We are living in a miraculous but
paradoxically perilously fissured world. So, on the one side we have such
amazing technological development, access to information and connection to the
world that was inconceivable even few decades back, we live incredible time
that seems a miracle if you trace two hundred thousand years of homo sapiens
evolution. Access to the world is no longer controlled by few, every voice has
an opportunity to express and be heard -a qualitative leap from past, they can
learn and organize and assert. Traditional forms of authorities and feudal
control is getting diluted as virtual world have progressive ramifications on
real world. World has become much aware in the last one decade than ever
before. Well, people could have taken this path to make world a better place,
and really did take some firm steps towards progressive values systems and
nurturing inclusive institutions facilitated by technology. What we see however
is consolidation of worst expressions of technology tapping primal values and
atavistic concerns that bypass progress humanity made in last many centuries
and hard-won humanistic values. Primed in extractive systems neoliberal
capitalism and values extrapolated from fantastical religions and juvenile
faiths we are being pushed into perilously fissured world. Bad players use these
latest technology and access to vitiate the situation for greed and control.
They viciously nurture extractive systems to trap people and spread misery.
Possibilities of awareness is reduced to targeted disinformation and reality
obfuscating misinformation, apathy and irresponsible ways. Life threatening
conspiracy theories are spread with earnestness and cunning logical reasoning
that impress many. As the world gets polarized, we find on the one side liberal
posing dark empath sociopaths and on the other self-assured god ordained
psychopaths. We see this template replicated all across the world in varying
degree. Psychopaths deem themselves as born to lead hence aren’t really
bothered about people or nuances, they use latest technologies as opportunity
to access to blatantly control by whatever means -an Orwellian world if you
will. While dark empaths are sociopaths who consider themselves as blessed
exceptional people but have to relentlessly pose to gain trust and capitalize
opportunity, they work to nurture extractive system for benefits -a kind of
Huxleyian world that lull us into complacency since we assume they are here to
uphold cherished values and humanistic concerns. They playact with semantics
but are least involved, and as people loose trust in dark empath sociopaths –
who see themselves as savior in increasingly chaotic world they unleash as
liberal while systematically diluting existential concerns of vulnerable people,
they feel insecure hence give way to authority figure -the psychopaths consolidate
feudal and regressive forces. The shift can be debilitating if the democratic
institutions are not resilient which ofcourse is crucially hinged to democratic
ideals and liberal thoughts percolating to common people and their interaction
to the world. The reason why transactional neoliberal value system deeply violate
progressive society so does fantastical ways of religions that isolate from
surrounding reality. An unthinking mind sentimentally connected to feudal
institutions seeks associations in ascriptive association and is insecure,
incapable to assimilate challenges of progressive world hence will find solace
in authoritarian patriarchal leaders. Rise of authoritarian is on primal need
for safety and not to be mistaken for progressive evolved values of seeking authority
of facts to decipher reality for better possibility. The need for authority is
to protect their fantasy world, an evolutionary mismatch trapped in thousands
of years of brutal hunter gatherer life that seek ‘strong father figure’ leader to sought
out problems and take control. Primitives like to wallow in the muck while simultaneously
constructing fantasy of spectacular past and nostalgia for this self-consuming
myth -very likely genetic imprint traces reminiscing exhilaration of chasing
wild pigs or grand celebration of bringing down a mammoth. These evolutionary
juveniles haven’t gained sophistication to become aware of enlightened world
and possibilities of present.
Science is an effective
intellectual tool that helped humanity make breathtaking progress and dramatic
conceptual understanding in past century, but in recent times these itself are
questioned and have become ‘totem of polarization’. The authors try to clarify
scientific methodology and attempt to create framework of understanding for
common people in tackling and deciphering the challenges in daily life. It is a
meticulous work of distinguishing measuring tool from thinking tool, creating
parameters for evaluating information on what we know and what we believe. This
thinking tool of science is an asset that helped us to make immense progress and
hence can help in creating inquiring inquisitive mind to decipher the reality.
I recall when we studied science in school we didn’t study ‘thinking tool of
science’ that would have helped us to extend this brilliant progress of thinking
into everyday understanding of realities of life. This book therefore is also
an important document for creating new insight into scientific thinking in
formative years. Vibrant societies should be able to capitalize on these to
create progressive young minds. Meanwhile the concern now is urgent nature of
polarized manipulated world we live in and how systematic sincere dealing of
issue with progressive tool will create understanding. This is third millennium
thinking.
The book is quite readable and in
easy-to-understand language with not much jargons. Neatly divided into five
chapters, it deals with science as a tool in building trust in shared
understanding of reality hence can guide us in our daily decision making. Good
decision making depends on accurate information from reliable experts, a
careful consideration of values, and a structure that places the authority to
make decisions in the hands of those who will be affected. Science doesn’t work
by magic; it works by design. Authority of science comes from relentless self-questioning thus
science essentially is a social phenomenon, but a truth hunting collaborative
social phenomenon, not a coercive one. It helps us identify shared reality out
there in the world. Finding out causation by looking at correlation under the
condition of an experiment, standardizing factors. An experiment is when you
come from outside the whole system and interfere with to see what happens.
Science is not about certainty nor brittle binary views but probabilistic
thinking. Probabilistic thinking helps
us to be honest about our knowledge and keep us open minded to productively use knowledge that is uncertain. Probabilistic stance reflects the relationship
between our imperfect human understanding and the actual shared reality (well
wasn’t it Wittgenstein who said scientific truths could never have absolute
validity). In a world of inherent uncertainty scientists are calibrated. We
want our experts to be 100percent correct but that is not possible, but we can
and should seek experts close to 100percent calibrated. In an uncertain world,
we should prize experts who are calibrated. Experts needs to calibrated enough
to be trustworthy, but specific enough to be informative. Honest and realistic
assessment of confidence can preserve trust in expertise. There is a chapter on
how we are fooled by a pattern in random noise, or sieving more data to up the
odds that random noise will show some hunted data. Probabilistic thinking,
statistically significant, improving predictive/forecasting tools so on are
path to understanding. Statistical uncertainty and systematic uncertainty are
something most of us are aware of and helps us to identify biases in our
decision making.
The world needs scientific
optimism -the can-do spirit that the problem at hand is going to be solvable, tempered
with measured healthy skepticism. It is to keep alert, alive, and motivated
despite setbacks, a cultural antidote to cynicism. I found ‘order of
understanding’ quite interesting, not all causal factors in real world problem are
equally important -the classification of ‘first order’, ‘second order’, factor
so on, while framing an issue. ‘Fermi approximation’ process, a quick and easy
on the spot estimation approach, a random estimation based on familiar easier
to do as an anchor to probe. An approach to intelligent approximation is a valuable
insight. If unsure you can atleast create upper and lower bound estimation, a
band of possibility. There is an interesting chapter on what prevents learning
from experience, indeed experience is a weak predictor of job performance. The
psychological factors -habits, biases-the one that makes systemic error/ingroup/dispositional/confirmation,
available heuristic, can be overcome with scientific methods that includes
debiasing techniques like consider the opposite/alternative so on. How science
is misused provides important perspective on growing distrust among common
populace. From science not done well to pathological science to pseudo-science
(uses language of science -the terminology, great sounding words, but not the
activity -based in India we see these charlatans all the time!) to fraudulent
science. Of these, pathological science is particularly worrisome as it invests
in exciting result ignoring data that suggests otherwise. Trying out different
analysis until you get the result you want (p hacking, it is not cherry
picking) adds to the problem. There are examples cold fusion claims (or recent
superconductivity claim -not mentioned in the book but I recall being excited
about it) so on.
The stimulating part of the book is
the discussion on science methodologies -mental hygiene techniques, that are
quite new (and have not even spread to different field of science) so the
‘readers of the book have a chance to get ahead of science world’. ‘Ignorance
is bliss solution’ or blind analysis removes biases and remain honest. Blinding
is now tried in workplace to reduce discriminations. Blind analysis based
expert opinion in court proceeding is suggested. Next, we have ‘open science
movement’ to improve credibility and integrity in scientific practice. Preregistration,
multilab investigation, open science badges so on are safeguard against confirmation
bias. The book move to collective, the groupthink and mob behavior, resonation
from social media to real life implication. There are two different kinds of
influence in groups, informational influence (strength in argument -ability to
merge collective knowledge of the group and use it to reason to a solution) and
normative influence (strength in numbers -deference to large block or faction,
hence amplify shared bias -which can be removed by diversity). For argument to
work there is a need for some kind of shared conceptual system for identifying
strong and weak argument and a shared way of assessing. Maths, logic, common
knowledge etc. are shared conceptual systems. Good scientific theories can
serve as shared conceptual system, provided they have strong internal logic and
support of external evidence. Shared conceptual systems can help build trust
and platform for interaction. Another is the issue of emotions or extraneous
factors that influence; decisions are not based on getting facts of the world
alone. The book discusses with example on separating fact from values. Facts
are important but claims of fact (fact stories) can be shaped by societal
forces making it difficult to separate fact from values. Self-affirmation in
case of value conflict is an interesting study, and has been implemented in
schools to help students absorb new information. Reflective equilibrium between
our judgement about particular case and our judgment of general rules/principles
and prioritizing helps in value conflict resolution. There is a role for
iterative deliberation concerning values just as there is iterative
deliberation to adjudicate among different sources of evidence and expertise
when determining facts. Ofcourse deliberation is an important challenge of our
time. We have become aware of dangerous potential of the internet to polarize
and confuse public conversation; but not yet taken advantage of opportunities
for better collective thinking that it might present. Our collective challenge,
indeed grand challenge of the times we live in, is to invent new tools that
enables to think together productively and make us successful collectively. Productive
collective thinking is the immediate need to tackle global challenges we face,
importantly to create productive collective thinking environment. Deliberative
Polling (developed in Stanford ‘Deliberative Democracy Lab’ by JimFishkin) is a
transformative tool for productive collective thinking. So is Scenario Planning,
to develop a range of possible futures so that we can test how robust decisions
are in these contexts, identifying pending important decisions that need to be
made, a useful tool for stimulating careful thinking and planning for future -a
frequent goal for collective thinking and decision making. Good Judgement
Project (GJP) -a statistical method distilling ‘wisdom of crowd’, is a
forecasting technique that is effective collective thinking in action. Collective
thinking experiments are now extended to online, DebateCafe is a demonstrative
system encouraging people to enter best arguments on both side of the issue to
win place in leaderboard. Another is to decompose elements of discussion in,
say, news article into small testable part. Does this sentence show evidence of
clear probabilistic thinking or is it a probabilistic thinking mental trap like
p hacking? Does it have capacity to think the opposite or is it a classical
confirmation bias selection of evidence? These could be important addition to
education curriculum. Citizen-Scientist are set up to share these kinds of
analysis. We want science to not only increase our understanding but also solve
problem that is not confined to scientific field but ones with social
ramifications.
Managing with continuous adjustment,
an iterative solution in an experimenting society that isn’t a static structure
but ongoing process, a shift from factual to probabilistic thinking, multilevel
nuanced views of emergent problems through constant reality tracking rather
than appearing smart expert, zero sum to increase the pie for win-win, involving
and trying new innovative collective thinking tool taking advantage of latest technologies,
building and rebuilding of trust network, not attention (seeking) economy but
trust (building) economy that nurtures new ways to reward open minded
collective thinking, experiment with incentives and penalties to reform the
pollution of cognitive commons. This is new millennium thinking. A new kind of
enlightenment for a new millennium in which we advance global human family.
A brilliant much needed book. Buy it. Read it. Think about it. Try to apply it.
