The Art of Doubting

As a software tester, it is my job to question things. Questioning involves doubt, but is that doubt of a certain kind? Perhaps; let’s call it ‘good doubt’.
Monday May 15th 2017, I facilitated a philosophical, protreptic salon in Copenhagen about the art of doubting. The protreptic is a dialogue or conversation which has the objective of making us aware and connecting us to personal and shared values.
Doubt is interesting for many reasons. Self-doubt is probably something we all have and can relate to. But there seems to be value in a different kind of doubt than that with which we doubt ourselves.
Doubt is related to certainty. Confidence can be calculated statistically, and that seems to be the opposite of doubt.
Science almost depends on doubt: Even the firmest scientific knowledge is rooted in someone formulating a hypothesis and proving it by doubting it and attempting to prove it wrong.
Even religion, faith, seems to be related to doubt.
It is always interesting to examine the origins of a worud. The Danish and German words “tvivl” and “Zweifel” have the same meaning as the English doubt and all relate to the duo; two; zwei; to.
That appears to indicate that when we doubt we can be in “two minds”, so to speak.
So is doubt a special type of reflection, “System-2”, or slow thinking?
The protreptic is always about the general in terms of the personal. We examine our relations to doubt.
“What is it that our doubts wants or desires for us?” was one of my protreptic questions during the salon.
We circled a lot around that particular question. Finding an answer was difficult and we came back to self-doubt, which can be difficult to live with. Self-doubt can even harm our images, both the external ones and those that are internal to ourselves.
Leaders are usually expected not to have self-doubt: A prime minister risk loosing the next election if he doubts his own decisions and qualities. A CEO that doubts her own actions will drive the share value of the company down.
But there is a good doubt, and good doubt seems to be of a helpful nature.
Good leadership requires having the courage to doubt. It seems to help us act wisely and based on our experiences.
During the salon, my personal image of doubt changed. In the beginning I thought of doubt as a kind of cognitive function, perhaps a process I had to go through. Doubting could even be an event.
But at the end of the salon, my image of doubt changed into that a good friend walking with me through my life. Continuously present, if I want him.
With that image we found an answer to the question: Doubt is my friend. A friend who wants my actions to be driven not only by my instincts or simple gut feelings. A friends that help me shape my actions by my values.