Why Vote?

Nobody's right if everybody's wrong, in the words of the Buffalo Springfield song. 
In today's world it is difficult for an Earthling of a scientific bent to choose who or what to support in the political arena, when ecnarongi (i.e, ignorance in reverse, "knowing" that which is not true) prevails on all sides.
In this episode, Rik from Planet Vulcan argues that better education of young Earthlings must take place before political participation on your planet can be considered meaningful.  Earthlings must root out medievalist ways of thinking based on intelligent design, and start inculcating modern ways of thinking based on natural evolution before meaningful political discourse will ever be possible.
Please do not despair, however, if it seems to you that political action is our only hope, because there is much more going on outside of what we might call the political realm than you might have yet realized.  
Many Earthlings believe that what happens in the political arena is central to civilized existence, but in truth politics is more of a sideshow - "Real Politicians of Washington DC" in the words of Wait-But-Why Blogger Tim Urban.  
The MAIN attractions are scientific discovery, technological innovation, free enterprise in production and commerce, and a strict regard for the human rights to life, liberty and property.

Transcript

Why Vote?

 Good day to you, and welcome to Season 5 of Fascinating!  I am your host Rik, from Planet Vulcan.  My ongoing mission on Planet Earth:  to plant some seeds of a way of thinking, a way that is based on an understanding of evolutionary processes, with the ultimate aim of helping to sustain and increase the momentum of Earth’s long arc towards prosperous and happy societies, based on ideals of liberty and justice.

 I would like to repeat some things that are worth repeating from the introductory podcast to Season 2, concerning political participation on your planet as things now stand.

 On much of Planet Earth politics takes place under democratic political systems, that are ideally responsive to the will of voters, but with actual results that are to date short of the ideal.

 Not only are political elites unresponsive in many cases, quite often they cynically promote various ecnarongis as a way of building constituencies.

  Democratic processes are inevitably messy even under the best circumstances.  But when large portions of the population on all sides of an issue are immersed in and motivated by ecnarongi, democratic processes become worse than meaningless, and it’s difficult to convince oneself that support of any particular faction or agenda is anything other than futile.

  If we can demonstrate to you that certain persistently fashionable ideas and ways of thinking on your planet are indeed ecnarongis - and why - we believe that our advice can help to improve your democratic processes as voters improve their ability to recognize faulty thinking by well-intentioned would-be intelligent designers, and what passes for thinking by those who are cynically promoting ecnarongis; and little by little improve their ability to make good decisions about who and what to support.

 In case you are not yet familiar with this term, ecnarongi is “ignorance” in reverse.  Ignorance is not knowing what is true, ecnarongi is “knowing” what is not true.  For example, not knowing that Planet Earth is roughly spherical would be ignorance; “knowing” that Planet Earth is flat would be ecnarongi. 

 As many of Earth’s writers and thinkers - Mark Twain, George Bernard Shaw and Frank Knight, etc. - have pointed out, ecnarongi is typically a much larger problem than ignorance on your planet.

 There seems to be a common thread that runs through much of the current ecnarongi one encounters on Planet Earth.  That thread is evolution denial.  

 In a way that strikes Vulcans as particularly absurd, this evolution denial appears to be ultimately rooted in Earthlings’ belief that you humans are not part of nature, but that you exist in a realm apart where you are not bound by natural constraints.  Earthlings are animals who do not think they are animals.

 For many Earthlings, evolution denial takes the form that by means of rituals and incantations, they can escape their own physical mortality; that there is some essential part of them that will survive their death. 

 Earthlings of this persuasion exhibit an uncomfortable reaction, to put it mildly, when confronted with the massive evidence that humans are just another species of animal that has been sculpted by natural processes, and they simply dismiss the evidence that disturbs them.  

 They instead choose to comfort themselves with tales of what they call the “supernatural”, an undefinable concept if ever there was one, and one that can only be explained as a consequence of desperation, an unwillingness to give up the hope of eternal life. An event is considered supernatural when it simultaneously cannot happen, and yet does happen.  A scientist would say that if something cannot happen it doesn’t, and that if something does happen it can.

 Fascinating!

 Other Earthlings have at least foresworn this delusion, while at the same time adopting another delusion that is not all that different.  Out of the frying pan, into the fire!

 These Earthlings have convinced themselves they have put theism and belief in an intelligent designer behind them; but they now think of themselves as intelligent designers, endowed with much the same abilities that others ascribe to a divine being; who are able to defy nature’s laws when these laws stand in their way, and to create a heaven on earth by means of somehow putting good intentions into effect.  

 The means of putting good intentions into effect invariably involves conditioning of their fellow Earthlings, and coercion when conditioning fails.  And of course conditioning always fails.

 And they have their own lists of dogmas, sins and retributions, just like any other religious order.  The tenacity with which the hope of doing intelligent design is held can only be explained as a desire to create and maintain an illusion of control, and to be one of the controllers.

 Belief in intelligent design is more of an intellectual fashion statement than a serious idea, and under some circumstances such a thing might be a relatively innocuous hobby.  But humankind is facing serious challenges right now, and simply pursuing what is fashionable is unlikely to produce desired outcomes effectively.  

 It is the actions that Earthlings take to try to deal with these challenges that produce the energy flows which will determine, by a process of evolution, and not by a process of intelligent design, the path that humankind will follow.

 It’s important to understand that whether or not you believe in evolution, evolution is what happens anyway.  

 Individual humans are best thought of as cells in a superorganism that we might refer to as the socioeconomic system.  This superorganism has a life of its own and it follows no one’s orders.    

 No one has expressed this insight more succinctly than Bruce Lee, the legendary martial artist and philosopher, who said words to the effect that, in all this talk of means and ends, we must be clear that we cannot choose ends – we can only choose means.

 On the same subject, Penn Gillette says that the reason you can only choose means and not ends is that nothing ever truly ends.

 The way to understand a socioeconomic system, and how to influence it, is to conceive of it as an evolved and evolving dynamical complex system.  Deep understanding results from choosing this conceptual framework and pursuing it to its conclusions.

 Whether you believe that Earth’s serious challenges are going to be handled by the intervention of a deity, or whether you believe that Earth’s serious challenges are going to be handled by the intervention of visionary leaders, acting in the role of deus ex machina via the institution of government, evolution based on everyone’s actions is what will happen instead.  

 Let’s focus our attention more closely on the term “dynamical complex system”, because understanding the implications of this concept is the key to understanding societal evolution, and to understanding why intelligent design is neither an explanation of what is currently happening, nor is it a viable way of shaping the future.  An agenda that depends on the design and construction of a future state of affairs, intended to replace the evolving complex system that now functions, cannot possibly work, no matter how many people vote for it.

 We have spoken extensively on the topic of dynamical complex systems in previous podcasts, and there will be more, but right now we can summarize briefly:

 A “system” is any collection of components that work together, often with closed feedback loops, sometimes with open feedback loops.  

 A simple example of a closed feedback loop would be the loop between a furnace and a wall thermostat in your home.  When the furnace is on, the temperature in the building rises, and the rise is sensed by the thermostat, which provides negative feedback – “no more heat” - to the furnace when the temperature gets too high.  We say then that the temperature regulation is “automatic”.  

 An open-loop system would require intervention by a human decision maker, who would be obliged to manually turn the furnace on and off when the temperature is outside the desired range.

 A system is “complex” if the interdependencies between the components of the system are of such a nature that quantitative relationships among the components is non-linear. Non-linear just means that the magnitude of a response can be out of proportion to the magnitude of the stimulus.  

 This phenomenon is metaphorically known as the “butterfly effect”, and it makes complex systems unconducive to modelling because accurate prediction is fundamentally impossible, even when the relationships among the variables are deterministic.  

 If you wish to be able to predict a future state of a complex system with any confidence, you would have to measure the variables in the current state of the system with infinite precision, which is not possible.

 A system becomes “dynamical” when energy is introduced.  As the legendary Buckminster Fuller explained it, a system is organized by the energy flowing through it.

 In a quite delightful way, order spontaneously emerges in complex dynamical systems, as the energy flows create changes that spark processes of adaptation, and the sparking creates even more sparks.  

 Think for example of a field of sand dunes, which exhibits a type of fractal order arrived at spontaneously as the wind provides the energy to blow the grains of sand.  The size and weight of the sand grains, coupled with random obstacles of various sorts, leads to a chain of adaptive responses.

 No one is out there designing and constructing the sand dunes, and yet the sand dunes are continuously formed in a kind of ordered state; and we can be confident that they will continue to be formed without anyone’s help or guidance.

 For purposes of our discussion, the chief implication of the realization that a socioeconomic system is dynamical and complex is that trying to gain control of the system by opening the closed feedback loops, and coercively intervening with the intention of controlling outcomes is futile at best, and harmful at worst.

 As the eminent twentieth-century Earthling economist and philosopher Friedrich Hayek put it: “Our curious task as economists is to explain to people how little they understand about that which they propose to design”.

 If you are following the reasoning presented here, you might be tempted to despair if you are beginning to grasp the extent of the complexity of the challenges Earthlings face.  If it is fundamentally impossible to take control of a dynamical complex system, then how can Earth possibly deal with these challenges?  

 There is an answer to this query, and it can be summarized briefly.  And the answer is that even though nature denies us the power to design and construct a socioeconomic system, it does allow us to cultivate the evolving complex system we have inherited and within which we exist, and to influence the course of evolution towards a particular pattern, even though the details of the pattern will be inaccessible until the evolution takes place.  It’s not possible to be like architects and builders, implementing detailed specifications; but we can be like gardeners encouraging ways of functioning that are efficient, sustainable and just.  

And there is plenty of reason to believe that the prosperity and the ever-changing order that will emerge from such a process will be pleasing indeed to Earthlings in general.

 You can influence the patterns in the sand dunes by doing things that will influence the flow of the wind’s energy.  You cannot, however, stop the wind from blowing and design and build your own set of dunes, not even if you are upset that all the naturally occurring dunes are not the same size. 

 In the upcoming season we will continue to look for and recommend for your adoption signs of intelligence on your planet, and we will continue to point out ecnarongis we think you should avoid.

 You are living in interesting times.

 I invite you to have a listen to the next Fascinating! podcast and a look at the next video on our YouTube channel.  You can find access to all podcasts and videos on our web page, fascinatingpodcast.com.

 Please recommend Fascinating! to your friends if you find the lessons from nature in these essays personally valuable.

 Theme music:  Helium, with thanks to TrackTribe.

 Live long and prosper.

 Practice the art of winning without defeating anyone.

 Savor your experiences.

 Treasure your memories.

 Anticipate a happy and rewarding future.

 And respect nature’s wisdom.