Why We Know Less Than We Think

I see people arguing about whether free will exists or not, whether God exists or not, what gender is, and various political issues, but it all seems kind of skewed. I have come to the conclusion that everyone should be humble enough to accept that we have no idea what's going on with these topics

There are various ways of searching for the truth. I am a big fan of the scientific method; it's mind-boggling how this simple approach has created so many wonders and extended our understanding of the world like no other. I have studied high school level science. I know my knowledge of science is pretty limited, but I have made some interesting observations.

So what's the tool that we use to engage in scientific communication? It's mostly math and very precise definitions, thus leading to rather accurate and helpful results. The more a science deviates from these principles, the more inaccurate its results are.

Math relies on pure reasoning and is always absolutely correct because the object of discussion is very simple (say a line, circle, vector, slope, etc.). We define every single thing about the object, we lay out our assumptions at the start, then through logic, we derive more facts about that object and its behavior, and we are very strict with our logical rigor.

It always fascinates me how the repetition of this simple process yields amazing results. The most unobvious theorems, even artificial intelligence, and counter-intuitive yet true results are just a result of this process, continuous abstraction of simple results in an innovative and creative way.

Through stepwise deduction, and basing each step on a set of well-defined axioms which are obviously true, we can reach truths which were previously hidden from us.

Any crazy math theorem is just a result of this seemingly simple process

And this is what makes Math beautiful.

You can realize how simple things lead to profound and complicated insights by deductive reasoning and thousands of layers of abstraction.

Physics is a bit less accurate and includes more assumptions rather than relying on extremely obvious axioms like mathematics, as we are dealing with more complicated things. Already, the need for logical rigor becomes a second priority. But we still build precise models and then use those to make predictions which are mostly accurate.

But again, in physics, from the little knowledge I have, there's this huge problem that the models we create for how the universe works seem to break down depending on what scale we are talking about. If it's electrons and atoms, things behave according to a different model (quantum mechanics), and if they are as huge as a supernova, they behave under a different model (relativity and such, I think).

We often use things like approximations that would make any mathematician frown over the lack of rigor.

Actually, Einstein put this perfectly:

"As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality (physics), they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality (math)."

It's definitely interesting.

And chemistry discusses even more complicated systems, hence it's even more abstract and less rigorous in its approach. From the little organic chemistry I have studied, we don't actually have any precise models or rules in chemistry. What we have are trends we observe that we generalize over certain cases. Like in coordination chemistry, I remember studying the EAN rule, and it doesn't always apply. That's fine, but it's not like we have created a precise model of how atoms work and now we can just predict what would happen in a reaction based on that. The approach is more like first you observe the reaction and try to fit it into some logical trend or order so you can make sense of it and at least try to predict something with a similar system. You aren’t creating a generalised model of how reactions work based on a set of fixed axioms instead you create multiple models for multiple situations , which rules out certainty

I bet if you ask a math student a question and keep grilling them again and again on "why this, why that", like in the earlier example about the prime number theorem, for each step in the process you could keep making the flow chart bigger and bigger by asking questions and in the end you will ultimately reach the very fundamental axioms of mathematics.

So you see how as the things to analyze get more complex, our scientific models become less and less accurate. My point is basically that science as a method of inquiry into truth works because it relies on mathematical deduction, so we can be sure of things only in a mathematical world.

But the problem is there are questions which science can never answer, and it has its limitations (maybe because the problems can't be solved). We turn to other fields like philosophy, political science, and psychology to look for answers to such questions.

But here our logical rigor seems to fade away entirely. We completely start discussing topics in terms of analogies, stories, and emotions, which introduces a whole bunch of complexity and confusion to something which is already extremely complex. It seems like the more complicated the topics get, the more humans dumb them down for themselves (i.e., focus less on the precise mathematical rigor because at this level of abstraction it becomes almost impossible).

When I was a kid and heard there was this math question called the Poincare Conjecture with a million dollar prize on it enough to spark a child's interest , I thought stuff like this was the peak of human intelligence, the hardest thing the human brain could ever do. When I looked up the proof, I saw this 140-page article filled with scary Math, all of inferential deduction just to demonstrate this simple fact, but now that I look at it I realize actually simple average political discussions are way more complex and maybe require even more analysis than this proof, but we, for our own convenience, don't actually think about every single variable of the puzzle. We create a model in our heads based on the fragments of information that we have picked up along the way and then form an opinion out of it.

THE PROBLEM WITH LANGUAGE

The tool we use for philosophical communication is language. I think it's often ignored how complicated language is. What are words? They're a bunch of syllables that are attached to an object or idea. Words have complicated meanings and carry the burden of context and historical usage. Anyone who engages in any kind of discussions must have realized the amount of semantic gap there is between people and the idea you are trying to convey. This leads to subjectivity.Language is almost never interpreted as you actually mean it,and you don't even know how the person you are debating with is actually interpreting your words. Some people say you must follow the Oxford dictionary to avoid semantic misunderstandings. This has use and is helpful, but with words like "society," "religion," "god," "evil," "woman," "man," "intelligence," and "consciousness," the contextual burden these words carry is so great, it is only a brutal simplification to reduce them to two-liner definitions. So being ignorant of this fact is a crime

I think that when we hear a word, we form an image in our minds , from our own lens which is made of our emotions, past experiences and personal values.

Let's take the word Palestine for example

Of you look at the wikipedia definition for this word , you would get something pretty simple referring to it as a geographic location in middle east or something But when you hear that word, even though it just refers to a fixed objective geographic entity .different people let's say a guy who knows nothing about Palestine, a Jew, a Muslim, a person who just read palestinian history, someone who knows the culture of the place , each person would have a different idea of Palestine in their head , and this is the subjective burden is ignored in conversation s.So to an extent there are 1000s of different version of the word palestine but in conversation they are clubbed into one word.

I have seen this happening countless times in debates related to complicated topics such as "What is gender?" and religious debates related to scripture.

This simple phenomenon causes so much confusion and gap in communication.

The second pillar of which we form any opinion is our morality. I think it is simply a function of emotions and generationally passed on learnings of our ancestors, again at the root of which was again human emotion, and human emotion is subjective thus leading to morality being subjective. For example, people argue endlessly on whether abortion is "moral" or not, eating meat is moral or not. Now as I have been explaining, something like this has 1000s of variables attached to it, religion, etc.

PERCEIVED VALUE

Another thing we often ignore in our discussions is the subjective value attached by every individual to an object. What I mean by this is, let's say I have two exact copies of the same football, but one of them is the football Ronaldo played his last match with. Now this football has a higher perceived value than the other football. So let's say we are talking about these footballs; I think it's a crucial factor to consider. This becomes specially important in discussions involving objects of historical, religious or artistic importance like the ram mandir issue or the israel palestine conflict .But again, whenever we talk about politics or history, we fail to do an accurate analysis of the perceived value of the objects in discussion or any other issue. To each human, each thing has a different value. Again, this laziness and ignorance is understandable as it would be another impossible thing to account for, but I think it's an important variable to account for .

Now try to get your head around this during any said political discussions: 1000s of words are being used which all have a deep-rooted context and the subjective image created in everyone's mind for each one of them is different. There are 100s of variables they play into that discussion and each variable has subjective perceived value based on history, culture which is again 1000s of years old.

Isn't it impossible to wrap your head around?

we dumb all of this down and look at the world through a lens or a perspective of our own making, and every experience we have slightly alters our emotional consciousness, what we feel empathetic towards, what we feel disgusted by etc., and these tiny nudges make everyone a different person.

And we all know how much of our thoughts are bound by the chains of emotions. Another thing we love is to lie to ourselves and perpetuate the collective lies we believe, hiding that under the veil of positivity! In other words, we like to believe in things which we wish were true rather than the truth. There may be many more such impossible variables for the human brain to account for which I am not able to think of right now, which are very much needed in our analysis of the world but it's just not in our capabilities to account for them correctly.

Just think about it: there have been thousands of political scientists and philosophers from Adi Shankaracharya and Aristotle to Nietzsche and Buddha, who spent their entire lives contemplating about the world. Why then, even after so much effort in the search for truth, are their truths just completely different? No matter how much they try, they make subjective judgments, based on their own life experiences and morality and all that other jazz I discussed above.

I think this is because we haven't developed (I don't know if something like this can even be developed) a proper logical tool for engaging in good philosophy.

See, I am not saying all these discussions are pointless or useless . This article is basically just an urge for humbleness in the fact that we can't really be opinionated on these things and we are forced to live on the edge of "Yes" and "No," which is sometimes hard for people. This could actually be a really healthy mindset in this modern world, where people have become so opinionated politically as if they think they are some sort of moral superheroes who care about the world and on the other side everyone is a vicious demon who is evil, instead of recognizing the subjectivity of it all.

This makes me think we humans only possess a certain level of cognitive abilities. Are we even capable of logically discussing these extremely complicated ideas? We should really question our capabilities and at least be a little humble about how little we know!

This perspective just makes you way less arrogant about your views. In short, I think humans are too limited for philosophy or political science; hence, it's just a fun little mental exercise you can do for fun, but don't take yourself that seriously.