January 26, 2012

  • On Being Right about Something

    "What is your objective basis for calling anything right or wrong?"

    I was recently asked this question, and I believe it deserves a thorough answer. In The Relativity of Wrong, Isaac Asimov answered a similar challenge. Asimov's challenger claimed that scientists in every generation were always wrong, and I am happy we have moved past that. But wielding wrong's relativity like a weapon is dangerous without the proper background as well. It is time we had a sequel.

    It is popular and in favor to assert that all claims have merit. This is what happens in a great many philosophy courses, where the student learns of many philosophical systems and is then told why each is useful in some ways and wrong in others. This is what happens in regards to beliefs, where criticizing beliefs is bad, and you're supposed to respect everything.

    But just because right and wrong are fuzzy does not mean that everything is equally valid. It does not mean we shouldn't ever call anything "wrong" or "right". Most importantly, it does not mean we should say, everything is both right and wrong.

    Of course, we know it is valid to say claim that a leaf is green or that a chair has four legs. What I'm interested in is what does it mean to say a belief is right?

    When I say something is right, I mean that it can be used to make accurate predictions about the world. For example, the doctor says he believes a certain medicine helps people recover from the flu faster. We look at many cases of the flu. After many people recover, some with the medicine and some without, we look at how long it took them on average, and it turns out people who took the medicine did indeed recover faster. Then we say the doctor was right.

    Einstein said that the sun's gravity could bend light rays. He said that the position of certain stars should appear to shift as the stars passed behind the sun. In 1919, the eclipse actually happened, and observations of the stars were as he predicted. We say that Einstein was right.

    People believe that their preferred deities can intervene in people's illnesses. Although studies have found that prayer has psychological benefits, no sign of divine intervention has been found. A ten-year study of patients undergoing coronary bypass surgery found that patients who'd been prayed for actually had worse health than those who hadn't (although the study attributes that to chance).

    "But," I hear my hypothetical opponent arguing. "My friend this-person prayed and recovered quickly." What about the patients who were prayed for and had complications? "It only works if you know the person you're praying for." For each seemingly-miraculous story about near-death person recovering, what about all those who don't? "Those people must have not been really devout / pure / worthy in some way." Or perhaps "god works in mysterious ways." How do I tell if someone was worthy then? If I can only tell after the fact, that's not an advance prediction.

    When a person holds a belief, that is a model of the world. The person says, I believe this is how the world works. The doctor believes things about medicine, and Einstein believed things about physics. How well your belief predicts things that will happen determines how right you are.

    Only once you are right can you begin to hack the world around you.

    People used to believe that human bodies were made of four kinds of biles, and all diseases were caused by imbalances of the biles. Germ theory (the idea that microorganisms cause diseases) became accepted in the 1800s, and after that people could fix things they couldn't fix before. It was because we understood diseases better. We got this thing right, and then we used our knowledge to change our fates. People who used to die of things could now live.

    People used to believe that heavier things fell faster. Newton showed that golf balls and bowling balls fall at the same speed, and many other things about physics as well. People used to believe that the Sun went around the Earth, and now we know better. We were wrong before, and now we are right. On August 20th, 1977, NASA launched the Voyager 2 space probe. It was timed to pass by all four outer planets. Astronomers calculated the planets would line up neatly as they orbited the Sun, and this was only possible by assuming a Sun-centered solar system. Voyager 2 reached Uranus on within a second of its predicted time on January 24, 1986, eight years and five months after it left Earth. One second, out of eight and a half years! It could not have done that if we were wrong about physics or wrong about the layout of the solar system. It couldn't've left Earth at all. Sending wonderful human-made creatures out into space means predicting how they will move in space, and planning its actions accordingly. If our predictions are wrong, it never would've worked at all.

    It is important that our beliefs have predictive power! The world is much like a program where we have to figure out the language. But each time we get something right, that knowledge gives us a bit more control. We learned that microorganisms affect our bodies, and now we can put things in that kill certain microorganisms and foster others. We couldn't have light bulbs or computers until we could control electricity. A person who can accurately predict how others react to things they say will do better in job interviews. If you can predict what happens to ingredients, you'll be a better baker. Each time we decipher a bit of the language, we can then wield it to rewrite the code, expunge the illness, build the comforts, and discover more of the language.

    Today, there is controversy over global warming. People who believe humans are causing it predict that the average temperature on Earth will get warmer during the next century. People who do not predict that Earth will not. That is the difference between everything staying as it is and New York City being underwater. Our policies will depend on our predictions, and so it is important that our predictions be correct!

    Of course there is such a thing as right and such a thing as wrong. If we exchange something that is wrong for something that is right, we move forward, and the human condition becomes a little bit better. If, however, we exchange the right for the wrong, then we do ourselves injustice. Teaching our children intelligent design makes them slightly less knowledgeable about biology. In the future, they will want to study sickle-cell anemia and fail to realize why it is more prevalent among some groups; want to save the cheetahs and fail to understand the genetic bottleneck; want to study sociology and fail to learn from chimpanzee tribes. These are all powers that understanding evolution gives us. We could lose those powers. We could teach our children an outdated astronomy with the Earth at the center. In the future, they will try to send out space probes and wonder why the planets are never where they predict. We could teach our children to pray for their ill. In the future, they will wonder why their god is so cruel.

    Astrology is wrong; astronomy is right.
    Alchemy is wrong; chemistry is right.
    Creationism is wrong; evolution is right.

    Each thing that we can say is wrong or right is a triumph wrought from the toils of our forbears, a treasured word of an ancient and powerful language. I'm proud of how much we know.