An Unpleasant Condition

Voltaire had a way with words.

Besides having a biting wit and sharp ability to use satire to make a point, he used language to convey complex ideas to a wide audience. Like Hemingway, Voltaire felt that if it could be said with fewer, simpler words, it was almost always better.

He was also a keen observer of both nature and of human behavior. That’s largely because he had loads of free time to think about whatever he wanted—at least once he figured out how to win the French lottery, along with several other compatriots who also never had to work again.

Not one to waste such an opportunity, Voltaire often worked 18 hour days in the quest to understand things better. I think the world has benefited from this clever lottery scheme far more than Voltaire or his friends ever did.

One quote of his really sums all this up:

Doubt is an unpleasant condition, but certainty is a ridiculous one.

I love this quote so much.

This is from a letter to Prince Frederick William of Prussia, dated November 28, 1770. The world was becoming smaller, and scientific discoveries that threatened to upend established principles were increasingly common.

It’s no coincidence that both the brand new United States and Adam Smith’s ideas about economics were entering the world stage around the same time. The race was on to “discover” and map any remaining islands or unknown geographic features, and many human ideas were converging all at once.

Here was Voltaire, always curious and suddenly very rich, now able to put two and two together in a way that nobody else was. He was in the right place and at the right time, and he turned out to be the right person.

What does he mean, though?

The first part is more obvious, but I think it’s worth thinking out loud here.

An unpleasant condition! That makes it sound like it’s in the same category as a headache or an itchy skin rash. If you’re in the midst of an unpleasant condition, you’re likely to feel unease and discomfort. Maybe you have to pee, or maybe you’re stuck in traffic, but no matter what, you don’t especially like it.

Everyone wants doubt to end.

And yet, certainty is a ridiculous one. Voltaire says that being certain is ridiculous, but living with doubt just plain sucks.

Voltaire knew all about Plato’s allegory of the cave.

Here, chained to a wall since birth and unable to go and explore the world, these prisoners observed the dance of shadows on the wall, created by the flicker of a flame burning behind them. The fire was designed to keep them warm, but it also provided just enough light for these shadows to perform little stories.

This shadow world was the only reality these prisoners had ever known, and they naturally came to believe that the way they perceived the world was complete and correct. Generation after generation added to the idea that the shadow world was all there was—reality.

Here’s the thing, though: one prisoner returns to try to tell the others what he has seen, but everyone just assumes he’s bonkers and they’re sane.

Pretty much all educated Europeans of the time knew this story, but the prevailing wisdom was to accept Plato as the end of philosophical thought. Voltaire regarded his ideas as a useful starting point, but he ultimately rejected Plato’s ideas about ideal forms, and Voltaire insisted that evidence was the ultimate arbiter of truth, not philosophical ideals.

Maybe if that prisoner had come back in with a nice HD video of what he had seen, then the other prisoners would have been more likely to believe him. Remember, this was before the time of convincing deep fakes, so it might have worked.