Ideology vs. Methodology
~ yeah, I’ll probably offend most of you… ~
Strangely, people who are never held accountable for designing something with measurable performance continue to insist that a story which is simple enough to fit inside one brain is miraculously accurate at predicting the future — you want ‘X’? Gotta do ‘Y’ to get there, says Ideology. Fundamentally, this is hubris: “I heard something, and it sounded right to me, so I’ll assume that it’s true. I don’t even need to check reality.” When someone decides that they already know, they don’t look, and that is the seed of ignorance (literally, ‘to ignore’).
Contrast the conceit of Ideology with the humility of Methodology: “I do NOT already know all the details and peculiarities of this vast, complicated universe. I do NOT know how to predict it, except under a few controlled circumstances. If I want to find out what will happen when I do ‘Y’… I’ll have to actually do it.” Methodology does experiments, using ONLY non-paradoxical tools. Wait, what?
Imagine I have a calculator that has a new algorithm for its processor. I plug-in “5x3” and it spits-out: “14”. Uh? Weird… I thought it was 15. On a whim, I type “3x5” instead: “12”. Whoa! This tool should give the same answer both times. When I see that the calculator gave two different answers to the same problem, then I don’t even need to know the answer to the arithmetic before I can conclude: “This algorithm is goofy and unreliable. I can’t use it to find truth.”
Let’s watch this non-paradoxical criterion in action:
Pascal’s Wager
A guy walks into a bar, and says to the bartender: “You have two options — believe in God and follow His commandments, or be an atheist. If you are an atheist, and you are correct, then you die and nothing happens. No gain, no pain. Yet, if your doubting duff dies and winds-up in hell, you’ll regret your insistence on evidence and reason. In contrast, as a faithful believer, if you are wrong, then your consciousness evaporates; no harm, no foul. While, when your pious patoot parks in-front of Saint Peter, sweet rewards!” Thus, spake Pascal in centuries past, you should believe in God and follow the commandments, in order to get into heaven.
But, wait — that argument is a sort of ‘algorithm’: you feed a set of thoughts into it, and the argument works them over until they take a new shape — the conclusion, the revealed truth! So, if this argument is a reliable method for finding truth, it ought to NOT give conflicting conclusions. Yet, the argument’s applicability relies ONLY on this ‘threat of torture/promise of reward upon death’ component. The argument still applies equally well when substituting for a different God, with a conflicting set of ethics. Using Pascal’s Wager, you would conclude that, in order to avoid THAT God’s hell, you must ALSO follow their commandments… but, they are opposed in places, and what about when both of these Gods’ commandments include “no other God before me”!? Uh-oh. Pascal made a paradox. (And, he preempted Roko’s Basilisk!) Which, regardless of how the universe was actually created, is proof that his method for finding truth does not work reliably.
For two thousand years, most everyone who was educated in Europe learned from the trivium and quadrivium — the ‘Core Curriculum’ of the age. They learned logic and the fallacies, which are the commonly-identified erroneous methods for finding truth. Unfortunately, the modern school system was only designed to teach arithmetic, handwriting, spelling, and memorization, because they needed plenty of scribners for burgeoning business services. Schools don’t focus on fallacies. Which is why politicians get so much mileage out of these errors in reasoning. They need gullible hubris.
So, let’s look at Ideology, again: Two political parties argue for decades, thwarting each other at every turn, bemoaning and dragging their feet, and conveniently, when their plans fail, they point at the other side. Our institutional heroes saw this bickering as inevitable, and resigned themselves to balance these competing corruptions and power plays by canceling-out, preferring inaction. Meanwhile, your pocket has a sandwich of rare elements that links you to all information, business, entertainment, and people on Earth, for fractions of a penny apiece, being manufactured for less than the price of airfare. One method: stagnation for a quarter millennium. Other method: 60 years generating a 40 MILLION-fold improvement.
Don’t credit capitalism with that one — capitalists make most of their money from advertising, rents, and financial management, subsidies, and litigating patents. Bankers didn’t design high-def cameras smaller than a booger by asking their Austrian-school Ideology to predict what would work. Engineers and scientists, by performing experiments and designing prototypes, did that. And, they compared the results from all of them, to select whichever worked best, regardless of initial preference or preconceptions.
Flord Modors
What would you think of a car company that sketched a new car body design: a survey showed that a lot of older people liked how it looked, and so they immediately began producing and assembling, shipping, selling this new car? No prototype, no crash tests. No competing designs or review teams. Just… looked good, make some! Worse: by some perversion of the social contract, this car company has a MONOPOLY on cars in your country. You and everyone else are required to abandon your old car, and pay cash for this new car, which you MUST drive. Oh, and because there were no alternatives, endurance tests, no quality control, mitigation of wear on parts: folks are watching tires roll off their axle, engines ignite the fuel-injection lines, brake-pads shatter… and people die. Yet, the company does not make any effort to see if their product works, long after sale to all — it’s up to journalists and doctors to notice the rash of fatalities. Even then, the company’s response: “Well, good luck electing some challenger to the Board of Directors in 6 years — we’re sticking to our policy until you force our management out!” That’s government legislation, right?
“We have a story! We know the future! The ONLY way to get what we need is to…” Your goals, concerns, virtues; there, we have common ground. I see no reason to invalidate them — we would be better-served, all of us, if we included ALL concerns and interests in our evaluations. There’s no reason to ignore every concern voiced by 49% of the population! However, as soon as you use the story that fits inside your head to predict which WAY to achieve those virtuous goals, then we have a problem. Left, right, center, all become a Tyranny of Ignorance.
Which way should we use, to reach our goals? What sort of government policy might work? Try many ways, at least a few times each, in detail; double-blind, with controls, representative samples, few independent variables, independent review, public disclosure; measure all you can, compare, and continue re-evaluation as circumstances change. Later, check to see if your ‘best solution’ is still working — measured according to public goals, not legislators’ veiled standards of approval — and if it’s not, then you immediately halt that policy and review alternatives. Not by selective enforcement or waddling commissioners. As much as possible, eliminate gate-keepers who operate according to private strategies and whims. Let evidence decide amongst policy implementations. Better than measuring none of it. That’s why bridges don’t fall down as often, anymore. Fewer shipwrecks and milder, ahem… plagues.
(I should also note: we cannot measure everything; the most important stuff is immeasurable. Yet, those matters are not ones of policy — they are issues of ethics. And, because the political elite maintains authority primarily by aggravating the schisms on these ethical fronts, it seems an ironic, callous impropriety for government to take turns weighing violence against each side, over a matter of virtue in doubt! “I’ll punish whichever one of you loses this next election; you’ll both have a chance, eventually” — that isn’t really justice. Without a super-majority for ethical matters, my ‘druthers are that government not act.)
At its core, the attitude of the scientist is NOT “how do I get my team to win the election?” Instead — “If we find any error, any incongruity… WE ATTACK AT DAWN!” You may smirk, imagining a phalanx of labcoats firing volleys from pipettes. The comparison to heroic veterans seems farcical. And yet… tell Marie Curie that. Or Galileo. Explain to Florence Nightingale that Science isn’t at war with Ignorance.
Yeah, but who’s gonna?
The reality is, most people never perform any scientific research or mathematical proof, and they don’t ever need to design, prototype, measure and compare. No statistical analysis necessary. No assessing the validity of models. So, from the economical and ephemeral vista of each life, there isn’t a compelling reason to learn those things.
Yes, in fact, you can go your entire life with a story that predicts the future incorrectly, and you’ll be able to feel like the intelligent underdog by shunting your failures onto the opposition and labeling all evidence as conspiracy-driven lies. You will actually feel much better, day-to-day than people who recognize the idiocy of ideology, feeling trapped in a political system where their perspective on methodology seems a perpetual fractional minority. To be happy, convince yourself of whichever ‘truth’ makes you feel good, and when your ignorance destroys, you’ll glow righteous blaming the other team’s fanatics for it.
But, those few budding philosophers who bothered to read the Wikipedia page on ‘fallacy’? You should probably stop standing in the rain, trying to convince the idiots to take shelter — ‘ignorance is bliss.’ Let them enjoy themselves. Just make what they never imagined, and change the game.
