” was the title
of an article in the In de pen dent, a British newspaper. Across the
Atlantic, the Washington Post ran a piece claiming, “Fake News
Might Have Won Donald Trump the 2016 Election.”7 Even when
f u t il e fa k e ne w s 201
it is not about politics, fake news is scary: a piece in Nature (one
of the world’s foremost scientific publications) suggested that
“the biggest pandemic risk” was “viral misinformation.”8
Some fake news spread the old- school way, carried, for in-
stance, by “Brexit buses” claiming the United Kingdom was
