Self-Doubt Is My Superpower

For the past few years, I’ve worn a mask in class, plus a hat, so my students can’t see whether I’m smiling, and hence being ironic, when I assure them that self-doubt, which I possess in abundance, is cool.

January 3, 2024. I can’t help myself. In recent columns (see here and here), I slap down neurobiologist Robert Sapolsky’s claim that we lack free will. I uphold writing as a demonstration of Sapolsky’s free will, and mine.

Then in a subsequent column, I fret that I lack free will, because I’m just a neural network, like ChatGPT, spewing out columns in the style of John Horgan.

Self-doubt strikes again.

I do this (this happens to me?) a lot. I confidently take a stance, then take it back. Self-doubt used to torment me, but I’ve come to accept and even cherish it. Let me explain.

I was born ill at ease in my own skin. As a child, I felt as though I’d been thrust onto a stage in front of strangers. Everyone was watching me expectantly, but I was never sure what I was supposed to do.

Smoking weed and dropping acid in my teens intensified my derealization and depersonalization, that is, my estrangement from the world and myself. I wanted to fit in, to be liked. In high school I had friends, dated a little, played varsity hockey. But I felt phony even, especially, when passing as normal.

Eventually, I finished college and grad school, began a career in science journalism, got married, had kids. I convinced myself I knew what I was doing, especially as a science writer. I enjoyed weaponizing my doubt, turning it against bigshot scientists. I pointed out flaws in their claims about the origin of the universe, life and consciousness; about the genetic basis for behavior; about treatments for mental illness, you name it.

But doubting others never kept me from doubting myself. Like rubber bullets, doubt tends to ricochet off my targets back at me. I might be arguing with someone, whether my girlfriend “Emily” or an expert like Sapolsky. I’m spouting off about Barbie or free will or ChatGPT, and a voice inside me murmurs, You’re full of shit.

My self-doubt often has a moral cast. I want to believe I’m a good person. A kind, considerate husband, father, boyfriend, colleague, teacher. When my marriage is falling apart, or my girlfriend gets mad at me, or my son or daughter is in distress, I tell myself it’s not my fault.

But as I defend myself, the voice whispers: Are you a good person, really? You devote more energy to pretending to be good than being good. Then I might doubt my self-doubt and get trapped in infinite regresses, strange loops, of doubt.

Some people seem utterly lacking in self-doubt. It can be hard not to envy them. After all, self-confidence, even in the absence of intelligence and decency, can take you far. You can become President of the United States! Plus, chicks dig self-confident guys, right?

I’m not entirely lacking in confidence. You need an ego to be a writer. You can’t write a whole damn book, especially one titled The End of Science or The End of War, unless you think you have something to say, something others should hear.

But how, given my compulsive self-doubt, did I manage to become a professional loudmouth, who has been spouting opinions for decades? Why doesn’t self-doubt paralyze me? Several reasons come to mind.

First, I’m one of those weirdos who loves to write. Writing helps me figure out what I think and who I am, if only temporarily. I get a visceral pleasure from turning nebulous thoughts into sentences and paragraphs, as I’m doing with this very column. I also still get a kick out of poking holes in the beliefs of know-it-alls, whether self-proclaimed “Skeptics” or defenders of cancer tests and treatments.

One of my favorite tricks for coping with self-doubt is retreating into irony. That is, I state things in such a way that you can’t be sure—because I’m not sure—whether I’m serious. I propose ideas in a joking way, or I propose, hedge, re-propose, hedge again, and so on—as I recently did with the end of science.

I’m at my most earnest and un-ironic when I write about war. But now and then my faith that humanity can and must stop fighting wars wobbles. How can it not, given what’s happening out there? At some point, optimism drifts toward delusion.

But here is what really keeps me going as a self-doubting writer—and professor, too, someone paid to bestow wisdom on the young. I’ve convinced myself that self-doubt is a feature, not a bug. A strength, not a disability. The best lack all conviction, right?

I preach self-doubt to my students. Spotting holes in others’ beliefs is easy, I tell these young people; what’s harder, and much more valuable, is discerning the cracks in your own worldview. Those lacking self-doubt get trapped in their certainty; self-doubt keeps you open-minded. The closest we come to escaping the cave is knowing we’re in it. I conclude these riffs by commanding my poor students, Doubt yourself.

I say all this in an exaggerated deadpan, so my students might think I’m kidding. I’m not kidding. We’ve learned a lot about the world, including ourselves, but the mystery endures. Science, mathematics, philosophy, history, theology, art—all our representations of “reality” fall short. The older I get, the more certainty seems foolish, a category error.

The only sensible stance is to be an agnostic, a negative theologian, a radical postmodernist who doubts everything, including yourself. Artists, even cocky bastards like Tolstoy or Picasso or Dylan, are all self-doubters, because they know their most sublime creations cannot capture existence. Self-doubt keeps them trying, again and again, to express the inexpressible. Even God, if there is a God, doubts Himself.

Basically, I’ve rationalized my self-doubt. I’m stuck with this kneejerk tic, this pathology. So I’ve brainwashed myself into thinking it’s a gift, which helps me see the reality that lies beyond science and art, beyond language, beyond belief.

Yeah, self-doubt can be a drag. But it’s a superpower, too, like x-ray vision, which, if you’re lucky, gives you a glimpse of the weird, weird heart of things.

So I tell myself.

Further Reading:

For more of my self-doubting schtick, see my columns “Confessions of a Namedropping Humblebragger” and “Confessions of a Woke, Antiwar, Hockey-Playing Demonic Male” as well as my free online books Mind-Body Problems and My Quantum Experiment. Also check out my lightly fictionalized memoir Pay Attention: Sex, Death, and Science. Hell, just read everything I’ve ever written, it’s all riddled with self-doubt. Unless you’d rather not, because maybe you don’t have the time, or you didn’t like this column. It’s your choice. I mean, obviously.