We've created a world that is far too complicated for our little minds.
If you look around at those most important issues that need to be addressed, in many cases they are just too hard to figure out. Even the people who are paid to figure these things out can't figure them out.
This can't be a good thing.
Here are two examples. Both are difficult to understand, are full of complexities and uncertainties and non-linearity's, and do not lend themselves readily to tidy conclusions.
The first is global warming. What struck me when I first started reading about the global warming debate was that there really is quite a bit of uncertainty about the whole thing. There is not necessarily uncertainty about whether the world is warming, that can be easily measured, but there is definitely uncertainty about how quickly it is warming, whether this warming is secular or cyclical, what the causes of the warming are, and how strong of an effect each of those causes has.
Its no fault of scientists. The problem isn't lack of research or resources. Its just a very complicated phenomenon. The weather is the result of so many disparate events, some of them reinforcing, some of them dampening, some of them difficult to measure, some not very well understood at all, and all of them difficult to separate from each other in a way that allows us to discretely analyze the problem so as to be intelligible to our minds.
Of course, the good scientists realize this. Their argument, and the one I am sympathetic with, is that such uncertainty is to be embraced, and that decisions should be made based on probabilities and the impact of potential outcomes. This is how you deal with things you don't know.
But the uncertainty can be wielded as a weapon. The skeptics use the uncertainty to discredit the idea entirely. They use uncertainty to advocate a continuation of the status quo. We don't know for sure, so why should we change?
But that debate is for another time. This post is about the complexity of our world, and how its just too complex for our little minds. Global warming is just one example of this.
The globalized economy is another.
I read a lot about economics. Its fun, and what makes it fun is that its so puzzling. Most economic problems that we face today have given rise to a number of conflicting theories regarding them and not much agreement as to which of the theories hold the most water. The phenomena are just too complex to understand.
Take for example the US current account deficit. This has the potential to be a major problem in the future. If you listen to some commentators, the correction of the current account deficit will lead to higher interest rates, a falling dollar, the slippage of an economy, a fall in house prices, and just general economic disorder all around.
If you listen to others, the current account deficit will benignly correct itself with a readjustment of exchange rates that will have little effect on consumers or businesses.
And you can argue the point back and forth till the cows come home. There is at least a degree of validity to the arguments on either side. So you won't get agreement. Hell, there isn't even agreement as to what the current account deficit is caused by. We have this thing happening that's causing more then 50 million dollars an hour to leave the US and we can't even agree on why.
The point is, the whole system is too complicated for us to understand and drawn definitive conclusions about. We've created a monster.
This is true on the macro-level, as I have just demonstrated, and it is true on the micro-level of each of our little lives.
We drive vehicles that most of us don't understand, take out mortgages based on interest rates we don't understand, work at jobs where we don't understand the consequences or outcomes of our work, elect politicians who make decisions on issues that we don't understand based on papers and research and graphs that we don't understand... I mean, if this isn't the friggin dark age, I don't know what is.
Its not the age of information, or technology, or any of that crap. Its an age of ignorance. An age of not understanding the world.
So tell me how we're supposed to control it?
- posted by Sigurd5/06/2005 11:32:00 AM