The Market for Certainty

Imagine a weather forecaster who predicts sunshine every time it rains.

Eventually, no one watches.

Imagine an investment advisor whose recommendations consistently lose money.

Eventually, no one invests with him.

Now imagine an opinion journalist whose predictions repeatedly fail.

Often, he becomes even more influential.

Why doesn’t that destroy his reputation?

If his purpose were to predict the future, it should.

Yet in opinion journalism, and increasingly throughout the broader media, the relationship between accuracy and prestige appears surprisingly weak. Some of the most influential commentators continue to command enormous audiences despite making confident predictions that later prove dramatically wrong. In finance, the phenomenon has become so well known that investors have jokingly created strategies built around doing the opposite of certain famous television stock pickers.

Why?

Prediction may not be the product being sold.

Certainty is.

Those who produce certainty are rewarded with status within the coalition.

As societies become more specialized, fewer people experience most of reality firsthand, making interpretation itself an increasingly valuable profession.

Most of us think of opinion journalism as a way of making sense of the world. Columnists observe events, interpret their significance, and present arguments that help readers understand public affairs. Better explanations persuade people because they correspond more closely to reality. Over time, stronger ideas replace weaker ones.

In this model, prediction is one measure of competence. Accurate commentators gain credibility. Repeatedly inaccurate ones lose it.

It is an attractive ideal.

It is also probably an incomplete description of what opinion journalism actually does.

An evolutionary perspective begins with a different assumption. Human beings did not evolve in universities, newspapers, or television studios. We evolved in small bands competing with other bands for territory, resources, mates, and status. Communication evolved within that environment. As a result, its function has never been limited to discovering objective truth (Cosmides & Tooby, 1992; Dunbar, 1996).

We communicate to identify allies, establish trust, reinforce shared values, coordinate collective action, negotiate status, expose defectors, and maintain the cohesion of our group. Truth matters, but it exists alongside other evolutionary pressures that often prove just as powerful (Mercier & Sperber, 2011; Simler & Hanson, 2018; Trivers, 2011).

This may sound like a cynical view of human communication, but it reflects a broader shift within cognitive science. Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber have argued that human reason itself did not evolve primarily as a mechanism for discovering objective truth. Rather, it evolved to produce and evaluate arguments within social groups—to justify our own beliefs, assess the claims of others, and help coalitions coordinate around shared understandings of reality (Mercier & Sperber, 2011, 2017).

If they are correct, then opinion journalism is not an aberration from human nature. It is one of its most sophisticated expressions.

Viewed through that lens, modern opinion journalism begins to look very different.

The columnist does not simply report events. He performs a function that human societies have always required: helping the group construct a shared interpretation of reality. He tells his audience what events mean. He identifies heroes and villains. He explains which emotions are appropriate, which values are under attack, and which people deserve admiration or condemnation. His role is less like that of a scientist describing reality than that of a respected elder interpreting reality for the tribe.

Notice something important.

Very little of this requires persuading ideological opponents.

Its primary audience often consists of people who already share the same basic worldview. They are not merely looking for new information. They are looking for reassurance. They want arguments that confirm they understand the world correctly, that their moral instincts are justified, and that their coalition remains on the side of truth (Nickerson, 1998; Haidt, 2012).

The audience is asking two questions simultaneously.

“Is he one of us?”

“Are we right?”

If that is the product being consumed, many otherwise puzzling features of modern media suddenly become easier to understand.

Why are opinion pieces so often written in ways that opponents find dismissive or even insulting? Because they are not primarily written for opponents.

Why do readers enthusiastically share articles that almost no one on the other side will find persuasive? Because sharing them reinforces a common understanding of reality within the coalition while simultaneously signaling loyalty to it.

Why do some commentators become less persuasive to outsiders as they become more prestigious within their own political tribe? Because the incentives reward becoming a more faithful representative of the coalition, not a more effective persuader of its rivals.

This leads to a more fundamental question.

What behavior is the modern media ecosystem actually selecting for?

If prestige were primarily determined by predictive accuracy, commentators with consistently poor forecasting records would gradually disappear. Readers would seek out those who most accurately described reality, regardless of ideology.

But that is not what we observe.

This does not require anyone to be consciously deceptive. Evolution does not require intention. Organisms adapt to environments without understanding the forces shaping them. Institutions can do the same.

Of course, newspapers did not evolve through natural selection in the biological sense. The minds that created them did. Once created, however, institutions become subject to a different kind of selection. Communication strategies that better satisfy enduring features of human psychology spread, while those that do not gradually disappear. Over time, journalism adapts to the psychological environment in which it exists.

The media rewards attention. It rewards confidence, emotional engagement, and moral certainty. Above all, it rewards communicators who make members of a coalition feel understood, validated, and united.

From an evolutionary perspective, this should not surprise us.

Like every environment, the modern media ecosystem creates selection pressures.

Forests select for different traits than deserts. Oceans select for different traits than mountains. Likewise, every social institution rewards certain behaviors while discouraging others.

Those selection pressures do not reward prediction. They reward coalition maintenance. The commentators who reassure the tribe, reinforce its identity, define its enemies, and confidently interpret events through its existing worldview are more likely to rise in influence than those who merely make accurate predictions.

Prediction, in other words, may not be the product being selected.

The ability to produce certainty is.

Those who produce certainty are rewarded with status and influence within the coalition.

This also explains why repeated forecasting failures often produce remarkably little reputational damage.

That seems irrational if readers are purchasing forecasts.

It makes perfect sense if they are purchasing certainty.

The commentator’s primary value lies not in telling the future.

It lies in reducing uncertainty within the coalition.

Even when events unfold differently than predicted, he continues performing his more fundamental function: affirming the group’s shared narrative and reassuring its members that they remain morally and intellectually justified.

This is not unique to one political ideology.

Conservative and progressive media operate under remarkably similar evolutionary pressures. Their narratives differ, but the incentives are largely the same. Every coalition rewards those who articulate its worldview most effectively. Every coalition punishes those who publicly validate its rivals. Every coalition prefers confidence to visible doubt, particularly during periods of conflict (Tajfel & Turner, 1979).

From this perspective, it is hardly surprising that modern opinion journalism has become increasingly moralized and increasingly difficult for ideological opponents to read. The purpose of the writing has subtly shifted. Instead of attempting to persuade neutral observers, much of it functions to reassure believers.

There is an even broader implication.

Throughout history, every society has relied upon specialists. Some grew food. Some built houses. Some healed the sick. Some defended the community with violence.

Today we increasingly rely upon another class of specialists: people who interpret reality itself on behalf of coalitions. Opinion journalists are among the most influential members of that class.

Every increase in specialization reduces the amount of reality any one individual can experience firsthand. It therefore increases our dependence on trusted interpreters.

As civilization becomes more complex, each of us knows more about less, while depending more on others to understand everything else.

Most citizens lack the time to become experts in economics, constitutional law, foreign policy, epidemiology, climate science, or countless other increasingly complex fields. Instead, they outsource interpretation itself. They rely upon trusted members of their coalition to tell them not merely what happened, but what it means.

Opinion journalists have therefore become a new kind of specialist. Their raw material is not information. It is interpretation. Their role extends beyond reporting facts. They organize facts into narratives, assign moral significance to events, identify heroes and villains, and reduce uncertainty for the people who trust them.

This helps explain why political disagreement today often feels much deeper than disagreement over facts. Competing coalitions are not simply consuming different information. They are consuming different interpretations of reality.

That may be inevitable.

Complex societies require specialization. No individual can master every field of knowledge. We will always depend upon others to help us understand a world that has grown too complicated for any one person to fully comprehend.

But understanding the evolutionary function of opinion journalism changes how we should evaluate it.

Prediction was never the primary product.

Certainty was.

Those who consistently produce certainty earn status and influence within the coalition.

Instead of asking whether a commentator was right, perhaps we should first ask a different question.

What evolutionary function is the commentator serving?

If the primary function is helping a coalition construct and maintain a shared understanding of reality, then prediction is only one measure of success—and perhaps not even the most important one.

That realization does not make objective truth unattainable. It simply reminds us that institutions evolve just as organisms do. They are shaped by selection pressures. To understand an institution, we should look less at what it claims to produce and more at the behaviors it consistently rewards.

The evolutionary question is never, “What was this institution intended to do?”

It is, “What does this institution reliably produce?”

Only then can we ask the question that matters most.

Is this article helping me understand reality more accurately?

Or is it helping my coalition feel more certain that it already does?

Those are not always the same thing.

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Dunbar, R. I. M. (1996). Grooming, gossip, and the evolution of language. Harvard University Press.

Durkheim, É. (2014). The division of labor in society (S. Lukes, Ed.; W. D. Halls, Trans.). Free Press. (Original work published 1893)

Haidt, J. (2012). The righteous mind: Why good people are divided by politics and religion. Pantheon.

Mercier, H., & Sperber, D. (2011). Why do humans reason? Arguments for an argumentative theory. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 34(2), 57–74. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X10000968

Nickerson, R. S. (1998). Confirmation bias: A ubiquitous phenomenon in many guises. Review of General Psychology, 2(2), 175–220.

Simler, K., & Hanson, R. (2018). The elephant in the brain: Hidden motives in everyday life. Oxford University Press.

Smith, A. (1976). An inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of nations. Oxford University Press. (Original work published 1776)

Tajfel, H., & Turner, J. C. (1979). An integrative theory of intergroup conflict. In W. G. Austin & S. Worchel (Eds.), The social psychology of intergroup relations (pp. 33–47). Brooks/Cole.

Trivers, R. (2011). The folly of fools: The logic of deceit and self-deception in human life. Basic Books.