Democracy and the Asylum

There is more information available to us than ever before.  We moved from oral story traditions to the printed word, then to widely available media and education and now to the internet being in everyone's pocket.  The access and volume of information available to us is increasing exponentially.  At the same time, people's capacity to interpret information is not increasing.  We are as smart as we have ever been (perhaps even a little less so).  With busier lives we have less time to analyse that information; overall our capacity is probably diminishing. 

Depending on your point of view, we may be drowning in information.  There must have been a knowledge inflection point in history, perhaps sometime in the 19th or 20th century, when the available information matched our ability to absorb and analyse it.  Before that people were ignorant, knowledge blocked to them.  During this inflection point, people were not perfect, but they were able to understand the world around them and attempt to act on it in an informed way.  The gap between their knowledge level and reality closed.  After this point, we are not necessarily worse off, but we are at risk of being overwhelmed.  We have to consume and analyse so much to stay informed of our environment and we may not be able to keep up.  As a crutch, we may rely on authorities, experts or snap decisions.  They can all lead us astray - intentionally if they are another person, or from ignorance if its a decision based on missing information. 

Democracy is decisions.  Specifically, who makes them; the deimos or the government.  We always face a risk that we may make bad decisions.  But now, because we may not have the time to properly analyse the choices available to us the risk may be higher than expected.  If we do decide to trust voices of authority, we are back at square one, since we have to analyse them and decide if they are trustworthy.  They may be biased or have hidden agendas.  Finally, making snap decisions, often based on prejudices, while expedient, can also lead to errors. 

The cynic might say that; life is a farce, and that democracy is little more than the lunatics running the asylum.  How true that statement is depends on a few things.  When in history are you looking? What is the governing system?  How well informed were the people; was it around the time of the knowledge inflection point?  Most western countries are representative republics, not full democracies.  For a full democracy you would need proportional representation, ideally with a referendum on every decision and law proposed by the government.  Is it a problem that we don't have full democracies?  No.  At the same time, we should not take for granted the voting process in electing representatives that align to our values (for example MPs in the UK).

We need to keep one thing in mind.  There is a gap between the knowledge of the overall population and the reality of any situation (as best as we can understand it).  That knowledge gap can be on anything; for which party to vote for, climate change or how to balance the economy.  And this gap is a variable.  If the gap is getting wider, people will find it harder to figure out what the right choices are.  How close we become to the metaphorical lunatics becomes uncomfortably relevant.  I don't have an easy answer - AI perhaps but that isn't an answer.  Be mindful, critical, take the time to analyse things and don't be suckered in by any person or group.  The last place we want to end up living in, is the asylum.  

What is science?

Have you ever heard an argument, between somebody speaking about religion and the other person speaking about science? Arguments like this are pointless, but not for the reason you might expect.

First of all, science and religion are not the opposite of each other. If they were opposites then many of history's greatest scientists would not have been religious. To name just a few of them: Copernicus, Galileo, Cantor, William of Ockham, al Khwazari, Newton, Mendel and so on. 

Today, scientists are more likely to be atheist than the general population. In the US for example the general population is 60 percent religious while scientists and university professors are only 15 percent religious. That there are any scientists that are religious is proof that you can be both! The fact that both are possible shows that there is a logical operation in play and a relationship of superposition similar to a Venn diagram.

Fig. 1: If I was a 4 year old,  and I wanted to draw a Venn diagram displaying all knowledge,  and by extension,  all scientific evidence for or against any theory, and all evidence yet to be discovered,  I am POSITIVE it would look like this, and be this messy.... 

Science is a process as well as an 'entity' or a set of facts and theories. Because of this, it is possible to follow a scientific process while having certain religious beliefs.

That process is called the scientific method. Look it up. It's actually a very intuitive process you follow most of your life. Science merely makes it mandatory - a kind of accreditation or standard that has to be adhered to if you expect your theories to be viewed with the same trust and credibility as anyone else's who follows the same method. The scientific method is really relevant to every day life as well as LHC experiments:

Theory > experiment > evidence > proof OR create new theory

The scientific method in more detail. Dig it. 

Think about something simple: how you find your keys - possibly if they are in a bag - seriously:

1 - Theory: my keys are in that bag.
2 - Experiment: check in the bag. 
3 - Evidence: you either see them in the bag or you don't*.
*Let's pretend its a small bag and it is brightly lit!
4a - Proof: you see the keys.  Hooray! You found them. 
4b - New theory: you don't see the keys; try the kitchen drawer next (1 again)...

The process repeats - eventually you find the keys but now you have to find your wallet, so you use the same process again!

Second, its important to realise that both studies (religious and scientific) are the same in how they are structured - notwithstanding science using the scientific method. Science is a set of  theories and facts contributed by many scientists, just the same as religious texts are compilations of religious theories by religious authors. The differences are in the relative sizes of their respective sets (see Venn diagram in fig.1).

To help us understand what's the relationship between then and the difference in their scale, let's define the words.

Religion; is a set of beliefs about the nature of the universe. A belief can also be a theory or an idea or an axiom.

These beliefs are usually codified into a book; for example, see the Bible, the Koran or the Veydas. This codification is very similar to the way science collects the evidence it gathers. The main difference is that scientific literature is constantly evolving, rather than fixed in its dogma but let's pass this for this discussion.

Science; is the systematic collection of knowledge gained by the testing of theories by verifying them using observed evidence.

Science is fundamentally a recorded theory system, the same as religion except in the crucial difference that it requires each proposed theory be proven or refuted, using evidence. Further, science is therefore the collection of all theories, true or false, with the distinction being that the false theories are marked as such, and not followed directly.

So as Aristotle said; all Greeks are men, but not all men are Greeks, so there is a difference between the scale of religion theory and scientific theory. Science, by its holistic nature encompasses all religious theories. Religious theory is a subset of theories within the wider scientific literature of all proposed and yet to be proposed theories about the universe. 

Where the scientific method finds a religious theory to be true the two will coexist happily without any problem. If a theory is found to be refutable then it will not be followed. This is where scientists may be pushed to become atheists, as they find religious theories and beliefs that they one had to be refuted and they are forced to turn away from them.

The small portion of scientists that are religious are those that have not found their religious beliefs refuted by their knowledge of science in the area that they are familiar in. Equally, a religion that can be proven true, by using the scientific method (evidence), would be completely comfortable existing alongside science and be followed by scientists.

If there is a point in this, its that any religion can be followed by anybody, barring harm to others (J S Mill), as people are free to choose a system of life that they like. 

What people with religious beliefs must do, if they want to introduce their beliefs to others as being true, is engage others on the same intellectual level - using the scientific method - to show that their beliefs are true, on the basis of facts and evidence.  

To fail to do this is to go from faith, to fantasy and fanaticism. If this happens then a debate is pointless and likely to only annoy,  go nowhere and cause more alienation between the parties.

Hubble Deep Field View

More important is a personal point. For me, science is a spiritual experience. I have a stronger affinity for and a feeling wonder when I study and discover new ideas in science. My spirit is strongest when I'm learning.

My mind is boggled by the fact that this is happening a million times, simultaneously, every day, all day, in my body and in everyone else's.

The mechanism by which tight DNA spirals uncurl and unzip, ready for  replication; watching a flower opening, preparing for pollination; and images of the early galaxies in our young universe, the most distant objects we could ever observe, all make me feel connected to the grand structure of the cosmos and our fragile existence in it.

REALLY ancient history... 

The colossal Carl Sagan put it profoundly and perfectly in these two quotes;

Skeptical scrutiny is the means, in both science and religion, by which deep thoughts can be winnowed from deep nonsense.

The brain is like a muscle. When it is in use we feel very good. Understanding is joyous.

Go on. Exercise your brain.

Look up the scientific method. See if you already use it every day without even realising it, and thank you for reading.