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May

2012

Skepticblog » The Unknown Unknowns

Firestein is Professor and Chair of the Department of Biological Sciences at Columbia University, where he teaches a wildly popular course on ignorance, inviting scientists in as guest speakers to tell students not what they know but what they don’t know, and even what they don’t know that they don’t know. (Would you rather earn an A or an F in a class called “Ignorance”?, he muses.)

www.skepticblog.org/...the-unknown-unknowns

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Ignorance Science Education Academia

Firestein captures the essence of the problem by contrasting the public’s understanding of science as a step-wise systematic algorithm of grinding through experiments that churn out data sets to be analyzed statistically and published in peer-reviewed journals after a process of observation, hypothesis, manipulation, further observation, and new hypothesis testing, with the Princeton University mathematician Andrew Wiles’ description of science as “groping and probing and poking, and some bumbling and bungling, and then a switch is discovered, often by accident, and the light is lit, and everyone says, ‘Oh, wow, so that’s how it looks,’ and then it’s off into the next dark room, looking for the next mysterious black feline” (p. 2), in reference to the old proverb: “It is very difficult to find a black cat in a dark room. Especially when there is no cat.”
It has been estimated that from the beginning of civilization around 5,000 years ago to the year 2003, all of humanity created a grand total of five exabytes of digital information. From 2003 through 2010 we created five exabytes of digital information every two days. By 2013 we will be producing five exabytes every ten minutes. The 2010 total of 912 exabytes is the equivalent of 18 times the amount of information contained in all the books ever written. It isn’t knowledge that we need more of; it is how to think about what we know and what we don’t know that is becoming ever more critical in science, through a process Feinstein calls “controlled neglect.” Scientists “don’t stop at the facts,” he explains, “they begin there, right beyond the facts, where the facts run out” (p. 12). It must be this way, he argues, because “the vast archives of knowledge seem impregnable, a mountain of facts that I could never hope to learn, let alone remember” (p. 14). Doctors and lawyers and engineers need many facts at their ready, as do scientists, but for the latter “the facts serve mainly to access the ignorance” because this is where the action is. “Want to be on the cutting edge? Well, it’s all, or mostly, ignorance out there. Forget the answers, work on the questions” (pp. 15–16).
4 more annotation(s)...
- unknowable unknowns, “things that we cannot know due to some inherent and implacable limitation.” He puts history in this category, but I would not, for if we take the broader construct of history as anything that happened before the present then most of astronomy, cosmology, geology, archaeology, paleontology, and evolutionary biology are historical sciences, subject to testing hypotheses no less rigorously than their experimental scientists in the lab. And I worry slightly that an overemphasis on our ignorance about this or that claim opens the door to creationists, Holocaust deniers, climate deniers, and post-modern deconstructions who wish to challenge mainstream scientists because of religious or political agendas. Acknowledging our ignorance is good, but let’s acknowledge and celebrate what science has confidently given us in the way of well-supported theories.
- even the famous “tongue map” in which sweet is sensed on the tip, bitter on the back, and salt and sour on the sides that is published in countless popular and medical textbooks is wrong and the result of a mistranslation of a German physiology textbook by Professor D. P. Hanig, and that the localization differences are much more complex and subtle.
- the expanding sphere of scientific knowledge comes into contact with an ever increasing surface area of the unknown (thus, the more you know the more you know how much you don’t know), we would do well to remember the mathematical principle of surface area to volume ratio: as a sphere increases the ratio of its volume to surface area increases.
- as the sphere of scientific knowledge increases, the ratio of the volume of the known to the surface area of the unknown increases, and it is here where we can legitimately make a claim of true and objective progress.

May

2012

Roger Pielke Jr.'s Blog: New Paper: Energiewende and Nichtwissen

Post-Normal Science in a German Landscape

This essay explores the management and creation of ignorance via an exploration of the landscape of eastern Germany, which has seen profound social, political, and technological changes over the past several decades. Like in many places around the world decision makers in eastern Germany are seeking to reach a future state where seemingly conflicting outcomes related to the economy and the environment are simultaneously realized. The management of ignorance is an important but often overlooked consideration in decision making that the concept of “post-normal science” places into our focus of attention.

rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/...rgiewende-and-nichtwissen.html

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Post-Normal Science Ignorance Information

Nov

2011

Ignorance is bliss when it comes to challenging social issues

The less people know about important complex issues such as the economy, energy consumption and the environment, the more they want to avoid becoming well-informed, according to new research published by the American Psychological Association.

www.sciencedaily.com/...111121142446.htm

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Complex System Knowledge Ignorance Society

And the more urgent the issue, the more people want to remain unaware
participants who felt most affected by the economic recession avoided information challenging the government's ability to manage the economy. However, they did not avoid positive information
3 more annotation(s)...
- The participants who received the complex description indicated higher levels of perceived helplessness in getting through the economic downturn, more dependence on and trust in the government to manage the economy, and less desire to learn more about the issue.
- "This is despite the fact that, all else equal, one should have less trust in someone to effectively manage something that is more complex,"
- people tend to respond by psychologically 'outsourcing' the issue to the government, which in turn causes them to trust and feel more dependent on the government. Ultimately, they avoid learning about the issue because that could shatter their faith in the government."

Aug

2011

Roger Pielke Jr.'s Blog: Certain Ignornace versus Uncertain Uncertainty

The flood disaster arguably was exacerbated by poor decision making under flawed decision processes -- decision makers chose the certainty of ignorance over the uncertain nature of uncertainty judgments. Indeed, as van den Honert describes the rainfall forecasts were inaccurate, but this did not mean that they would have been without value.

Ultimately, the only way that Queensland gets out of this situation will be to build sufficient water retention capacity to simultaneously meet the conflicting objectives of flood mitigation and water storage as a drought buffer. In other words, there is a technological fix here that can dramatically reduce uncertainties -- but such a strategy will cost money.
POSTED BY ROGER PIELKE, JR. AT 8/30/2011 06:55:00 AM

rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/...gnornace-versus-uncertain.html

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Uncertainty Ignorance Rain Climate Science

Aug

2011

Roger Pielke Jr.'s Blog: Obituary: John Marburger

THERE are two kinds of ignorance: the kind removable by education, and the other kind, which is defined by the limits of current knowledge. It seems to me that in extolling the virtues of higher education we have overemphasized the removable ignorance and encouraged the notion that more is knowable than is actually the case. This has mischievous consequences.

rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/...obituary-john-marburger.html

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Ignorance Knowledge Limit

The humanities are valuable because they deal openly with the inevitability of ignorance and the consequences thereof. They show us how great men and women faced incomprehensible situations. They tune the instrument by which ultimately we all grapple with the question of how to act without sufficient knowledge. And they urge us to free that instrument, the educated human mind, from the restraints of ignorance, even ignorance of ignorance itself.