Tiers of Certainty
Tiers of Certainty
Reality is Complex—How You Can Be Confident That Your Worldview is a Good One
How certain are you that what you believe—about anything—is actually true?
How do you know whether the level of certainty you feel with respect to any particular belief is justified or appropriate?
While these questions are relevant for even the most mundane of ideas, such as the practicalities of daily logistics, the greatest benefits come from applying them to the category of “worldview”.
Worldview is the deepest mental model that we each carry, encompassing the hard-hitting questions within religion, philosophy, politics, and psychology.
Your current worldview contains answers, whether conscious or subconscious, for the following:
“What is real?” “What is knowable?” “Why am I here?” “Where did I come from?” “What is human nature?” “Who am I?” “How do I determine what is good?” “Am I a good person?” “Does something or someone greater exist?” “How do I find fulfillment in life?” “What should I do next?” etc.
Worldview permeates everything: how we view ourselves and others, the way we handle our relationships, what we care about, how we spend our time, etc.
In other words, getting the big questions wrong will distort everything.
The quality of our life experience (especially that of the internal life) is directly dependent upon which beliefs we have stored as answers within our worldview.
What if there was a process we could use to maximize the likelihood of having the right answers to life’s big questions?
I’ll give you a tool for this a few paragraphs below. . .
We’re all agents who operate “within the system” of existence, yet we want to hold credible beliefs and opinions about the nature of the system itself.
Perfect knowledge of the system would require a perspective from “outside the system”.
Since none of us have such a vantage point (well, I don’t want to assume… let me know if you’re an exception 🙂), we must agree that we can’t know for sure whether our “map” perfectly reflects the territory.
We first acknowledge that the precise answers to life’s big questions aren’t completely knowable, with absolute certainty, at least from our perspective as a human being who is constrained by the standpoint of being in one place at one time, whose thoughts are processed within a discrete locus of consciousness.
In other words, we’re all just trying to figure it out. There isn’t any person on earth who can definitively prove that they have the “perfect worldview” (even if, by chance, or some supernatural means they did happen to possess it).
With all this unknowability acknowledged, should we throw our hands up in the air and resign ourselves to some sort of passive agnosticism? No! 😤
This is because there are, in fact, some things that we can know for sure, as well as some unsure things we can know with more certainty than other unsure things.
Uncertainty is not equally distributed.
There is a spectrum of certainty, and we can distinguish between the quality and credibility of different beliefs, based on their inherent knowability, as well as their causal connection to higher- vs lower-certainty beliefs.
Enough with this abstract talk, give me the goods!
I’d like to share with you a tool that I use whenever I think through complicated matters. I call it the Tiers of Certainty.
Here are the principles behind the Tiers of Certainty:
Anything that is knowable (a belief) can be properly categorized into a “bucket” or tier of certainty.
Higher tiers contain higher-certainty beliefs. Tier 1 is the highest.
Lower-tier beliefs rely on higher-tier beliefs.
For a lower-tier belief to be true, it must depend on some higher-tier belief.
e.g. Every Tier 2 belief must be logically connected to at least one Tier 1 belief
Any big belief is built by combining a stack of smaller beliefs.
Similarly, any higher order, complex belief is built upon a foundation of raw, primary beliefs.
One system of beliefs is said to be more credible than another system of beliefs to the degree that:
It is composed of higher tier beliefs.
Its lower-tier beliefs don’t violate or contradict the truths found in the higher tiers.
Its conclusions can be logically traced back through the successive tiers, back to Tier 1.
It’s like being able to understand how the roof of a house is stacked on top of support beams, which are connected to the second floor, which are connected to other beams, which are connected to the first floor, etc.
Here is a diagram of the tiers, which I’ll separate out below:
(for a quick read, just look through the things written in bold)
Overview:
What can you be 100% certain of? What are you, in this present moment, able to recognize as being absolutely true, such that no argument, combination of words, or new piece of information could ever disprove it?
What are the principles that all ideas, even those that contradict each other, depend upon?
Examples of Tier 1 Beliefs:
There is something as opposed to nothing. Something exists rather than nothing.
“Existence” itself is a thing.
It’s impossible to actively conceptualize or experience nothingness. (Go ahead, try it… )
I exist.
Or, there is an “I” that exists.
I am currently receiving data through my senses. 👁👂👅👃🤚❤️ 🧠
Assuming you have access to each of your senses, consider the following:I am currently looking at a “tv screen” or field of vision in my head, where I see images and color.
I am hearing sounds.
I am feeling a sensation on my finger tips.
I feel warm, cold, or somewhere in between.
I feel energy such that I’m “alert and awake”, “tired and sleepy”, or in between.
I feel my body “in space” (proprioception).
I feel emotions — happy, sad, angry, anxious, surprised, and/or disgusted.
I hear a voice in my head (auditory-digital sense). I can perceive that I am thinking.
I can use my imagination to visualize things and experience ideas.
My current awareness is finite, subject to some level of focus or zoom.
At any moment, I can only perceive a limited set of data streams.
I’m seeing only what I’m seeing, and I’m not seeing something else. I cannot seeing “everything” at once.
I perceive some basic element of order.
I perceive the Fundamental Laws of Logic. I cannot think any thought nor am receiving any sensory stimulus that violates these laws.
Law of identity: A = A.
Law of non-contradiction: A ≠ -A
Law of excluded middle: Either A or -A
In other words, the data I’m receiving and the thoughts I’m having are not 100% random chaos, but there is some minimum intelligibility that exists. I perceive the concept of “makes sense” and reason.
I can “distinguish” between one thought and another, one sensory input and another.
I see that “whatever” is responsible for creating/receiving my thoughts (my mind), has certain abilities, such as combining, separating, aggregating, connecting, etc.
I am experiencing a sensation of time.
I have some sense of experiencing “before” and “after”.
I can access a sensation of “memory”, which feels different than what an act of imagination feels like.
I perceive space.
I feel a connected layer of sensations that are not occurring in the same “place”.
e.g. My shoulder feels different than my toe. “Where” I am experiencing the feeling of my shoulder is different than the feeling of “where” I am experiencing my toe.
I have a (free) will.
I have “desires”.
I can “act”.
I can make a “choice”.
In this moment, it feels like I have more than one option of what to do or think next. I do not consciously perceive any “force” that is irresistibly, 100% pushing me into any particular line of thinking or course of action.
Things matter. Or at least, something matters.
Anytime I think, I perceive Meaning.
Every thought I have has some associated “value” or “importance” attached to it. It’s impossible for me to believe that a thought or stimulus has exactly 0% importance or relevance (because my very act of thinking that thought, sets it apart from all of the other possible thoughts that I could have been thinking instead).
I cannot perceive meaninglessness.
Tier 1 Summary:
The beliefs I chose to place in Tier 1 have to deal with base perception and cognition.
Even if the thoughts and sensations you are experiencing are based on a lie or some hallucination, it’s still 100% true that you are experiencing them.
The thought or sensation exists, even if its origin is unknown.
Overview:
Here we see the beliefs that essentially 100% of all humans believe (a college student on psychedelics may beg to differ), though we acknowledge that there is still a conceivable possibility that they are false.
Any belief in Tier 2 must use at least one Tier 1 belief as a building block.
Examples of Tier 2 Beliefs:
The data coming into my senses is based on something “real” and separate from me.
There is a categorical distinction between the subjective and the objective.
The map is not the territory. I create the map, but the territory exits on its own, independent from me.
An external world exists.
During every split second, your brain is conducting a science experiment that receives the observational data from your senses (Tier 1), calculates its correlations, and rejects the null hypothesis that an external world is false.
e.g. Tap your finger on an object within reach. In the moment of your tapping, you are receiving:
A visual image of your finger “making contact” with that object.
A sound wave with the sound of the tap.
A feeling vibrating in your finger.
A feeling of proprioception, such that your finger is being “blocked” from moving any further through space.
Based on this data, you conclude with 99.99% certainty that there is an object which “exists”, and it is separate from you.
In this category of belief we can also include the existence of your body, as well as the fact that your body is not the same thing as the object that you are touching.
In other words, I am not infinite; I am not everything.
I can feel, see, and hear similar correlations with other objects, as I move my body through space.
The network of correlations I perceive leads me to hypothesize the existence of an “environment”, which I am located in.
Over the course of time (Tier 1), I can walk in one “direction”, entering a new environment or scene, and then I can walk in the opposite direction back to the original environment.
I see that the original environment looks similar enough to what I remember it being like before. So I conclude that I am now back at the “same place”, as opposed to somewhere different.
I now have a mental model of a spatial connection between two environments. I can repeat this traveling exercise and expand my schema to include more environments.
The combination of these separate, yet connected, environments, can be considered a macro environment, which I label as the “external world”.
The phenomenon of causality (cause and effect) exists.
There are certain changes within the environment (and perhaps within parts of myself) that appear to be tightly connected by an if-then relationship.
One event or state can be related to another event/state, such that if I see the first event, I can “predict” or expect with near certainty that the second event will then happen.
Causality cannot be directly observed; it is inferred through interpreting Tier 1 data.
You could also argue that the concept of causality itself, which your mind can access as a tool during the act of any interpretation, belongs to Tier 1, while holding that the belief there are causal relationships actively manifesting in the external world would classified under Tier 2.
i.e. one might say “Causality exists in principle; I just can’t guarantee to you that any particular cause and effect relationship is real.”
Regardless, we should agree that the concept of causality can only be “seen” or imagined across an interval of time, rather than existing as a static thing that can be directly observed.
Consider: “If I drop this egg, it will break.”
This is a belief in a causal relationship.
It’s based on my memory of previous instances where an egg would break after it was dropped.
Since the egg always broke when it was dropped in the past, I now assume that there was an underlying relationship in the specific interaction between the if condition and the then outcome (the dropping and the breaking).
I also assume that this relationship will continue to hold in the future, such that if I drop an egg, it must necessarily be the case that it will break, even though when I look at and feel this egg in my hand, I don’t actually “experience” all of the potential things that could happen to it.
Other people (intelligent beings) exist.
I understand that I have a body 🙌, and my internal sensations—thoughts, feelings, and experience of consciousness—are somehow bound to and experienced within this body.
I call this integrated mind-body entity a “person”.
I am a person.
My senses perceive the presence of another body within my environment (I see another head, shoulder, knees and toes…).
I can tell that this other body is not me, but how do I know whether this other body is a “person”?
To determine that, I need to know whether an independent experience of thinking, feeling, or consciousness is occurring within the space that other body is occupying.
I notice that when I have certain internal experiences, there are things that also happen to my externally manifesting body. e.g.
I smile if I feel happy.
If I have an internal thought, I can convert it into external vibrations (sound waves) using my voice when I speak.
I can convert an internal desire to move within the environment (or a desire to change the sensory stimulus that I am currently experiencing) into an external act of moving my body, such that it occupies a new position within the environment, which then comes with a new set of sights and sounds.
So then, I could attempt to use my body to provoke independent action in the other body. e.g.
Move my arms and see whether the other body’s eyes are “looking at” or tracing my movements.
Poke the other body on the shoulder and see whether the other body will flinch in response.
Use my voice to “say” something to the other body and see if it “understands” it, by saying something back to me—specifically something that I cannot predict 100%, so I know that it’s not my own mind projecting thoughts into another body.
In a way, this idea of “provoking” an action from the other body is assuming the existence of some sort of cause-effect relationship. But I could just consider this a “call and response”, where I offer a stimulus, which the other person, should he/she be conscious, could receive and choose to respond to.
I imagine what it would look like if another person existed and tried to interact with me, and then I do precisely that.
In other words, I have to first assume that the other body is a person, and treat them as such, in order to see whether I would receive the kind of response that only a person would provide.
I have make this assumption because the act of wondering “What if that other body is a person?” necessarily occurs before any attempt to investigate that wonder.
If my experiments of interacting with the other body result in responses that I would predict for conscious being to do, then I would conclude that this is another “person”.
Note that as soon as we accept the belief that other people exist, we automatically accept the belief that communication and transfer of information between people exists.
There is a physical world.
Similar to the belief in an external world, we would establish belief in the concept of the “physical” or “material”, which represents those external objects that we can see, touch, etc.
This realization also recognizes the contrast between physical things and metaphysical things.
The scientific method is the best process for studying the physical world.
Frankly, we can include as Tier 2 any methodology or system of logic that holds up to the strictest principles of deduction and induction.
I can experience different states of awareness.
Using my memory, I see how sometimes I operate on “auto-pilot”, and other times I can be more consciously contemplative and meditative.
I am drawn to stories, to drama.
I notice that when I see certain forms of communication and interaction, I feel more energetic and/or stronger emotions than when I see others.
I feel inclined to pay more attention to situations with conflict or where there is something meaningful at stake.
I feel a sense of deep satisfaction when a conflict is properly resolved, or when a tension is released in a way that “makes sense”.
I perceive Beauty.
I notice there’s something that happens within me when I am out in nature, in a cathedral, experiencing certain kinds of art, etc.
It doesn’t feel like my mind is artificially creating the concept of beauty itself, even though people would disagree about what belongs to the category of beautiful.
There is a (universal) Moral Law.
From a Tier 1 perspective, I would say that I feel disgust 😫 and anger 😡 whenever I see a scenario of cruelty being inflicted onto an innocent person. But that’s all I can say.
The Tier 2 belief is to say that this situation is objectively wrong, and that it violates a Moral Law.
The specifics of the Moral Law could be subject to debates occurring at the lower Tier 3, 4, 5. . . levels. But the existence of a Moral Law, in principle, would be Tier 2.
I personally don’t put it at Tier 1, because we need to first believe in the existence of other people before we believe in the existence of “rules” that should guide the people’s actions.
Simply put, we merely acknowledge here that the word “should” is based on a real concept—that there is a way that things ought to be (an ideal state of affairs exists), even if we disagree about which configuration constitutes the ideal.
Moral relativists may try to assert otherwise (that there is no Moral Law, and the use of should is always an exercise of arbitrary power), but I would argue that most relativists simply haven’t consolidated their own beliefs.
i.e. The people who have properly integrated moral relativism across their full psyche—the true, consistent, and practicing moral relativists—are, by definition, psychopaths.
The non-psychopaths who believe they are moral relativists are just confused.
Tier 2 Summary:
As you can see, many of the Tier 2 beliefs now require argument and appeal to logic in order to recognize their validity, whereas as the Tier 1 beliefs are obvious on their own accord, by their very nature of existing and being directly experiencable.
The Tier 2 beliefs are as rock solid as one could hope for, but they still leave room for some modicum of doubt.
Tier 3, Tier 4, Tier 5. . .
At this point, you get the picture.
Tier 3 includes beliefs like those that sit at the tip-top of scientific consensus (e.g. the Law Gravity, that the sun will rise tomorrow, that human beings require oxygen atoms, etc.), as well as general historical facts.
While really strong and certain, these “facts” aren’t things that we are experiencing directly in the moment, so they don’t hold the same weight of certainty as the things that are most immediately accessible.
If this statement bugs you because “science is the greatest thing ever”, see the FAQ below.
As far as drawing the lines between Tier 4, Tier 5 and beyond, things can get murkier, although still doable. At that stage you could rely on statistical analysis, with its associated p values, as far deciding what level of certainty is appropriate for any particular claim.
I recognize that, even here, model specification and experimental design would still be up for debate, but I would assert that the path of Truth is still discoverable. It just requires more patience in situations of higher ambiguity.
Either way I guarantee that if you use the Tiers of Certainty, you will achieve deeper understanding of what’s true as well as have more profound and insightful conversations with others.
So, how do I use the Tiers of Certainty?
My hope is that by reading my analysis of the example beliefs above, you can already experience the process.
Consciously recognize the belief you are questioning.
Ask yourself “How certain can someone be that this belief is true?”
This should put you in the mental space to begin the process of assessing certainty via the Tiers.
Begin to identify the full set and network of beliefs that are involved in your chosen belief.
What other beliefs must be true for this belief to be true?
If this belief is true, what other beliefs must it necessarily imply? If this belief were false, what other beliefs would then have to be false (or lose meaning) as a direct consequence of this parent belief being false?
Under what circumstances could this belief be wrong? Why do I believe that these circumstances are not currently active or applicable?
For each related belief (spending more time on the beliefs that carry greater attentional weight), analyze the EXACT steps that connect it back to Tier 1 and Tier 2 beliefs.
Count how many links are on your chain of beliefs. The more links (i.e. assumptions), the less certain.
On each step, ask any of the related questions above, as you feel so inspired in the moment.
Along the way, you may notice that you are naturally making some changes or modifications to your worldview. However, if that’s not enough of an outcome, and you want an ultimate verdict…
Aggregate the certainties of the individual beliefs so that you can get a certainty estimate of the full belief system.
In theory, this would be like a weighted average certainty.
I wouldn’t recommend actually trying to do a weighted average, nor obsessing over precise estimates of probabilities, since it’s neither practical, nor useful, to say, “I am 57.5% certain that my preferred religion or political ideology is correct.”
The ordinal categorization of the tiers is sufficient, in my experience, to give you a proper sense of what the overall certainty is. (The mind’s background processing engine works quite nicely, provided you give it the right inputs!).
I suppose that since I’m sharing with you this super tool, supposedly capable of cutting through all uncertainty, that must mean I think I have the correct worldview, right?
Nope.
In analyzing any particular belief, I might not be implementing the Tiers of Certainty accurately.
Yet the system itself is a good one. . . How do I know that?
Because appealing to the most certain and irrefutable concepts (during an exercise of determining certainty) anytime it’s possible to do so, is the best that anyone could conceivably do, by definition, since there’s nothing else greater or more certain to appeal to.
Moreover, it’s worth pointing out that proper use of the Tiers of Certainty doesn’t guarantee that you’ll arrive at the ultimate truth. But it does, in principle, guarantee that you can identify the worldview, which is the best a human being could credibly hope to adopt.
While it’s possible that other forms of epistemology could more efficiently lead you to personal knowledge of some greater truth, I don’t think you’d be able to convince or demonstrate that truth to others as effectively as you could with the Tiers.
Using the Tiers of Certainty should also reduce your risk of experiencing an existential crisis (other than maybe the first time you do it), because it helps you proactively anticipate answers to “What if there was something else I didn’t know that would disrupt everything?”
There are only so many things that you could put in Tier 1 or Tier 2, and those categories serve as your worldview anchors.
After consistent use of this tool, you’ll notice that any future “surprises” will happen at something like the Tier 4 level, which isn’t that scary, if you feel solid on Tier 1 and Tier 2.
Finally, I believe that the Tiers of Certainty can serve as a universal tool, or language, for anyone who cares about the discovering the truth, to talk to one another—from the atheist to the Christian, the liberal to the conservative, the capitalist to the socialist.
After reading this far, I hope you feel the same way.
I left a FAQ section below, in case the above content stimulated you. So let me leave you with this question:
What Tier of Certainty would you place the Tiers of Certainty method in? 😉
—Drago
FAQs
Why aren’t scientific facts Tier 1 or Tier 2?
Consider that any scientific belief that you choose to accept as true first requires you to rely on the data of your senses.
You see a visual image in your head of a piece of paper or screen with “words” on it. You interpret the collection of black ink words as having been written down by other people, as opposed to spontaneously appearing out of random chaos. You believe intelligibility of the external world is something that exists and can be studied. You believe the logical combination of these words (as well as the methods they claim to use) “make sense”. You also trust that the experiment described was done accurately and in good faith (since you hope most people will act in accord with Moral Law). Your trust is also based on the belief that if it weren’t performed correctly, there would be some other person who would have noticed and put together a rebuttal (alternative words) on a paper, as well an authority who would have promoted the refutation, such that you would know about it.
Only after all these beliefs do you get to a place where you exercise your own conscious free will and judgment (as well as recognize the emotions being stirred within you) to assent to the scientific theory that is written on the page before you (or more likely, you assent to your memory of the information that you read previously).
This being said, I believe we should still have great respect for how the process of science, when done right, can provide us with knowledge that defy our common intuitions or anecdotal experiences.
In other words, theories supported by extensive scientific research should, on average, hold more weight in our minds than spur-of-the-moment theories that we create based on only our own limited experience.
Yet valid scientific theories should never undermine the status of consciousness, since it is consciousness itself (with its tools of logic and observation) that establishes the validity of the scientific process in the first place.
You mention “external world exists”, but with the growth of technology like VR, I’m becoming less sure about my own experience of reality… shouldn’t you be less certain?
Most of us agree it’s obvious that an “external world” exists, yet we’re willing to acknowledge that it’s possible that we are living in the Matrix, the simulation, or some advanced metaverse.
At the same time, the mechanisms that facilitate any sort of “Matrix” must themselves exist in some external world.
Now, you could say that the mind itself is the source of the illusion, somehow creating a fake reality or hallucination, playing tricks on us every time we engage in the “reality-proving” experiments mentioned above.
But such a view should be deemed as not credible, per the Tiers, as we have no reference point for seeing the tricks or deception.
We cannot falsify the claim, as it would require access to an “outside” the system perspective to hold with confidence.
Alternatively stated, it’s more credible to believe that the primary data we see is real/apparent until we have definitive evidence that it’s not, rather than the other way around.
It’s an ex ante decision of “innocent until proven guilty” rather than “guilty until proven innocent”.
The fact is that when I tap the object, I see, hear, feel, and experience all of those converging stimuli, and this should suggest that there is something of meaning going on there. I don’t have any Tier 1 access to evidence that would suggest otherwise, that everything I see is “fake”.
Now, it could still theoretically be possible that everything I experience is fundamentally a lie, but I have no credible way of ever coming to that conclusion, or knowing that. Hence the Tiers of Certainty approach would dictate that I dispose of such beliefs.
With respect to VR, AR, or XR, right now there is still a base perception of feeling the device on your face, which serves as a reminder that you’re experiencing some derivative of primary reality (in contrast with your memory of having experienced primary reality before putting on the headset).
It will be interesting if, as the technology progresses, the manufacturers come up with a way to numb your feeling or awareness of the device such that you lose any sensory signal pointing back to the “real world”, and thus achieve full immersion.
Then we should wonder, as a thought experiment, what it would mean for a person to be fully immersed into the metaverse right after they leave the womb as a baby, such that their entire experience of life would be perceived in the context of the metaverse.
Would this person still have a developed sense of (or belief in) an “external world”?
I think it would depend, in part, on whether the metaverse technology will recreate the same base feelings of movement through space, repeatability of travel, limitations of focus, etc.
Conceivably, the metaverse baby could still develop a sense of “external world”, even though we would hold that this person’s understanding of “external world” is a container that sits within out understanding of “external world”.
In other words, belief in “external world” is not the same thing as believing “All that I see, hear, and feel right now, is all that exists, and there’s nothing greater.”
And by analogy, there is no shortage of people who believe that our current understanding of “external world” is just a sub-container that sits within an even greater reality of existence.
What about God"?
Belief in God (creator, designer, higher level of intelligence), I would say, is the framework that best explains the Tier 1 and Tier 2 data points.
At the very least, its installation provides a solution for our fear of being deceived and everything being a lie, as well as our intrinsic longing for Truth, Goodness, and Beauty.
One could even argue that perception of God, or the relationship one has with God, is itself a “sense” that, at the proper level of meditative awareness, one can experience as a Tier 1 encounter.
This, of course is a matter of personal experience, and it’s almost impossible to capture in words what something like this feels like.
I could say more, but I’ll save it for a later post.
What are some beliefs that the Tiers of Certainty would naturally encourage users to doubt?
I’ll start generically and then give you a couple of examples.
Similar to the “external world” answer above, any belief that says “Your base perception is a complete lie” is not credible. Why? Because for me to believe that “My base perception is a complete lie” would require me to use that same base perception in order to assent to such a belief.
In other words, “I am using my base perception to believe the claim that my base perception cannot at all be trusted” is a self-refuting proposition, just like “I cannot speak a word of English.”
One example is a hardcore materialism, whose proponents might claim that “thoughts aren’t real” and “consciousness is just physical process”. But, as we’ve established, my direct experience of consciousness precedes any belief or concept of a “physical world”.
To refute my consciousness is to imagine that I could observe it from the outside-in. Yet any act of empiricism (including such attempted refutation) inevitably starts with the “I” observer, first going from “in” to “out”, then using instruments in the external world to try to go from “out” back to “in”.
Another example would be determinism, which would claim that free will is an illusion and everything that you believe is merely a direct effect of some other mechanistic cause.
Consequently, even your belief in determinism would be based not on the consciously exercised and “free” faculties of judgment, reason, and comparative evaluation, but based on some external, mechanistic force out of your control. Hence there is no “meaningful” reason for you to believe determinism, over a competing philosophy (or really, no “reason” to believe anything over anything else), since meaning itself would be an illusion.
Yet advocates for determinism have presumably been “persuaded” to believe in determinism and believe they have reasons for doing so. They wouldn’t say out loud that: “I have no reason to believe in determinism. I believe it purely because some arbitrary force made it necessary that I do.”