My instincts to the contrary, I’m becoming an optimist! What could have wrought this transformation? A person, as it happens. The name of this magician is David Deutsch. He’s a philosopher, writer, and Visiting Professor in the Department of Atomic and Laser Physics at the Centre for Quantum Computation in the Clarendon Laboratory of the University of Oxford.
It’s not his thoughts on quantum physics that fascinate me. I have yet to understand them. Rather, it’s his enshrinement of knowledge as one of the most potent forces in the universe. Most scientists and laymen hold knowledge in much lower regard. Gravity, electromagnetism, radioactive decay, the binding force of subatomic particles — these are forces to reckon with! Ever since the Big Bang, they have dictated the course of the cosmos. Deutsch scoffs and says they’ve done no more than perpetuate 14 billion years of “The Great Monotony.” He says the cosmos didn’t get interesting until the genus Homo came along. It has been the only lifeform to concoct explanations for the world it experiences. The explanations, regardless of their correctness, constitute knowledge in Deutsch’s view. (Two years ago, I added the post “Stories” to this blog. “Stories” is Yuval Harari’s term for incorrect explanations. Deutsch would call them knowledge nonetheless.)
Deutsch assumes that in all explanations there will be a degree of incorrectness. We can think of them as occupying a gradient that goes from total bullshit to extreme accuracy. The explanation for any given phenomenon can move ever closer toward accuracy and presumably grow in its utility. For this to happen, an explanation must be buffeted continually by inspection and criticism. It must stand up to critical thinking. This rough treatment will result in rejection, replacement, or refinement. It will not result in final confirmation because the gauntlet never ends.
It follows that the accuracy of knowledge grows where civil liberty flourishes. The contrary is also true; if freedom of speech and press are threatened or suppressed, if dogmatism becomes virtue, accuracy regresses and darkness closes in. Will we ever reach a watershed moment when humanity invariably recognizes regression in the making and short-circuits it? I think so, but that moment is at best one to two centuries away. Until then, our grip on what is factual will remain tenuous, and the threat of extinction will hover over us.
It also follows that democratic societies have a survival advantage over autocratic ones. When critical thinking and novel ideas are prevalent, useful knowledge aggregates faster. Consequently, power does too. Unfortunately, no democratic society offers unequivocal equality of personhood and opportunity — at least none I know of. This is their Achilles heel, and they pay a high price for it.
One of Deutsch’s best observations is about memes and the role they play in Homo society. He uses “meme” in the sense that Richard Dawkins, the creator of the term, intended. That is, a transmissible bit of cultural information, in the same sense that “gene” is a transmissible unit of biological information. Memes have a role in the life of any animal capable of learning. For example, young chimps learn from older ones that they can get a snack by poking a grass stem into a termites’ nest. Similarly, human children learn that they can start a fire by rubbing two sticks together. It’s the “start a fire” meme in action. What makes humans special is their proclivity to focus on the results of a meme, ask what caused the results, guess at answers (pose explanations), and try to create the same results by other means. If successful, voila, a new meme is born! The progeny of the original stick rubbers realized they could make fire by creating heat, and there were all sorts of ways to do that. With millennia of persistence, they eventually discovered a way to burn hydrogen.
Knowledge has made us the consummate adapter. We live everywhere. We don’t need nests or burrows or caves or any other natural shelter. Our shelters are fabricated with heating and cooling systems, ready energy, running hot and cold water, entertainment centers, and waste disposal. Our existence and our knowledge are now inseparable, and they always will be. But suppose there were some way to decouple ourselves from rationally derived knowledge. We would have then discarded our sole defense against crap knowledge. It would be the start of a slow and horrible extinction.
Deutsch’s vision isn’t merely of a world where our knowledge ends disease, feeds billions, controls the climate, and finds a modus vivendi for world peace. No, these are paltry challenges. Why shouldn’t we also be extraterrestrial adapters? Why shouldn’t we terraform planets and moons, deflect asteroids and mine them, colonize the galaxy, and harness energy in ways that are as yet unfathomable? That very well could be our destiny. It’s where our alliance with knowledge points.
The Scratching Post 