Chicxulub asteroid impact (65 mya) (uncertainty in the real world, sometimes impossible to anticipate)
(credit: Wikimedia, http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/releases/98/yucatan.html)
17. A Third Universal Trait and its Attached Beliefs/Values
A third basic trait of reality is uncertainty.
It is a trait of reality because of the quantum nature of matter.
Quantum Theory is very difficult to understand for most folk, but its presence in our lives is not. The quantum uncertainty in matter simply means in ordinary lives that life is not only hard (entropy), but also is run by probabilities, never certainties. We must face a life that is uphill, but harder yet, it always contains shocks. The past is fixed, but the future is not.
But the future is also not made of chaos. It is filled
with possible events that are degrees of likely, unlikely, and remotely
possible. The remotely possible ones are things we didn’t plan for because we couldn’t plan for them. We ignore some possibilities because they
seem very unlikely to occur or sometimes because they are literally inconceivable
for us. Who could prepare for an airborne form of ebola?
Quantum Theory tells us that the events of
the next century and the next minute aren’t fixed in unalterable sequences.
They are always governed by probability. The crucial insight comes at this point:
in this picture, humans act to intervene in the sequences of events around them;
we act to alter the odds of the events that are likely to happen in the next minute or century. We try
constantly to make events around us come out in ways that will be advantageous
for us.
I can’t guarantee that my hunt or my crop
will be successful, but I can do things to improve the probability that my
efforts will lead to success. Sometimes we have very little capacity to affect
the odds of what is going to happen next. But at our level of resolution, i.e. the
level of “medium-sized dry goods” (A. J. Ayer), we often do have at least some ability
to influence upcoming events.
Know the tracks of the deer from those of
the elk. Know their droppings. Know the area. Then, your hunt will succeed more
often because you’ll choose to act in ways that improve the odds of your hunt’s
being a success. Odds are you can kill, gut, and drag a deer alone today. But
elk? Much harder. If you kill one, then have to leave it overnight, scavengers will likely get it. Track the deer.
Or if wireworms get into your yam field, learn
how to trap them in pieces of potato, then the next day, throw the potato bits in
the fire. With this trick in your tool kit, odds are that you’ll bring in good crops
on a reliable basis.
Understanding uncertainty gives us more than wisdom and courage can. It tells us that we can act in ways that use the odds, anticipate what’s likely to happen in a minute or a year, and often influence what’s going to happen. Uncertainty is scary, but on the positive side, understanding uncertainty tells us we are – to a very useful degree – free. At our level in reality, we can influence how our future is going to turn out.
Understanding uncertainty also tells us
that what’s going to happen next can, occasionally, be an event that we’re unprepared
for. Our total bank of wisdom, individual and tribal, may not have prepared us
for even the possibility of a huge asteroid hitting the earth. Or a patch of ice causing us to skid over a cliff face. Life brings rude shocks. But the balancing side of this truth is that extreme catastrophes
are rare, and even when one hits, we’re still partly free. We may improvise in
a few hours. Use our machines to dig deep bunkers, stock them, then live
in them till our climate recovers. We put snow tires on for sound reasons.
We are not bound into sequences of events
beyond all human control, and there is not just one single possible future for
all parts of our universe. We do have a degree of freedom, especially at our
level of resolution. Not the atomic level, nor the cosmic, but our level of
medium-sized, dry goods. And deer and dry wood.
In response to the basic
uncertainty/probability of events in reality, all vigorous tribes have learned,
over time, to live by values that enable a tribe to adjust its way of life to handle
shocks. The profoundest uncertainty-driven values are freedom and love.
Love balances freedom. Charity balances entrepreneurship.
Why do these values, in dynamic
equilibrium, help us to survive? Because in a probabilistic world, a tribe
survives better if it contains lots of different kinds of humans with diverse
kinds of skills and ways of thinking. That’s freedom in the real world of whole tribes. But
freedom without a balancing value too often leads tribes that live by unrestrained
freedom to break up into hostile factions and scatter.
Love as a value lived daily, builds a tribe
that is pluralistic and resourceful. It contains lots of diverse kinds of people.
A tribe with strong love-your-neighbor values is more resourceful than any
lacking those values. Worse yet, a tribe that aims to build a monoethnic population
of “our kind ” will always be poorer in ideas than a more pluralistic tribe. Nations
running under hard tribalism lose.
However, courage, wisdom, and freedom, with
economies that are market-driven and full of complex, labor-intensive, cleverly
designed goods and services, are still not enough. Successful tribes/nations
also need the balancing value called ‘love’.
Smart ideas, once in a while, can be “game-changing”. In a generation, a good idea can totally alter life for a tribe that finds it. A tribe raises its odds of finding powerful ideas when it contains many really diverse kinds of people. In fact, some of our most powerful ideas have come from minorities and eccentrics. For example, Newton and Einstein were likely both autistic. Einstein was also a Jew. Alan Turing was a homosexual, as were Newton, Tchaikovsky, and many others. The society that embraces those who are "different" gets the products of the labors of these men.
It is important to note here that no
individual leader, no matter how versatile, can ever be nearly as resourceful
as a whole tribe can; thus, the most resourceful tribes run by the value called
love. We survive better as whole tribes, long term, when we respect
others: treat them with dignity. Engage our lives with theirs. Then, our tribe
gets more good ideas. Many different types of people, who treat each other with
respect, form a more resourceful tribe. (Centuries had to pass before the West
came to value its scientists and merchants. But then it did.)
So? Love your neighbor. Not in spite of his
strange ways, but because of them. One day in an unexpected crisis, those ways may save your life. And at a minimum, if you find their ways
unnerving, respect their right to live in the way they want, as long as it
shows you the same.
It is useful to note as an aside here,
that in modern Science, many who pose as ‘gurus’ disagree with even the basic
idea of freedom. They claim humans are not free even to a small degree. (Laplace
thought this way. Likely Newton also. Many more in science in these times are
also determinists.)
These ‘determinists’, as they’re called, believe
all events are shaped by earlier events in ways that are very complex, but that
nevertheless are set. They believe even the changes in brain chemistry that
humans go through as they observe events around them cause humans to respond to
those events in fixed sequences that guarantee that what is going to happen
next is inevitable.
In short, determinists believe there is no
free will.
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