Expansion of Science and Ethics: Improving Social Systems
Global warming has been pointed out for a long time. However, it took many years to recognize it as an issue that must be addressed seriously. Moreover, it requires time to seriously consider and implement countermeasures.
On the other hand, the nature of global warming is such that the longer countermeasures are delayed, the less likely it becomes to avoid its consequences, and the more challenging the measures required. This characteristic has been evident from the beginning.
Additionally, it has been suggested that if the situation worsens beyond a certain point, it will become irreversible.
Once global warming reaches an irreversible state, the situation will deteriorate over time. It will negatively affect not just some individuals but everyone. Moreover, it will have a more significant adverse impact on future generations than on the present generation.
The solution is to take measures at an early stage before it becomes irreversible.
This logic is clear to anyone.
However, in reality, it took modern society a long time to implement substantial measures. This reveals a weakness in contemporary society.
This weakness has two aspects: understanding and values.
In this article, I will explain the weaknesses in societal understanding and values and propose the necessity of expanding science and ethics to overcome them. Additionally, I will introduce the principles of refactoring and architectural thinking as foundational approaches for this expansion.
Weakness in Understanding
Focusing on the weakness in understanding, modern society can be summarized as follows:
- Governments, corporations, and individuals make decisions based on scientific understanding.
- The scientific community provides scientific understanding to governments, corporations, and individuals.
The weakness in this structure lies in scientific understanding.
Considering the advantages of early measures against global warming, the existence of irreversible states, and its broad and permanent nature, the time required to achieve scientific understanding is too long.
Does this mean we should abandon scientific understanding? Not at all. Relying on scientific understanding is crucial for making decisions based on facts, free from misinformation, rumors, or misunderstandings.
Therefore, it is necessary to overcome this weakness without altering the structure of decision-making based on scientific understanding.
To achieve this, scientific understanding in decision-making must be made scalable according to the nature of the issue.
Example of a Building Fire
To illustrate, if smoke fills a building, those who notice the smoke should say, “You should evacuate,” and those who hear this should evacuate.
Simply stating the fact that smoke is filling the building may not lead to an understanding that evacuation is necessary without background knowledge. However, if time is spent verifying whether there is a fire, it may become too late.
Thus, it is reasonable to clearly convey the message: “You should evacuate.”
If people then spend time confirming whether there is truly a fire or calculating the likelihood of fatal consequences from delaying evacuation, they are more likely to miss their chance to escape.
A reasonable decision would be to immediately evacuate after understanding the basis of the advice to evacuate.
Critical Risk Management Index (CRM)
One proposal is the concept of a Critical Risk Management Index (CRM).
Indicators that determine whether action should be taken, based on the nature of the problem or situation, are distinct from indicators that simply reflect facts or probabilities. CRM is designed for the former purpose.
The more complex the problem, the more essential expert knowledge and understanding are for calculating such indicators.
For instance, suppose smoke is visible, and there is a 10% chance of a fire and a 10% chance of fatal consequences if evacuation is delayed. In this case, the probability of a fatal outcome is 1%.
However, unless there is a fatal risk from evacuation itself, the CRM would indicate a 100% necessity to evacuate.
CRM 100% means “it should be treated as if there is a 100% fatal outcome if no action is taken.”
If the scientific community establishes a method for calculating CRM based on probabilities from the worst and best-case scenarios, CRM can be presented as scientific understanding for various critical risks.
Of course, the calculation methods for CRM must be transparent and evidence-based.
Significance of CRM
CRM not only facilitates swift decision-making but also allows for prioritizing scientific data and probability calculations that form its foundation.
When applying the concept of CRM to more complex problems, such as competing risks or the balance of countermeasure costs, these considerations may arise.
This does not indicate a weakness of CRM but rather highlights its potential to stimulate discussions. It transcends abstract debates about structural issues in society and serves as a concrete approach to improving societal structures.
Best Effort Science
The CRM example expands the concept of scientific understanding. This does not reject existing scientific methods or demand flexibility beyond conventional standards.
Instead, it adds a framework that better meets societal demands while retaining existing scientific methodologies, thereby expanding scientific understanding.
I refer to this approach as “Best Effort Science.” It aims to provide society with useful scientific understanding to the greatest extent possible, based on available information, without compromising rationality or objectivity.
Weakness in Values
Focusing on the weakness in values, modern society can be summarized as follows:
- Governments, corporations, and individuals determine necessity based on ethical values.
- The ethics community provides ethical values to governments, corporations, and individuals.
The weakness in this structure lies in ethical values.
Considering the advantages of early measures against global warming, the existence of irreversible states, and its broad and permanent nature, the time required to make decisions based on ethical values is excessively long.
Here, too, the need to expand ethical methodologies becomes apparent.
For example, imagine detecting a fire while attending a very important meeting in a building.
If the meeting is not directly related to an immediate life-or-death matter, there should be no hesitation about whether to evacuate or continue the meeting.
If time is spent comparing the probability of fatal outcomes from the fire and the expected loss of interrupting the meeting, it might already be too late.
A rational decision would be to say, “We’ll figure out the meeting later; let’s evacuate now.”
Critical Values
One proposal here is a method of value judgment called critical values.
A critical value is a value whose loss renders all other values invalid.
For example, money is an important value. However, if a person loses their life, they cannot use money. Thus, life is a critical value, whereas money is not.
Some people might claim that losing significant amounts of money is worse than dying. Others might be willing to risk their lives for a chance at a large prize.
Therefore, critical values vary depending on the individual and the circumstances.
Furthermore, there is not always just one critical value. In many cases, multiple critical values exist, and decisions must satisfy all of them.
Significance of Critical Values
Identifying critical values simplifies and accelerates value judgments. This is because it eliminates the need to consider other values as criteria for judgment.
Additionally, critical values can be identified alongside scientific understanding, even when probabilities have not yet been determined.
Of course, critical values are neither logically nor objectively determined. Consensus-building among multiple stakeholders is also necessary.
Thus, identifying critical values requires iterative examination and step-by-step consensus-building.
This is not a weakness of critical values. Instead, it promotes discussions on how to approach such issues rationally and how societal structures and systems should be designed to support this process.
Subjective Ethics
Concepts like critical values provide a framework for making accurate value judgments based on individuals and situations.
I refer to this framework as subjective ethics.
This approach does not negate or undermine the study of ethical values. Rather, it aims to expand methodologies so that ethical research can be effectively applied to real-world value judgments in society.
Principles of Refactoring
When aiming to improve society, there is an approach that excludes existing societal frameworks and starts from scratch with zero-based thinking.
While this is a desirable approach in the thought process, it presents challenges in practical implementation. Overcoming significant resistance in reality is necessary, and the scale of sacrifices involved may also raise ethical issues.
Moreover, in a mature society, genuine wisdom is often embedded within existing societal structures. Considering all such values while proposing an entirely new framework becomes increasingly difficult as society matures.
Thus, in a mature society, it is reasonable to refine existing systems by focusing on specific issues or extending them with new mechanisms rather than entirely replacing them.
I call this the principle of refactoring, borrowing the concept from software engineering and applying it to the improvement of societal structures.
Best Effort Science and Subjective Ethics are grounded in this principle of refactoring. Rather than challenging traditional scientific and ethical methodologies, they propose methods to extend these traditions while preserving their strengths.
This enables society to continue benefiting from the wisdom of traditional methodologies while addressing their weaknesses.
Architectural Thinking
Maintaining societal structures while modifying or extending problematic aspects is an intellectually demanding task.
It requires precise analysis to overcome the complexity of social systems and the ability to understand their essential structures and meanings.
This emphasizes the importance of the ability to analyze and evaluate the architecture of societal systems. I call this approach architectural thinking.
Architecture focuses on the fundamental elements rather than the details of a system. It determines not the specific functions of a system but its overall performance.
Performance encompasses various aspects. From the perspective of social system architecture, accuracy, acceptability, responsiveness, and flexibility can be considered aspects of performance.
A society that values traditional science and ethics can be described as one with an architecture that achieves high accuracy and acceptability.
By extending this architecture to include Best Effort Science and Subjective Ethics tailored to specific issues, a societal system with greater responsiveness and flexibility can be realized.
In Conclusion
These new proposals may face resistance as deviations from traditional science and ethics. However, let me reiterate: the proposals here are neither critiques nor calls for transformation of existing science and ethics. They aim to utilize the achievements and values of traditional science and ethics while proposing extensions to address areas that are difficult to manage solely within these frameworks.
This inclusivity is essential for society to progress along new paths. The issue of global warming will continue to be a topic of debate and action. Moreover, other challenges requiring approaches based on these ideas are likely to emerge in the future.
