Division of Ideas: Is and ought to be

To wrap up this in a nice (hopefully) trilogy, I finish on a philosophical note. Why do we bother sticking with democracy when it may not even be the most effective method? I light-heartedly said in the introduction that an ethical oversight committee is a spooky thought, however it belies the more serious note: there's just something right about democracy that is missing from technocracy. I don't want to delve particularly deeply into the basic philosophical rights and wrongs of democracy but the fact remains that a population without a feeling of autonomy is a deeply unhappy and rebellious one. Maybe a clever government which gave the illusion of freedom would provide the greatest possible total happiness but I still don't like the idea (interestingly Asimov touches on this topic a few times in his short stories about the three laws). What the reality is and what we think ought to be are distinct questions, yes one informs the other but we cannot move freely between the two.

On the same theme, perhaps the splitting of is/ought is key to an effective governance. Some questions are descriptive: are humans significantly affecting the earth's climate? The answer to this question has nothing to do with ideology or morality. The question: "what should we do about the answer to the first question?" Is answerable only with a system of morality combined with some evidence. Striving toward a system where experts answer the first question and a properly informed general public answer the second is probably the least worst realistic option.

Further Reading: A better explantion of is-ought comes from Hume

Division of Ideas: Ants and Crowds

An interesting paper from Arizona State University compared the reliability of choices made by an individual and by the colony. The paper found the surprising result that when a binary choice was easier (one choice much better than another), a single ant outperformed the colony. They found this was due to the fact that ants are likely to trust the word of an ant than check the choice out themselves (after all it is more efficient). It should be noted that the effect was not huge and naturally an easier choice was still more likely to be correct. It was simply that a single ant, checking out both choices for himself was slightly more likely to make the correct choice. I would recommend checking out a summary of it, for example on national geographic (or if you have a subscription check out the paper below).

I don't wish to make a direct comparison with human sociology, naturally our social structure and psychological autonomy is vastly different. However, in a more theoretical and basic sense, I think there are some things we can draw from this. Consider the following thought experiment:

There's a tough choice, lets say: should we give the green light for a certain GM crop (say called moonlight corn)? I'm pretty confident to say that only around 1% of the general public are even vaguely qualified to begin answering the question. Far less than that for people who are directly qualified to answer the specific question of this moonlight corn. So lets say there's 1000 people who know enough about this specific crop; not too unrealistic. Next, say 5 experts think the crop should not be grown. Now consider the dissemination of information about this moonlight corn.

The first amplification of this information would be the wider scientific community, however, say that the percentages are the same for the wider group of relevantly qualified scientists. The next stage would be the media and subject specific NGOs, and herein lies the problem. Again, I stress this is an example, but the amplification process is so efficient (few people informing many) and closed (subject to only a few cultures) that it is open to bias. Here we see real potential for misamplification of information where the people deciding on important decisions aren't the ones who are best informed. This isn't even seeking to demean the general public, we simply don't have the time to properly appraise evidence and decide for ourselves and the crowd decision making process is flawed.


Reference: Ant colonies outperform individuals when a sensory discrimination task is difficult but not when it is easy www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/07/24/1304917110.abstract. Unfortunately it seems Cambridge university doesn't have a subscription, so I couldn't check out the actual paper.

Further Reading: This isn't even considering that people use their world view as a prism to view evidence (confirmation bias), demonstrates that current social systems are not the best way to make decisions about empirical evidence.

Division of Ideas: Introduction

The power of humankind to achieve great things relies squarely on our ability to divide labour. For this reason, mathematicians are not typically tasked to do needle work, after all a proper tailor would be much better with such a needle. However, this does not just apply to the production of physical objects, to turn it on it's head: a tailor is not asked to prove mathematical theorems, after all, a mathematician is much better at maths and the production of mathematical ideas. Likewise, we trust economists to determine the best fiscal policy. Obviously, there isn't perfect consensus, but why is it trusted to the mathematicians and tailors to decide which idea is correct. I'm not preaching a totalitarian technocracy but why bother asking people to vote whether they want austerity or investment? The only merit in such would be to ask the people to vote on questions of morality. Is the burden of ethical decisions best left the the majority perhaps?

Although, even in this sphere, some people know better. After all we have philosophers and ethicists who can attempt to determine the best possible morality frameworks. At worst (and realistically) they can at least improve on the logic behind our decisions. But again, I'm preaching a government with an "Ethical Oversight Committee", which is a scary idea by most standards (maybe better if we called it Minimoral). I feel I've not got anywhere at all with this, although, I don't think the exercise is a pointless one. It just seems there is a better solution than letting people make decisions they (we) know nothing about. The people really in power are the ones that shape our (the publics) ethical and economic ideas. Do we really want to let the media and our teachers shape our future?

PS: I really want that to be a rhetorical question, not me planting the answer "no" in your brain with a literary device.

The least convenient possible world

Say I'm trying to demonstrate a principle, just that principle. The obvious approach is to pick out the principle, isolate and consider it. In this regard, all analogies or example are flawed because they don't do this. By placing the problem into real life (or near to) we add extra complications. Ideally, to avoid this, we would use a kind of flowerless, dry and precise mathematical notation to describe things but this would be hard to understand and off putting. The strength of an analogy or example is that it is more easily relatable for humans. The least convenient possible world refers to illustrations of an ethical nature. Its saying, there's no easy way out of this ethical dilemma, you need to make the choice that I wanted you to make.
I guess the least convenient possible world is a plea: when I use an analogy, don't be a smart-arse or you'll miss the point. You know what point I'm trying to make, don't invent a third option which circumnavigates the Dilemma.

The virtue of difficulty

Why is maths so difficult to understand? I often wondered this as I was trying to understand various mathematical problems. There was almost an innate sense that all things should be easily solvable. It is of course my naivety which makes me think this but it reveals an interesting truth. That a problem is useful only if it is difficult. It's an obvious concept, there is no great conundrum of how to walk (for typical humans). We just do it. However, Fermat's last theorem is a problem which a large number of people and hours of time was spent on. Again an obvious concept, but I did notice an interesting conclusion.

We tend to think about certain problems and how to solve them. For example when you use your phone, you often notice hundreds of problems with the hardware and the software. "Oh if only I could solve these problems, then this would be a perfect phone." But that isn't true, as when one problem is solved, we continue to seek problems until we hit upon a hard thing again, even if it is near useless. Just think about the number of hard problems that have been solved already. Thinking up a computer for solving vastly complex calculations, life saving drugs etc. There is a practically infinite number of problems that can be invented. I may be abusing language but what I mean is: with x number of atoms, there are more problems (even useless ones) that can be invented than solved by that collection of atoms. After all, just think about badly posed, silly questions. This might be at first distressing as if we will never quite work it all out. However, I think it is somewhat refreshing: just keep plodding along and enjoy solving the mass of puzzles. With that in mind, I accept there are lots of hard problems still to go and continue spout useless shit on here instead.


PS(As in, an interesting idea that I didn't manage to shoehorn into the main text): We tend to think of Utopia as the place where all the problems are solved. On second thought however It sounds dull and boring, quite the opposite to heaven. Naturally of course then this is no longer Utopia, it would be (for humans) the optimal amount of challenge and risk/reward.

PPS(As in clarification): When I say hard task, this can include easy tasks which require some complexity to discover. For example, simple group theory is very easy but to discover and understand its significance is considerably more difficult.