To know or not to know

Predicting the future is intrinsically difficult because there are many factors that can contribute to change the outcomes. Some basic physical events, such as the sun rising or an object falling to the ground under the pull of gravity are fairly reliable, but the moment we start to increase the complexity of the interactions the prediction becomes less and less reliable. Even something that does not include anybody's will, such as the weather patterns, can only be predicted in the near future and even then only with limited accuracy.

There are two main sources of error in our predictions: the hardest to solve is the influence of unexpected factors, these circumstances that are not likely to play a role in the evolution of the situation but in the end they do affect the outcome. There are so many potential sources of interference, each with only a minuscule probability of becoming relevant, that it is impossible to account for all of them and very often we just "hope for the best" or, in the most conservative analysis, try to make a probabilistic analysis of the possible effects.

Photo: GREGOR from Pixabay

The other source of difficulty in the prediction is the uncertainty about factors that are expected to have an influence in the outcome. This often presents itself as assumptions that turn out to be false. If you have a job interview in another city and plan to go by car there is a small but non-zero chance that an accident in the highway will delay you for one hour or more, but it can also be a flooding, a fire, or a herd of escaped cows, all of which can technically happen but are just unlikely. But the one thing that you are definitely going to need is gas to make the trip. If you drive off to your interview and find out that you do not have enough gas to make it to your destination it means that you have made the wrong assumption about a relevant factor.

The area is remarkably gray with respect to the division between expected and unexpected factors: if you do not have enough knowledge of the activity you are undertaking you might consider that a factor is irrelevant even if any insider will tell you that it is not. Following the car example, people who grow up in temperate climates are used to pouring plain water (perhaps add a bit of soap) in the deposit for the windscreen wipers. However, anyone who has grown up in regions with freezing temperatures in the winter will tell you that you have to add some anti-freeze to it if you expect to be able to use that water in a cold winter day. In this case, the problem is actually not knowing the things that you do not know.

This reflection comes to me on account of a discussion we had today over lunch, where Trevor was asking Karen in which way she has used in her "real life" the knowledge that she acquired in the each of the different school subjects. She pointed out straightaway that reading, writing and math are of immediate application every single day, but there are many others which also find direct application. Physics are very relevant the moment you try to move things: it is not like you are going to calculate the arm of the lever you need to raise that cabinet, but it is clear that it is the right way to go ahead. Using lubricants to reduce the friction in your bicycle, choosing the right hammer to put a nail or picking the location the least exposed to the wind are just other applications of physics. Chemistry is of very strong application in the kitchen and in all things cleaning: how certain products will help you clean the kitchen sink but not do much good in the bath sink is just a simple chemistry question. And the same goes essentially for every subject at school: if you are ready to look at it with critical eyes, every one is of application later in life. And they might not give you the answers (particularly after such a long time), but they can certainly help you to ask the right questions to inform your decisions in a way that your list of the expected factors to influence a certain outcome is not wildly off the mark.

Unfortunately pure academic knowledge is not enough. On the one hand, the school is limited in scope and there are certain fields that are not covered sufficiently or not at all. On the other hand, as we have discussed before, life is in constant change, so things eventually stop being the way they used to be and become something else, so the only way to stay on top of the current situation is to keep educating and informing and ourselves.

Some years ago I listened to this episode of Freakonomics, one of my favorite podcasts, and I could not disagree more. Steve Levitt reported that, since most news will not have any impact at all on his decision-making process, he consumes very little media. And it is true that, as he explains, many of the things that are happening around the world, like the coup in Burma these days or the incident with the container ship in the Suez canal, are likely to have a minute (when any) impact in our future decisions, so they can be considered "equivalent to entertainment". However it is equally true that information gathering is very strongly conditioned by the opportunity and the chance to learn something that you are passing on today might never present itself again. For instance, if you are considering buying a pair of sports shoes and you are "democratically concerned" you might be reluctant to go for a producer that ultimately pays taxes to the military junta in Burma and choose a different brand. However, as in the case of the anti-freeze, if you do not follow the news you might not even feel the need to check how is democracy doing in Burma because it has been doing fine for 20 years.

In the end the questions boils down of how much information you need to make a decision, which fraction of that you already have and how much time and effort you can put into completing your knowledge. The trade-off is clear: information which is readily available and/or of unlikely application is probably not that interesting, while for other pieces of information that are hard to come by or that are used very frequently might be convenient to have them available.

Then there is the entertainment factor, that Levitt mentioned in a somewhat derisive tone but it is not entirely irrelevant. Focusing too tightly on our own interests might end up isolating us, preventing us from reaching out to anyone that does not share on them and limit our ability to connect with other people. In this sense I have to profess my deepest admiration for American author Jared Diamond, who is a ornithologist by training but luckily does not force every conversation around him toward the birds he has known and loved. Instead, he has cultivated a vivid interest in other fields like zoology, anthropology, history, psychology or sociology. His culture is vast and his experiences many, and that allows him to form a (fairly well-grounded) opinion on many matters that he might run into.

In contrast with his erudition, I am nothing but an apprentice, but that does not prevent me from being an avid learner, exploring very different domains of knowledge and try to improve my understanding of the world in every possible dimension. I push myself everyday to try to come with intriguing approaches and comparisons for the entries in this blog and I hope that, if not every day, at least every now and then you find the content particularly interesting. I would love to hear back from you on this matter. Because, in the end, when it comes to choose between knowing and not knowing, I almost always pick the knowledge. Have a nice evening.