Dr. Steven Novella

And again, you never get there.

Like there's no point where I'm now a skeptical.

So I only believe true things.

Like it's an endless process of refining and refining and more and more nuance and just trying to get better at doing it.

Yeah.

So it's, first of all, being a skeptic is extremely empowering, you know, and having done this now for 30 plus years, you know, interacting with many people who get, continue to get emails from listeners who are like, first feel so freed by, oh, I don't have to believe this thing anymore.

I don't have to carry water for my tribe, my identity, whatever.

I could now just think what I want to think and believe what I want to believe, whatever is supported by logic and evidence.

So that, I think, overwhelms anything else.

It really is incredibly freeing to just say, I'm just going to call it like I see it and not feel like I have to defend some ideology or whatever.

But it absolutely can be exhausting as well.

And you have to pick your battles.

You have to decide what's important.

You know, we talk about it like, oh, well, let's do a deep dive on this topic.

You can't do a deep dive on every possible thing in the world.

There's not enough hours in the day.

So...

You know, generally speaking, it's helpful if you have good resources to go to.

There's a lot of people who will do the heavy lifting for you.

And once you establish that they're a reliable resource, you can say, okay, I can trust what this guy says.