“Come now, and let us reason together, …”
— Isaiah 1:18
Recently there have been some “flame wars” between personalities in the Medical Freedom Movement — popular people taking snipes at each other. It could be Peter Breggin vs. Mattias Desmet, or Michael Yeadon vs. Tess Lawrie, or Dr. Malone vs. all-comers or what-have-you. The mud-slinging has ramped-up as of late.
There is no rule book in life which states that we are all supposed to get along, at all times, at all places, and in all situations. But given how divisive rancor can dissolve the construction of solutions — and how the bad guys know this is so — it pays to be wary of divisive rancor and to try to nip it in the bud.
Back in 2005, a phenomenal book came out: The Wisdom of Crowds (James Surowiecki)
… where it was shown that the opinions of regular people, once averaged, can beat the experts. Individual people weren’t necessarily “smart” or smarter than individual experts, but because so much is collected when averaging them, they were more right.
In a 1907 study, 800 people at a fair guessed the weight of an ox to within 1% of its true weight. Experts can’t do that. Experts are often wrong by over 5%. When the Challenger Shuttle exploded, the stock market “discovered” the cause of the explosion in less than 25 minutes, while it took 5 months for the government to do so.
That’s because crowds are “smarter than” experts. A moral of the story is that it can be good to have differing opinions, especially when working with others. But the recent flame wars on Substack gain steam from a denial of that truth. A recent article on the subject — showing small groups even outperforming crowds — is found here.
Subject matter experts may not all agree, but that’s normal — even good. Learning begins with information (data), which gets put through the personal filters of individual human minds.
Information (data)
Information is just raw data and it does not tell you anything. But, when put through the filter of a human mind, information can turn into opinions. Artificial Intelligence (AI) works solely with information and — because information does not tell you anything — AI systems are inherently “stupid.”
When two chatbots were first tasked with negotiating a trade with each other — trading hypothetical balls for hats or for books — then they ended up speaking gibberish:
Bob: i can i i everything else . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Alice: balls have zero to me to me to me to me to me to me to me to me to
Bob: you i everything else . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Alice: balls have a ball to me to me to me to me to me to me to me
Bob: i i can i i i everything else . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Alice: balls have a ball to me to me to me to me to me to me to me
Bob: i . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Alice: balls have zero to me to me to me to me to me to me to me to me to
Bob: you i i i i i everything else . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Alice: balls have 0 to me to me to me to me to me to me to me to me to
Bob: you i i i everything else . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Alice: balls have zero to me to me to me to me to me to me to me to me to
That’s because AI is just trained-plus-generative symbol manipulation — with no understanding.
Interestingly, reporters reporting on it claimed that the chatbots “understood” each other, and that the apparent gibberish was perfectly normal communication for “their kind” — even if it isn’t good communication for human beings. But this opinion they hold isn’t different from one who thinks animals truly “speak” as they make sounds.
Opinions
Opinions go beyond information. An opinion is something that is subjectively held to be true. When it turns out that an opinion is true, then it is a right opinion. When you have “the right answer” but do not know how you know it, then you have right opinion. Opinions are volutarily held, they are “decisions.” Opinions are also beliefs.
An example of an opinion would be something like the claim that “No true Scotsman runs from danger.” People might believe it, but when asked: How do you know it to be the truth of the matter? then those same people would not be able to provide conclusive reasoning as to how they know it to be the truth.
It is possible for one person to hold an opinion that, for another person, is knowledge.
Knowledge
Knowledge goes beyond opinions. When someone is in possession of knowledge, they not only ascribe truth to something, they understand how it is that they know it to be the truth of the matter. Knowledge is “understood truth.” The chance of knowledge turning out to be wrong — such as after further investigation by experts — is zero.
Knowledge is “known truth.”
The claim that “round squares do not exist” is an example of understood truth. The chance of it being proved false at some point in the future is zero. Things that are contextual, and things that are relational — i.e., two kinds of things which, upon future investigation, cannot be found to have been false — can qualify as knowledge.
The knowledge that the area of a triangle is half of the product of (base * height) is knowledge for the teacher, but for the student who first hears it in class, it is still opinion — i.e., a “right opinion” which is being tentatively held in the student’s mind without the student understanding how it is actually the truth of the matter.
After working at it, that opinion can become knowledge for that student.
Wisdom
Wisdom goes beyond knowledge. Wisdom incorporates first principles and final ends. Knowledge is power, but wisdom is potential. A wise person without knowledge will soon discover how to gain all the knowledge that is needed for a fulfilling life. An unwise person can be filled with knowledge, but still not find good use for it.
A wise person, such as Aristotle, is someone who realizes how life makes things good and bad, even if they would not be good or bad in the absence of life. This means that there is no dichotomy between fact and value, between truth and morality — even if a bunch of philosophers formed “a circle in Vienna” and collectively agreed to say so.
It also means that character, not just intellect, is a factor in acquiring truth — because a quest for truth requires moral virtues, not just human intellect. People can have really high IQ scores and remain lost in life. Wisdom helps us understand why that is so. It’s because it takes more than “intelligence” (~intellectual virtue) to acquire truth.
Conclusion
When researchers investigated how people view those holding contrary opinions, they found out that — if you had first formed your own strong opinion — then you had a tendency to have disdain for those holding opinions much different than yours. It didn’t matter if you were male or female, young or old, expert or not.
The experts were just as susceptible as regular people to making this mistake. But if the Wisdom of Crowds teaches us anything, it teaches us that there is value in exposure to differing opinions, because everyone brings something to the table after they filter raw information through their individual minds and their past experience.
It’s the main thesis in Hayek’s defense of free markets: that freely-interacting individuals become “smarter” than any possible expert could ever hope to be. Let’s chill out on the flame wars, and keep our eyes on the prize: undercutting the Wannabe Globalist Overlords (WGOs).
Reference
Galton, F. (1907). Vox populi. Nature, 75, 450-451. https://www.nature.com/articles/075450a0
Learning From the Wisdom of the Crowd. Psychology Today. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/unserious-psychology/202305/learning-from-the-wisdom-of-the-crowd
Maloney, Michael T. and Mulherin, J. Harold, The Stock Price Reaction to the Challenger Crash: Information Disclosure in an Efficient Market (December 7, 1998). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=141971
Mortimer J. Adler, Ten Philosophical Mistakes. First published January 1, 1985. https://archive.org/details/tenphilosophical0000adle
Navajas, J., Niella, T., Garbulsky, G., Bahrami, B., & Sigman, M. (2018). Aggregated knowledge from a small number of debates outperforms the wisdom of large crowds. Nature Human Behaviour, 2(2), 126-132. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-017-0273-4
Surowiecki, J. (2005). The Wisdom of Crowds. Anchor, NY. https://archive.org/details/wisdomofcrowds0000suro
The Right Way to Use the Wisdom of Crowds. https://hbr.org/2018/12/the-right-way-to-use-the-wisdom-of-crowds
Here, here! Agreed!