Last night, my father-in-law and I were discussing the notion of truth, and in particular, how the anti-Vax movement exists and why is the truth is so malleable.
And what I observed, and thought may be worth sharing, is that the human-made world is as magical as the natural world. And that has profound implications for us as human beings.
What do I mean by magical?
If we consider something like math, there are fundamental axioms that allow us to create or discover theorems. Those axioms make it possible to understand the world more deeply. Those axioms are not provable.
As mathematics is layered, a typical mathematical proof will have some reference to some theorem that has been proven elsewhere, that the paper hinges on.
And mathematicians assume that a theorem is correct. It is right because it both can be used to derive more math, and because it has resisted the assault on its correctness from other mathematicians.
Every so often, however, a theorem is proven to be wrong, or unproven. When that happens, a whole sub-branch of mathematics that depended on that theorem dissolves into nothingness.
In short, mathematicians rely on the assumption that the other parts of mathematics are correct.
They believe the theorems are correct, without necessarily understanding the entire depth of their correctness. Mathematicians also simultaneously understand that at some fundamental level, their truth depends on unprovable but useful axioms.
And that faith is magical thinking. We believe that the system works; therefore, it works, while realizing it may not.
And is this fundamentally different from the Ancient Greek perspective on Helios? After all, they believed that a titan dragged the Sun was dragged across the sky. And that explanation, although absurd, had sufficient predictive power that the farmers of the time could make other inferences and assumptions. And it was a perfectly workable model of the Sun. Absurd, but workable.
In short, the mathematicians’ faith in a theorem is the same faith of the Ancient Greek farmer in a titan who drags the Sun across the sky. Both could be proven to be absurdly incorrect, and both useful.
My intent is not to suggest that mathematics is not rigorous, but to illustrate how the most stringent of intellectual disciplines is also based somewhat on faith.
But why do I say that the world is magical?
Because, in the past, the human-made world was not magical. A person could understand everything about his house. They could understand how to build it, and they could understand how to make the tools they used, he could understand why some tools worked better than others. The natural world was magical, but the person-made world was rational.
The triumph of modern science is a person-made world that is as magical as the natural world.
The rationalist project to reduce the natural world to the well understood human-made world failed. We know that we don’t know and must make assumptions.
And if it only ended at science, the rest of us could live in a perfectly rational and understood world.
But the engineers created a magical world that defies understanding. Consider the micro-processor. It represents several hundred thousand person-years of engineering and science (if not millions). No one can understand every piece of it, because there is not enough time in a human life-time to understand it.
Or consider the reader of this blog, that the set of technologies and science to make reading this blog possible, make the Apollo project look like a ten-person startup.
So engineers must rely on faith. Things work, so we continue to use them. And we build stuff on top of them.
But unfortunately, this faith has destroyed the truth. Since no one can understand the human-made world, based on a natural world we don’t understand, then everything is based on faith.
And if we base everything on faith, then everything is magical. We believe things to be true, because they work and because no one has disproved them or because they are useful. And if some truths are useful, then others are also useful. And if all truths are contingent and based on assumptions, then …
Why then it becomes a natural slippery slope to anti-Vaxers. Their truth is just as valid as anyone else’s in their minds; they have a different faith. They have a particular faith that science is wrong. They have a particular belief that big-pharma is evil. They have a particular faith that they have been lied to.
Because it turns out that everything about our world is magical. Everything we touch works because we believe other parts work, and as long as all of our assumptions hold, things hold. But, deep down, we all know that these assumptions are fragile things, like the mathematician and their axioms. And we know that something we don’t understand could up-end them, like the Ancient Greek farmer and his belief in Helios.
Couple of thought.
First, very conceptual and deep. I think it’s mostly correct (but then again, it could all be proven false tomorrow, eh?).
Second, regarding the old knowledge of building a house. I was thinking as I was reading. In theory, I might know pretty much everything which went into building a house. Framing is just nailing boards together. Roofing? Roll out tar paper and put shingles over it. Plumbing and electrical? Wire a conduit from point A to point B and don’t let the magic fluids leak out. Problem is, I know virtually none of these well enough to actually build a house. I can understand what someone is doing when they’re doing it but I can’t reproduce the artifact on my own. It seems there are two levels of knowledge here. I guess I’d say building a house is understandable, even if I can’t actually do it myself.
And finally to the third point. I think this is why we have such usability problems in computers and many other systems. They’re so complicated and software is so malleable that most people have no tools to understand how a software system will work. Thus, anything it does is essentially arbitrary, unpredictable, and could change tomorrow.
My classic example is my home stereo system (yes, I still have one). It’s got a receiver with a bunch of buttons on the front. I’ve got a reasonably good mental model of the switches and circuits so I can predict what each button will do. My family members have no such model. They are asked to simply remember “to watch Netflix, push button A, B, and C (and if you’re lucky, you’ll see some feedback you did this right and the movie will appear). To watch Amazon, push buttons A and C but not B. Why not B? It’s technical.”
I pity people who try to make sense of today’s world who can’t or don’t learn to pick up mental models of how these systems work. It’s so easy for us engineers, mostly, and we forget that’s not a skill or interest non-software developers have.
Great points!
But even as engineers we rely on faith that electricity works the way it does. I don’t really understand how anything below the basic atomic model of 100 years ago works …
I do like your comment on usability. Software is so detached from the physical world to be almost terrifying.
I find it disturbing that my children have access to a smartphone, but no access to a Commodore 64 or an IBM PC running DOS. There’s always another level below, but if you once get to a sufficiently fundamental level, you will not forget that. You don’t need to get to first principles for everything. And you will recognize machines for what they are and not let them control you (or be controlled via machines).
Uri, the notion of fundamental axioms is a good principle you suggest. That for any discipline there are some fundamental axioms that underpin everything and beyond that point is irrelevant or not necessarily useful to understand.
The only things you know for certain are through faith and common sense.