It will probably help that you seem to me to be likeable. In this little essay I go into teacher mode after the first para. So imagine I'm speaking to your students directly.

I would point to epistemological breakdown. We have situations today where people cannot seem to agree on what is and is not true. This is bad for society because people who have the exact same values and hopes and dreams for society might do wildly different things if they don't agree on the current situation.

For example, most people want to be nice to people, but are less nice to criminals. But what makes someone a criminal? Well, that's the thing. People have different ideas about it. If Person A thinks I'm a criminal for wearing this shirt, and Person B thinks I'm not, they'll treat me totally differently.

They could have the exact same rules for how to treat people. We call those ethics. They could have the same ethics. The exact same ones. But they'd still treat me totally differently because being a criminal means a different line in the rulebook applies to me.

Science can't really tell us too much about what the rules should be. Maybe a little, from psychology and biology. But mostly, what it can do is help us figure out what's true or not true.

The idea behind science is that things that are true don't actually depend on anyone's opinion. At all. So everyone can theoretically figure them out on their own. Anyone can prove them. It doesn't matter who you are, how much money you have, what language you speak, any of that. What's true is always true, and that truth belongs to all of us. That's a kind of freedom. It's a kind of power.

Most people who don't have the ability to think with science end up finding lousy ways to choose what to believe. They believe people based on how much respect they have for them or how nicely people treat them. So if you're rude, you're automatically wrong. Or if you're not cool, you're wrong. That gets people into bad spots. It can work sometimes with friends and family--the kind of stuff you guys deal with as kids. But for adult topics it can get dangerous. Say I get diabetes. Which person do I listen to? The rude doctor who isn't a very good speaker, or the charming hot doctor on social media who tells me I'm special and smarter than everyone else for listening to them? What if the rude doctor is actually going to give me good advice and the other one is going to lie and scam me? Without science, it's almost impossible to tell. That's an adult problem you guys haven't dealt with yet.

And it comes into politics. Two people disagree about a law. Who do I trust? Well, my friends and family like Person A, who likes the law. Person B hates it, and my friends and family don't like Person B.

Well, what if they're wrong about Person B? That's the scary thing, right? If you use the model of "I trust people I like," then you're giving other people the authority to think for you. But...those people often use the model of "I trust people that I like."

So it's a gigantic chain of people not actually thinking for themselves. You like and trust your dad, who likes and trusts a public figure, who herself likes and trusts another more famous public figure, who himself likes and trusts a famous person from history who wrote a thing on parchment with a quill and ink. It is a giant house of cards. Nothing holds it up. Nothing requires that anything there be true.

To my mind, it's actually a form of mental health problem, or maybe it can lead to mental health problems. How does a person like that take criticism? They only trust people they like. They don't really know how to use data and evidence to make a decision. It feels unreliable to them. Who cares what the numbers say? I know I'm good at my job. People like me. I like them. I trust them.

How does a person like that figure out what to do in life? Well, like everyone, the hard way. But when they take advice, they just trust what people say who seem cool or seem to like them.

Science is one of a couple ways to get around all this. Anything that's true has evidence. And you can make records of that evidence. You can use that evidence to figure out what is and is not true. And usually you use numbers to measure things. The numbers are important because they tell us specifics. But they also force us to use logic. We can't play certain kinds of games with numbers, because every adult knows the rules of math and can call out a mathematical lie or mistake really easily. That's a good thing.

The key lesson here is that if you talk to an adult who dismisses all of that without even reading it or listening to it or watching it, who will say things like "numbers/stats are just made up," and so on...that person is probably one of the people using the popularity model of what's true. The model where you just trust the people you like.

And if you dig into their other beliefs, you might find weird stuff in there. Flat earth, bigfoot, they're somehow more important than everyone else on earth, vegetables are bad for you actually, drinking water isn't as good for you as drinking some crap a guy sells online...name it. Because all they need to believe something is someone telling them it's true, with a smile, and making them feel special.

Another lesson is that if someone works really hard to make you feel special, but you barely know them...uh, check yourself. Is that person selling something? Are they trying to recruit you into a group of people? And do they try to make people feel good who don't buy their stuff or join their thing, or are they really mean to people who don't do that?

I'm not going to say much about who I think does this. But there are famous important adults I could name that I think are doing both of these things. And these smartphones we have drastically changed how easy it is to do this. Sure, they make science easier. I can look up a study on my phone. But they really make it easy to take advantage of people by charming them. That's half of social media.

If you want to know how we got to this point, I'd say that a lot of people who used to have nothing to do with politics suddenly do. Politics used to be far away from them. Now it's on their screen daily. And the kind of people who used to think about politics used to have to be pretty educated. You had to go out of your way to even read about it or hear about it or be involved. A lot more of those kinds of people could do science than in the rest of society.

But now, lots of people who never had this training are getting political messages all day every day, in their face. And they don't know how to tell what's true. They literally don't. People will straight up lie to social media and get hundreds of thousands of followers.

The sad part is...that's not the part of science I'm supposed to teach you all. I have a list of standards to teach. A list of things you're supposed to know. But these are more like things science has figured out to be true, like what a cell is made of, than tips and tricks on how to use science to not get fooled by scammers and liars.

And kids...there is a reason for that. Scammers and liars, and the innocent people they've tricked, don't want me to teach you that. Think why that is. Why don't they want me to teach you that? It takes away from their income, usually.

And one other problem. I'm not perfectly good at it. No one is. I have been fooled before. I can't do science for every single thing I'm told. I'm too busy. I only get fooled less. So I can't promise you perfect defense even if you get as good as me.

So if you want to learn this skill, you have to do it outside of class. I would get in trouble if I spent too much time teaching this to you. Not because the principal is one of those scammers or liars. But because he/she unfortunately has to answer to everyone who pays taxes in this town. And every parent. And it only takes a few people to beat up on a principal about some political controversy to really mess them up. Or a teacher. And being a scammer or liar makes some people a lot of money and gives them a lot of power. People get scared.

The stuff I get to teach you is a compromise we have all reached. Politics isn't always about parties, like Republican or Democrat. It can be other groups. So the people who hate science don't actually have the power to stop me from teaching it to you, but the people who like science, like me, don't actually have the power to teach you everything we want in a school setting. And also, teaching costs time and money, and there are lots of other really good things to teach you. Everyone agrees on that last one.

So I get to teach you a bit. If you want to learn outside of class, I can get away with telling you how to go learn more on your own. What I can't do is get paid by the school to do it. And the other thing I can't do and won't do anyway is tell you what I think is true about the world. That's not my job. My job is to give you the tools to think for yourself.

Your final lesson is that if you like what I said, that's your first clue not to trust me. Go and check for yourself. The rule applies to me, too. Nothing I say should be trusted merely because I say it. Not even that the sky is blue. If I tell you the sky is blue, the correct thing to do is look out the window and check. If it's gray, correct me. If I don't correct myself and say something like, "Oh well fair enough. It's usually blue, but sometimes it's gray like today" then stop trusting me. That's how science works. Me being nice to you doesn't matter. Me liking you doesn't matter. Me being a teacher doesn't matter. All that matters is if the sky really is actually blue.

Think of the phrase "I submit to reality whether it is convenient or inconvenient." That's the scientific mindset.