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A Meander: Prediction vs Prescription, Science, Engineering and the Meaning of Life
Purists love to talk about what is and is not a science. Clearly, for example, physics is a science, because it allows us to offer theories, and test them against data. And we learn from the results.
By way of contrast, economics or sociology or psychology are not sciences. Of course not! Those soft squishy subjects have no real predictive power after all, right?
Not so fast. Sure, physics will tell you, with impressive accuracy, what happens when a billiard ball hits another one. But if you replace the target billiard ball with a kitten, physics is not so helpful. And if we replace the kitten with a person, then physics has nothing at all useful to tell us.
On the other hand, some of those squishier subjects, albeit with large error bars, do have some predictive powers when it comes to people. When we scare people in a pandemic, we know some of the likely outcomes. We know how people tend to react to scarcity and plenty, how they change as a result of marriage or divorce. We don’t learn these things from physics, but we can learn them from the study of mankind through these softer “sciences.”
And aren’t people ultimately more interesting than billiard balls? After all, the physical world is at least partially deterministic. The more predictable the natural world is, the more boring it is. Billiard balls, writ large or small, are still inanimate forces acting on each other.
Of course, the physical world is not really deterministic, not all the way down or all the way up. And as we leave the realm of simple mechanics, we see that the parts wherein the “hard” sciences end up unable to give definitive answers at all, resembling distributive answers that look more like statistical spreads in sociology than Newtonian certainty. In other words, science stops telling us what will happen, and instead tells us what is more or less likely to happen!
Indeed, if you come right down to it, if “All Models are Wrong, but Some Models are Useful,” then there is another variation from the math-grounded physics down through chemistry to sociology: the error bars get larger. All answers to all predictive questions in every field end up offering a statistical range of answers. The difference between physics and sociology is found not in whether the operative models are predictive, but in how large the error bars are.
“Ah!” you might say. “But at least Science is falsifiable! That is what makes the difference!”
This sounds nice. But how falsifiable is physics, really? If 97 or 99% of the mass in your galactic model is not actually directly detectable at all but is instead measurable only by its assumed effects on other objects (see Matter: Dark), then where is the falsification?
Or take Climate Change. All the models have been wrong. None have been useful. Does that stop the Science Train from continuing to double-down on nonsense? Not so far.
There is no objective scientific discipline, free from human interference and biases. We might argue that this is because people are the practitioners of science. But we cannot be sure. After all, anything can be described in more than one way, so why should there be an “objective” way to describe a leaf? In a language not bounded by human models of physics and chemistry and biology and dendrology and even poetry, is there such a thing as a “leaf”? And if there is, does it even matter?
I would like to offer that the ideal scientific metric of “predictive authority” is itself a false goal since it can never be absolutely, 100%, no-wiggle-room-whatsoever- TRUE. We instead should be very happy with an engineering standard: Either it works, or it does not.
And one of the really cool things about engineering is that there is a natural constraint on wasted time: engineers have to, sooner or later, make something that someone else will pay for. That is the true measure of a “useful model.”
Creating new things is not scientific. Engineers care about what works, not what is True. Nor do engineers, unlike, say, mathematicians, often make things that are perfect, that can never be improved-upon. Instead, I offer that engineers are doing something much more open-ended and interesting: engineers always have to keep working and growing and improving. There is no “best for evermore” mousetrap or software program or packaging plant.
In engineering, there is a falsifiable check at all times: are people paying for your product? As any study of the history of technology shows, it is not simple to predict what will work – at least not in advance. This trend holds in absolutely every field, from the internal combustion motor to cooling technologies to software languages. Dozens of people built flying machines before the Wright Brothers, and even after Orville and Wilbur broke the barrier, the next iteration in aerospace engineering did not retain the Wright approach to controlling flight.
Engineering consists of betting on the future, using all the tools we have to hand. Those tools include the tools of the harder sciences, but they also require substantial teams comprised of a vast range of human talent. A new drug requires not just biologists, but lab techs and quality teams, lobbyists, regulatory experts, marketing… and all the support staff to support them as well as all the tools used in drug development, tests, approvals, production, and distribution. The result is companies that themselves resemble biological entities, possessing staggering capabilities, but at the cost (and even as a result) of complex and unpredictable systems and teams and individuals.
Predictive powers … your mileage will vary. On the other hand, I am personally entranced by prescriptive powers: the ability to create and shape and carve the future based on what we decide we want it to be.
There is, for example, no denying that without Elon Musk, electric cars would not be where they are now (and this is from a guy who thinks that electric cars will never compete, on a utilitarian valuation, with internal combustion-engined cars). Musk applied his vision and sold it to people. Nobody predicted Elon Musk.
Similarly, Steve Jobs (and other great visionaries) took this one step further: he did not give people what they needed. He TOLD people what they needed, and created entirely new markets for things that people now cannot live without – but somehow had functioned perfectly well without in the past. Coupled with a great engineering company, Jobs showed that his prescriptive vision could alter the course of human history. That is impressive.
Ultimately, it is the popularization of tools that enables maximal human prescriptive powers. Edison invented the phonograph, but he thought the purpose of a phonograph was to record last wills and testaments! It was everyone else who pioneered so many other uses for analog storage systems.
From a societal level down to the individual person, visionaries create everything from new drugs and software to personalized curtains. The modern age, with our unprecedented wealth and access to tools and the knowledge of how to use them, opens the gates of heaven for every person who dares look upward.
For me, the archetypal prescriptive tool is the Torah. The text does not tell us what the natural world is, or how to use an abacus. There are no predictive tools in the Torah. But as a prescriptive document, it forms the basis of Western Civilization. The Torah tells us how we can grow, how we are to build productive and constructive and beautiful relationships with each other, and with our Creator. It tells us to be holy, and then explains what holiness means.
If we think of our underlying religious presuppositions as guidance for our lives (e.g. Do we think our lives should have meaning and purpose? Can we seek to understand what that purpose can be?), then we can work to ask ourselves those questions and make something of ourselves. Not because the world (and certainly not humanity) is predictable, but because we each have the opportunity to help shape the future. And the sooner we all recognize and embrace this way of seeing the world, the better our tomorrow’s look.
Published in General
I meant the “philosophy” expounded in the B5 video, is BS.
It sure was after they started making the universe into a god and then babbled about starstuff.
Another example:
I don’t think it was “making the universe into a god.” I think for that type of belief, there would be no god, or gods. As Delenn said in the most recent video.
If that wasn’t universe-worship, I don’t know what is.
Oy. Once more into the breach!
Yes. I am content that I understand myself on this point.
We have gone around and around.
Think about the soul like a $5 bill sewn into your clothes. If you never know it is there, you never take advantage of it. But that does not mean it is not there.
A person who denies he has a soul is like the guy who is not aware that he has $5.
If you know it is there, you can figure out what to do with it.
It’s not the same air I breathe, but it still is air.
But god is what creates the universe. The universe doesn’t create itself. If the universe was not created, then there is probably no god. (For people who believe that there would be no universe except for god, that’s just a tautology.) And Delenn didn’t say that they “worship” the universe trying to figure itself out. Also, “universe-worship,” even accepting that’s what it would be, may be incorrect, but it is only NECESSARILY incorrect if god actually exists, and created the universe. Which may be what YOU believe, but that doesn’t make THAT necessarily correct either.
Yes, I think it’s not right to worship the universe. The point is it has been done, and that Delenn was doing it.
Yes, but is it a piece of G-d or isn’t it?
There’s an indestructible part or aspect to humanity.
I think you misunderstand it. But I’m not surprised, some people believe that everyone has some kind of God, whether it’s the one they agree with, or not. It is beyond their ability to conceive of NOT believing in SOME God.
What do you think worship is? If they’re believing it has a plan and trusting it and looking up to it and being comforted by it, I call that worship. Not a lot of praise songs, but I’d still call that worship. Not the right object of worship, but I’d still call that worship. It is, once again, the dictionary definition.
You do realize I study for philosophy for a living? I like Nietzsche. I am certainly able to conceive of his existence. (If someone in a church setting asks me whether he may have really worshipped himself, I might not say no. But speaking plainly and without pausing to do any complicated theology or psychology, I can happily say “Nietzsche believes in no G-d or gods at all!”)
I think you actually made my point without realizing it.
If I believe that I require the atmosphere to breathe, and water to drink to survive, does that somehow mean that I worship air and water?
No. You don’t think they have a plan. You’re not trusting water to guide your life and make sure your sufferings are all leading to a good result. You’re not reverencing water.
What Delenn does in that clip seems to me precisely what the dictionary gives for the first definition of worship: “reverent honor and homage paid . . . to any object regarded as sacred.” You don’t do that for water, do you?
I think you misunderstand/misinterpret what was said about the universe, again perhaps because you can’t conceive of anyone not worshipping some kind of God. Unless maybe if they claim there’s absolutely no point to anything at all. But if they have some belief or theory on how the universe began or what it means, no matter how… neutral?… atheistic?… it might be, YOU still interpret that as being their “God.”
Not necessarily. If you kneel down and ask a bucket of water to make it rain, then probably yes. :)
So you don’t think Delenn said that the universe has a plan for her life and will guide all things in the right direction?
(I wish you’d keep your speculations about my thought processes to yourself. They are uninformed, inaccurate, and irrelevant.)
That was an enjoyable read! As an engineer myself, I concur. It’s what works!
She said that they believe people – all life, really – are the universe trying to figure itself out. Some may end up playing a greater role in that than others, but I don’t see how that can be interpreted as deliberate placement by the universe. Sometimes the people in those positions might flatter themselves by thinking the universe did it on purpose, but that doesn’t make them correct, even if you believed the underlying theory.
Oh, well said! (Maybe I skipped a bit of the video at the end on my way to class? I’m very tired. I wouldn’t put it past me to do that and think nothing of it and even forget it!)
Ok, with that further explanation of what she said, yes–you are probably right; Delenn was not worshipping the universe!
(Now that may still be a religious view of some sort. I believe the last paragraph of The Mind of G-d by Paul Davies captures the general idea. A sort of process theology where G-d is the end-result of our efforts, not a creator. But maybe not; that would require more thought than I have time or brain cells for right now.)
Well the Minbari certainly seem to believe it’s a religion, after all they have the religious CASTE. But a religion doesn’t necessarily have to have God at the center. If Western religious people have it in their heads that any kind of religion requires some kind of god, I’d say that’s just their limitation.
No objections there.
You don’t necessarily have to have a theory. But if your innovation conflicts with underlying nature, it’s not going to work, whether you have a theory or not.
But theory itself is perhaps the most significant innovation in history. It is the innovation that permitted the West to break free from the limitations that had constrained all other civilizations. As Aristotle describes it, without theory, you have at most an “art” or a “knack” for doing something. And that only gets you so far – no farther than ancient civilizations generally got. You might happen to create ice skates, for example, but you’ll never develop jet airplanes or spacecraft without theory. The East, its great cultural achievements notwithstanding, never developed a theoretical understanding of nature prior to contact with the West, let alone a theory that was a cultural legacy that developed over time. Without a theory of nature, innovation is limited to happenstance and is not really cumulative; without knowing why something worked rather than failed, there is no basis to direct further innovation.
So you can certainly have a knack for clever innovations even if you don’t care why something works. But if your civilization includes a passion to discover why some things work and other things don’t, innovation that was not yet even dreamt of become real possibilities. And entire classes of false hopes become recognized as such. Alchemists wasted time for centuries attempting to turn base elements into gold. It turns out that it doesn’t matter how lucky you are or hard you work; chemical and physical theory has proven the attempt impossible. Unless you happen to be a supernova.
We humans tend to put whatever we are totally lacking into the center of our universe, so there is that.
An anthropologist was spending time with the Navaho. He commented on their traditional songs, “Why are so many of your songs about water?”
The tribal elder’s retort was “Why are all the songs in your culture about love?”
Those of us living in a Western culture due to tend to place much value on romance. And on money. Some people love money to the point of worship. Yet God worshippers still watch movies about bank heists without feeling we are adding to the worship of money.
Form definitely follows function, but it can be a long and tedious process. I’m reminded of the hundred year-old driver golf clubs that were all made with a slight but very specific convexity on the face of the head. This developed presumably over time, to take the slight hook or slice out of a drive. Scientists in the couple of decades mathematically determined the exact curvature of the face of the driver to accomplish this and found out that, indeed, this was the exact curve of the century-old drivers. This was not a knack or a bit of luck, and it wasn’t a calculated curvature based on existing knowledge of physics either, but simple trial and error that produced a very specific form which received a very subtle advantage.
Sure. Another example is musical instruments, in particular the Stradivarius violins. We still aren’t quite sure what about it makes them the instruments they are.
But look at what we are talking about: Ice skates, golf clubs and violins. We aren’t talking about Apollo spacecraft, iPhones, skyscrapers, or mile-long suspension bridges, all of which are innovative and beyond the imaginations of those old creators of golf clubs. My objection is not that innovation can occur without theory; it is the implicit opposition the OP drew between innovation and theory. In reality they go hand-in-hand. Indeed, theory is itself subject to innovation, and innovation informed by theory is powerful in a way impossible for innovation without theory.
I certainly agree with this.
But the breakthroughs that made all those possible were invariably the product of old-fashioned experimental trial and error. Vulcanized rubber came before it was understood. Aspirin is still, apparently, not understood. But it works. And it really matters.
Let’s take bridge designers: they are not physicists or metallurgists. They rely on working rules-of-thumb for all the stuff on the micro level.
The engineering, with just a few exceptions (fission), always seems to run ahead of the theory – not the other way around. Innovation within engineering is driven by the results from design and test cycles, not by underlying physical theory. I am not just blowing smoke on this: I know this firsthand from decades of building innovative aerospace tech.
Well if credentials count I have a masters degree in electrical engineering and work as a software engineer. So can we call it a draw as far as arguments from authority go?
My objection is to the generalization you seem to be making from the highlighted phrase below:
Maybe you are being hyperbolic in that sentence and I am overinterpreting it. I agree that innovation can outrun theory: As I’ve pointed out, theory is itself subject to innovation, so by definition innovation will have outrun theory when there is a theoretical innovation.
I don’t disagree that innovation is sometimes driven largely by design and test cycles that operate largely independently of theory: My objection is that you seem to be saying that this is exclusively so, or that there is nothing for theory to add to such innovation. I think such a strong statement is clearly false.
For one thing, theory can inform the limits on innovation and redirect efforts that are necessarily fruitless. I already pointed alchemy as an example of this. In software, there are theoretical limits on just how efficient a particular algorithm can be; when an implementation has achieved 98% of the theoretical limit, there is usually no point wasting resources on some “innovative breakthrough” that can at most squeeze out another percent. Young software engineers often fall into that trap and must be redirected before they spend weeks researching something that can have but little payoff.
As far as aircraft go, I worked on aircraft flight controls early in my career. I would never fly in a plane that had a control system designed purely by trial and error without any theoretical understanding of the underlying control problem. It’s very easy to come up with a control system that works 98% of the time, but will go unstably out of control under conditions that appear 2% of the time and might never appear in testing. Or, rather, would not appear in testing unless you had a theory that told you what conditions were dangerous for that particular control solution and needed to be tested.