I admire what medical researchers and biochemists do. They are dealing with a terribly complex system, the human body, and they are applying the most unexpected chemical, physical and radiological treatments to it, and they get it right a lot! But once in a while they come up with a treatment that is a big oops: say thalidomide for morning sickness or arsenic for syphilis. And the reason is that underneath it all,
they don't really understand what the heck they're doing. Ask the most brilliant researcher how much they understand the thousands of intricately balanced chemical cycles they have mapped out, and the answer is quite frightening. So in fact what they do, is move carefully and experiment a lot. They know what has worked in the past, but not really why.
The general formulation for this sort of science is: if you have a complex system that you don't understand, play around with it lots but don't do anything radical, observe everything, and use statistics to make predictions. Works pretty well too.
Now here is the problem: people are incredibly vain. We never want to admit that we aren't smart enough to understand something, so we often pretend or boast that we do.
Example #1: the environment. We've done some pretty radical things to the Earth, thinking that we understand it well and can predict the effects. Oops! And we end up with depleted resources (such as cod) and destroyed habitats (such as zebra mussels in the great lakes) and toxic towns (such as Chernobyl, Bhopal or Three Mile Island). But here's what's worse: we are even vain enough to believe that we understand our error and can repair the damage! Using DDT on insect vectors actually increased the spread of Dutch Elm disease. Do we
really understand what's behind global warming? Are we arrogant enough to think that reducing our carbon footprint will solve anything?
Example #2: our society. This morning in a magazine, I read an interview with a young activist. She was energized to change the world, which is great. The world has a lot of ugly warts and needs to be changed. And many of the wonderful things about Canada are the result of this sort of energy. But here's the crunch: how do we change our civilization to get rid of its flaws, without destroying the very aspects that we love? If you tax the rich will it allow you to help the poor, or will the rich take their wealth elsewhere, making the poor worse off? I don't have any idea, but some people are quite certain they do, and they're performing big, radical experiments on the fibre of Canada. Do we
really understand how the economy works? Or the law? Or social justice? Are we arrogant enough to think that tougher laws or kinder schools or better welfare will solve anything?
Hmmm. Moving slowly and observing a lot is starting to sound pretty wise.
