Is Skepticism Worth Believing?

In “A Brain in a Vat” by John Pollock, Pollock tells a first person account of learning that it is possible that the reality humans live in is just the motor cortex and sensory cortex being stimulated as the human brain sits in a vat. The brain is stimulated by a computer that creates a fictitious mental life. This life fits perfectly in accord with reality making all humans unaware that it is occurring. This idea of skepticism seeming has no counterexamples as the computer is perfect and can account for all dissenting ideas.

What we must ask, however, is whether or not it is worth it to believe this or any other skeptic theory. For example, the brain in a vat theory is accepted and proven, I do not believe it should change how people live their lives as it does not cause harm or benefit them in any way. As we continue to live our lives as brains in vats, nothing in our life will change; jobs, families, ideologies, and structure in society will go unscathed. There will be those who become paranoid or begin sects about the brain in a vat idea, but those people will be minorities compared to the entirety of the human race. These groups will stay minorities because by modern human nature we tend to stay with our beliefs and continue with their normal lifestyles.

In retrospect, skeptic theories such as the brain in the vat theory are not important to the way humans do and will continue to live their lives. All skeptic theories attempt to change how reality is and how it is perceived but these do not change how humans will continue to be in the future. Humans have lived a stubborn lifestyle for so long that the discovery of one of these realities to be true would not cause a serious change in human nature.