In Praise of Wikis
In many ways we are the grateful inheritors of the Enlightenment, the triumphant outcome of a series of changes initiated by the Renaissance. This revolution in thinking began as European intellectuals in the 15th and 16th Centuries pulled away from the dominance of theology, seeking to return to an imagined golden age of classical thinking. In part, the driver was aesthetic, a return to Greek and Roman sculpture, to secular rather than religious painting, and to literature. Europe remained Christian, but the Renaissance also emphasised observation of the natural world. From there it was a short step to the Scientific Revolution, the emergence of empirically based theories in physics, astronomy, biology and chemistry, resting on mathematical logic.
The Enlightenment took one further step along that path. Empiricism undermined the claimed authority of the monarchy and the church, and paved the way for the political revolutions of the 18th and 19th centuries. It emphasised the centrality of reason, the evidence of the senses, and the importance of the scientific method. Increasingly, religious texts were no longer central to understanding the profane material world. Despite fake news, lying presidents and the like, the dominant narrative of our times continues to be materialistic, logical, linear and empirical. Our actions have predictable consequences, and we can develop scientific theories to help us analyse how things work, and to provide a basis for creating new and better systems and products.
In the world of things, the results have been almost miraculous: today we can make efficient battery-powered cars because we understand electrical power systems, mechanics and materials. Yet, despite the achievements of design based on knowing ‘a causes b’, the limits to what we understand and can do are apparent when we step outside the inanimate world. The coronavirus offers simple yet pressing example. We have been able to detect and understand the structure of this virus; that it is the ‘cause’ of illness is clear. However, the more the effects are studied, the greater the complexities. Each patient may have many similarities with another, but individual responses remain unpredictable. People with compromised or weaker immune systems fare less well, but many who die had robust systems before infection. Short-term weakened or damaged lung functions are common side effects, but in many cases adverse responses appear in other organs. Some patients recover quickly, others take weeks or even months.
While all this is confusing, and even frightening for the public as a whole, it isn’t surprising to doctors. Medical treatment is a hit and miss business. It is a hit because we have an arsenal of treatments available to deal with many particular illnesses, and most times a drug or intervention is highly effective. It is a miss because no patient can be guaranteed to follow the same path. In part this is because individual psychology plays a role. However, it is also because we aren’t like an inanimate object, a bridge girder or an aeroplane aileron. The behaviour of those objects is reasonably predictable: linear logic prevails, and we know what will result from our actions. Humans are complex interacting systems with multiple feedback loops and alternate pathways: as a result, medical interventions can, and sometimes do, result in unanticipated outcomes.
Despite this, medicine is relatively easy. I don’t mean that medicine isn’t a sophisticated and complex practice. It certainly is. But the object of physical medicine is clear: the human body, something you can see, isolate, study and analyse. The same is true for bridges and aeroplanes. There are other areas of study, political systems, business enterprises, economics or love, where there isn’t an entity we can pick up, scrutinise and dissect in isolation from its environment. The best we can do is to make models of the object of our study, analyse those, and hope that what we conclude translates into effective understanding and interventions in the ‘real world’.
There are three problems here, all of which stem from our adherence to our Enlightenment way of thinking, and our commitment to the idea of a ‘fact’, an approach embedded in that scientific model established back in the 18th Century. First, we are stuck with a prosaic understanding of what we mean by an observation, its tangibility. Second, we often forget that what we see is a function of the framework within which that observation has been made. Finally, we continue to rely on linear models of causation, albeit recognising importance of feedback loops and the like.
We need an example. Perhaps we can begin with me, the author of this blog. Tempted as I am to run down various ontological rabbit holes about what is real, we can compromise a little and accept there is an observable person, in both space and time (if we follow Einstein). As a physical entity, I can be measured, weighed, probed and scanned. However, very quickly we can see we have a problem, as any description can rapidly become unwieldy.
We could take my right hand, the one with the slightly enlarged index finger (anatomists refer to this as fma24946 – thought you’d like to know!). There are 27 bones in that hand, which we can measure, and two groups of muscles. Ready? “The extrinsic muscle groups are the long flexors and extensors. They are called extrinsic because the muscle belly is located on the forearm. The intrinsic group are the smaller muscles located within the hand itself. The muscles of the hand are innervated by the radial, median, and ulnar nerves from the brachial plexus. The intrinsic muscle groups are thenar (thumb) and hypothenar (little finger) muscles; the interossei muscles (four dorsally and three volary) originating between the metacarpal bones; and the lumbrical muscles arising from the deep flexor (and which are special because they have no bony origin) to insert on the dorsal extensor hood mechanism. Palmaris brevis which is a superficial muscle and adductor pollicis are also intrinsic muscles. The fingers have two long flexors …” Thank you Wikipedia, that’s enough for now although, as medical students will tell you, there’s more!
In describing my hand, we didn’t even get on to cells, chromosomes, DNA, and all the other complexities science has identified. There is so much it would take a lifetime to describe it all. Equally frustrating, the more we look at that hand, the more we slip past what can be observed into what is inferred. We can’t see electrical impulses, nor can we see many biochemical processes. We infer they are there. To describe that slightly enlarged finger requires yet more observations, some of which might involve going back in time to understand the activities that could have influence its characteristics. As for the rest of me, not only is a complete physical description, without limitations, impossible, but we have yet to plumb the depths of my psyche: hmm, maybe we’ll quickly pass that by. I hope my point is clear The easy world of 19thCentury observations is long gone, and with it any confidence we have seen what we need to see.
Of course, my exercise was silly. We don’t just ‘observe’. We look for things within a set of guidelines, a way of seeing. A medical student looking at my hand will see it very differently than would an artist, or a lover, or a child. Without always knowing it, we are observing with a purpose, and within a frame of reference. One current and ‘hot’ example is provided by news reports and newspapers. Fifty years ago, there were news outlets that sought to provide facts and understanding, sitting alongside the ‘gutter press’, offering lurid and salacious stories with little regard for truth. Now all news sources prioritise immediacy, sacrificing perspective and basic understanding. In a ‘now’ world everything becomes dramatic: today’s minor storm is ‘catastrophic’; our global pandemic was fabricated by Democrats and China! To add to the mess, we are victims of groupthink, seeing the world in the same way others like us do. [i]
Let’s change our framework, and examine me as a business would. Now, the data shifts. There are still some physical factors that matter, especially if the business is concerned with clothing, bicycles or desk chairs. However, the key ‘facts’ are about my preferences and interests, as ‘intelligent’ systems scoop up every choice I make, every enquiry I pursue. To put it simply, this framework is largely concerned with marketing and profits. I used to have fun with companies and data, and specifically with Amazon. Early on, I realised they’d established a reasonably good customer profile for me, as Amazon began to recommend books that were … well, to be honest, were interesting. I started buying books for my children, for my wife, and for friends. That would confuse the Amazon algorithm! Now if I were to click on the recommendations link that used to be in the upper corner of the screen, darn it, there would be good recommendations for me and for my children. All I did was enlarge the scope of possibilities. It took me time, but now I’ve learnt the best response: avoid any recommendations that are pushed to you.
In practice, the story about businesses and data has more to tell us. Today the business world sees companies collecting huge quantities of data, so much so it’s called ‘big data’, They have complex systems to analyse this data, in order to develop, market and sell their goods and services. However, big data is like the detailed data that came from analysing a biological entity. There’s so much that analyses can produce thousands of possible links and options. Big data, as such, is meaningless. To their cost, companies are learning you need questions to interrogate the data, to explore why choices have been made. For that, companies need a frame of reference, and some have rediscovered the best way to find out what a customer wants is to start by asking!
Alas, there is another path. Rather than trying to collect data about me and infer what I might want, why not offer some narratives, stories to help me learn why this option might be a good one. We know good stories are compelling, often better than analysing consumer actions and the causes that underpin them. Good stories can be convincing, with the great advantage they can be fact free. Political parties excel at this, conjuring up descriptions of what is going on, explaining motives, concerns and aspirations. As we read stories confirming our beliefs, we ‘know’ they’re true. When we see an alternative party platform, we set it aside as biased, it’s fake news.
A particularly troublesome topic is predicting the future. We want to know what’s going to happen next. The Economist predicts in 2021 there’ll be fights over vaccines, and a mixed economic recovery. Effort will go on rebuilding alliances, dealing with more US-China tensions, while companies will compete and technologies popular in 2020 may not stick. Tourism will shrink. We might tackle climate change. Postponed events will reappear, and we will all be worried about future risks. Wisely, these insights end with adding “The coming year promises to be particularly unpredictable”. [ii] Are these predictions, or guesses based on current activities?
This sad list illustrates the benefits and limits of Enlightenment thinking, as scientific language has seeped into so many aspects of our lives. Daily we are presented with ‘facts’, often presented as self-evident statements about the way things are, and what must be done. We read, see the evidence, and an expert tells us what this means and what follows. Some foods and additives are bad for us: eat less salt, butter or meat. No, sorry, that was last year, butter is better than margarine, so back to butter, and we all need salt. As for protein, red meat is still good, or is it? How can it be what is good today is bad tomorrow? Surely science can’t be wrong?
Sarah Steward Johnson, a planetary scientist, recently recounted a conversation with her son:
Cause and effect, I said, were tools that could unlock the universe. The more we can learn and grasp and comprehend, the better we will be able to function in the world, and the better we can cope with our fears. “Like the corona,” he said. I explained how we now can read every letter of life’s genetic instructions; how we can peer through human bodies to find out why someone is sick, where they are bleeding, what has happened to them; how we can target the rogue cells in his grandfather’s body and leave the healthy ones alone; how we can limn the crowns of a virus and trace its spread across the world. I assured my son that these were reasons for hope, and they are. We are now pulling covid-19 antibodies from the plasma of survivors, developing new treatments for those still battling the disease, and deploying rapid new tests in hot spots. And, one day, we will formulate a vaccine. In our conversation, I emphasized that there is rhyme and reason to the universe, and that our challenge is to understand it. I didn’t mention that, lately, it has been harder for me to face this challenge. But I know this is a lesson he’ll learn in time: that causality exists in a constant, essential tension with randomness—that the universe is also driven by the dragon of chance. [iii]
I liked her conclusion, but I felt it missed one key point. It isn’t just chance that upsets the logic of science. It is a flaw in the model, that disentangling linear cause and effect relationships isn’t always enough to identify what needs to be done: there are many issues that aren’t susceptible to that kind of causal logic. Rather, we need to engage in sense making, conversations to help us develop, explore, reject and rethink ideas. Making sense is a communal and necessary task, as much as it is a scientific one. For that reason I love wikis, web pages which allows users to upload and share ideas and data, a tool for collaborative understanding where each person can see, add to and even offer corrections to what others have suggested. A wiki isn’t intended to provide definitive answers, but rather to be a source of ongoing review and reconsideration, allowing us to puzzle together, transparently. Wikis are a digital technology, but they remind us conversations remain essential, exploring ideas without forcing us to find the ‘true answer’.
Here’s a topic for an excellent conversation. Many writers are telling us we are at a critical point in history, facing challenges at a hitherto unprecedented level, and choices that will change the world for ever, at the ‘hinge of history’. [iv] Richard Fisher suggests this is nonsense and this isn’t an especially significant moment . I doubt we will be able to ‘answer’ whether he’s right or not, but it would be a great topic for an open, transparent conversation on what we know and don’t know about the changes we face today. It would be good to come together to explore our current challenges, to review choices and consider alternatives. Why, we could even use a wiki.
[i] Groupthink Has Left the Left Blind, Bret Stephens, New York Times, Opinion, Nov. 16, 2020
[ii] The World in 2021, Ten trends to watch in the coming year, Tom Standage The Economist, Nov 16th, 2020
[iii] Sarah Stewart Johnson, A Scientist’s Reckoning With the Cruelty of Chance, The New Yorker, 4 October 2020
[iv] Richard Fisher, Are we Living at the Hinge of History, Future, BBC, 23 September 2020
