Benefits of the end of certainty
Four years after Francis Fukuyama declared the end of history in 1992, nobel prize winner in chemistry, Ilya Prigogine, declared La Fin des Certitudes:
The two books were diametrically opposed.
Philosophically Fukuyama was asserting not only determinism but that humanity’s answers had already been determined. Ilya was asserting indeterminism not just for economics but the universe in general.
Of course philosophy is slippery and pinning Fukuyama down to dead wrong is work better left for historians. Instead this essay will focus more on the benefits of recognizing that humanity has reached the end of certainty.
End of certainty 1st benefit — explains arrow of time
Very crudely if you can completely predict all of the past by knowing the present then it’s much harder to see why time only goes forward. However if our present is the outcome of probabilistic events then it might have resulted from any number of pasts and so be arrow of time compliant.
End of certainty 2nd benefit — explains the 2020s
Whatever simplified version of reality you think you know in the 2020s, someone is working diligently to disprove it:
As a star shrinks its centrifugal forces rise rapidly. There is no known reason why there cannot be a fast rotating nonsingular star inside the horizons generating the Kerr metric outside. There is no published paper that even claims to prove that this is impossible and yet so many believe “All black holes contain a singularity.”
Moreover the profit/fame motive behind these simplifications is ever more clear. However it’s equally clear that rejecting all simplifications and living in your own, possibly conspiracy driven, reality won’t prosper either.
When asked how he can be trusted, Michael’s speech in the Team Cockroach episode of the Good Place sums up the 2020s end of certainty dilemma:
You can’t. But you have to.
Logically, you shouldn’t but you have no choice.
I mean, I wouldn’t, if I were you.
It’s a crazy thing to do.
- But you gotta.
In an indeterministic world not every event has a cause and not every belief has a justification.
Not surprisingly most human institutions were not built to withstand that level of chaos. In an end of history world, a more educated populace can also more easily govern itself / be governed. In an end of certainty world, more education can equally just lead to more confusion.
So Fukuyama’s suggestion that liberal democracy is the best form of government becomes moot
For a political regime to be considered a liberal democracy it must contain in its governing over a nation-state the provision of civil rights- the non-discrimination in the provision of public goods such as justice, security, education and health- in addition to, political rights- the guarantee of free and fair electoral contests, which allow the winners of such contests to determine policy subject to the constraints established by other rights, when these are provided- and property rights- which protect asset holders and investors against expropriation by the state or other groups.
as no one can say for certain if they live in a liberal democracy or not.
This schism between authority and certainty was present in enlightenment philosophy from the start
According to Jonathan Israel, these laid down two distinct lines of Enlightenment thought: first, the moderate variety, following Descartes, Locke, and Christian Wolff, which sought accommodation between reform and the traditional systems of power and faith, and, second, the Radical Enlightenment, inspired by the philosophy of Spinoza, advocating democracy, individual liberty, freedom of expression, and eradication of religious authority.
where the 2020s have simply substituted belief in anything complex for belief in God.
If we imagine a marketplace of all ideas then an uncertain world makes that market very crowded. In the past one might walk down one street of that market where everyone was selling black holes containing singularities but in the 2020s that street has stalls selling nonsingular stars inside and perhaps a growing number of side streets selling who knows what as well.
Similarly if in the 2020s you go to the marketplace of all ideas to buy liberal democracy and pass a stall selling AI assisted governance, you can’t help but be distracted. The number of stalls keeps increasing because the universe itself rejects simplification.
End of certainty 3rd benefit — an enormous industry
The Good Place is a story about the creation of a new industry formed after the demons of hell get bored with simple torture. That new industry runs on the uncertainty created when the existing moral points system was proven unreliable.
Of course some demons resisted the new system — what’s wrong with flattening penises for a living — they said. What’s wrong with declaring, I am useful, regardless of the growing uncertainty or even flat out proof that you are not useful?
Ultimately what’s wrong with our deterministic economy (which may or may not be the same as economic determinism) is that, on top of being ineffectual, massively destructive, and cruel, human intelligence was meant for more than this simple bullshit.
However that characterization of human intelligence certainly sounds like an over simplification in itself. How can we be certain that there is life after flattening penises (beyond leap to faith, “You can’t. But you have to.”)?
Well because the internet already shows the early beginnings of the enormous uncertainty industry. We’ve already proven that humans will spend hours and hours learning and debating things in virtual worlds — we just haven’t made the jump from that to more real world application.
Yes of course there are any number of applications that move markets from physical and paper to digital and cloud but almost all of them just alter the delivery mechanism or ownership of existing goods and services.
The real untapped nondeterministic economy will come from humans tackling real world uncertainty in a way that alters policy and economic outcomes beyond the stock market.
Perhaps millions of people will work in think tanks, regulatory bodies, and investigative groups instead of financial institutions. The traditional hierarchy might be inverted with uncertainty workers vastly outnumbering those that follow their findings.
Note we are not talking about “managing uncertainty” which is our current anemic form of uncertainty worker. Billionaires, CEOs, VPs, and administrators work together to pretend the economic and corporate north star is clear. That’s the hierarchy working to paper over uncertainty instead of employing the masses to handle it.
The current thinking is still that uncertainty can be handled by leaders so that the “normal” economy can function. NO uncertainty is your economy and not some small detail with a top down fix.
And perhaps for most of human history uncertainty work was done almost exclusively by the masses. Some human was the first to try every form of plant and animal we eat. Some human was the first to try befriending a wolf, riding a horse, or milking a cow or goat. The uncertainty of living in the natural world was not conquered by billionaire ideology or CEO north star visions.
Maybe all of hierarchical governance is one small sliver between the 300,000 year hunter gatherer period and a future world of mass decision making beyond the 1990s end of history.