Our technological trend is accelerating. For instance, we now have 3D printers, vast machinery to help construct tunnels and bridges, and even software that helps with the design of new products and infrastructure, such as sophisticated computer-aided design (CAD) programs. One computational realm, evolutionary programming, even allows software to ‘evolve’ solutions to problems, while being agnostic on what shape that final solution could take. Need an equation to fit some data? Evolutionary programming can do that — even if you can’t understand the answer it comes up with.
The US legal Code, itself a kind of technology, is more than 22 million words long and contains more than 80,000 links within it, between one section and another. This vast legal network is profoundly complicated, the functionality of which no person could understand in its entirety. As Michael Mandel and Diana Carew put,"we keep adding more and more rules and regulations. Each law individually might make sense, but taken together they can be debilitating, and even interact in surprising and unexpected ways."
In chess, a realm where computers are more powerful than humans and have the ability to win in ways that the human mind can’t always understand, these types of solutions are known as ‘computer moves’ — the moves that no human would ever do, the ones that are ugly but still get results. Computers have exposed the fact that chess, at least when played at the highest levels, is too complicated, with too many moving parts for a person — even a grandmaster — to understand.
The US legal Code, itself a kind of technology, is more than 22 million words long and contains more than 80,000 links within it, between one section and another. This vast legal network is profoundly complicated, the functionality of which no person could understand in its entirety. As Michael Mandel and Diana Carew put,"we keep adding more and more rules and regulations. Each law individually might make sense, but taken together they can be debilitating, and even interact in surprising and unexpected ways."
In chess, a realm where computers are more powerful than humans and have the ability to win in ways that the human mind can’t always understand, these types of solutions are known as ‘computer moves’ — the moves that no human would ever do, the ones that are ugly but still get results. Computers have exposed the fact that chess, at least when played at the highest levels, is too complicated, with too many moving parts for a person — even a grandmaster — to understand.
So how do we respond to all of this technological impenetrability? One response is to simply give up, much like the comic strip character Calvin (friend to a philosophical tiger) who declared that everything from light bulbs to vacuum cleaners works via ‘magic’. Rather than confront the complicated truth of how wind works, Calvin resorts to calling it ‘trees sneezing’. This intellectual surrender in the face of increasing complexity seems too extreme and even a bit cowardly, but what should we replace it with if we can’t understand our creations any more?
Perhaps we can replace it with the same kind of attitude we have towards weather. While we can’t actually control the weather or understand it in all of its nonlinear details, we can predict it reasonably well, adapt to it, and even prepare for it. And when the elements deliver us something unexpected, we muddle through as best as we can.
And when things get too complicated and we end up being surprised by the workings of the structures humanity has created? At that point, we will have to take a cue from those who turn up their collars to the unexpected wintry mix and sigh as they proceed outdoors: we will have to become a bit more humble!
Perhaps we can replace it with the same kind of attitude we have towards weather. While we can’t actually control the weather or understand it in all of its nonlinear details, we can predict it reasonably well, adapt to it, and even prepare for it. And when the elements deliver us something unexpected, we muddle through as best as we can.
And when things get too complicated and we end up being surprised by the workings of the structures humanity has created? At that point, we will have to take a cue from those who turn up their collars to the unexpected wintry mix and sigh as they proceed outdoors: we will have to become a bit more humble!
Author and Credits: Samuel Arbesman