I have been wondering if the people that lived during the dark age, could have known that they were living in a dark age. If it was possible to know, what would the signs have been? The people living in this period will have noticed that the civilizations that came before had left behind great works of science, art, and architecture. Perhaps they would have heard stories told of the luxuries the citizens of the older civilizations had enjoyed, and the leisure time they had available. However, most of this could only be known by the people of the time if they could read and educate themselves. Instead they had to rely on representatives of knowledge dwelling within the churches to educate them. Representatives with certain knowledge and ready answers. Most importantly, people would have noticed that when these ready answers were not sufficient, then there followed cruel punishment to reduce the risk of dissent.
Perhaps then this is the surest sign that should have been evident to the people toiling away in the dark. The presence of a class with too much certainty. The destruction of certainty is possibly the single most important event that lead us from the renaissance and into the great age of enlightenment. The shining light of the enlightenment, Descarte, famously said that ‘I think, therefore I am’. This in retort to a question of what he does believe, given that he demanded that thinking people must doubt everything.
This philosophy of unerring doubt served society well, and reached a peak with Popper, when he showed that in science, we cannot prove anything, but that we can only disprove theories. This represented a significant advance for the human intellect. Perhaps as important as the first use of the number zero. Popper’s philosophy too, served society well. As a generation of scientists and engineers that had been trained to be doubtful, found a way to quantify their doubt. But then the most surprising thing happened.
Eskom jokes aside, I now believe that I am writing this in the dark, or at least in the dusk. Perhaps I sit on my patio, appreciating the setting of the bright disc of light that had been the enlightenment.
‘But, Fred, you tirelessly optimistic surveyor of innovation’ I hear you say. ‘How can you be so deluded as to doubt the advances we see all around us?’
I am glad you asked.
The death of doubt. To be enlightened we had to destroy certainty, but now certainty is back. Certainty is institutionalized and it is global. Popper probably thought that he was knocking the last nail in the coffin of certainty but as is often the case in life there were unintended consequences. It became very difficult to do good scientific research, and more expensive, because of Popper’s work. As a result I think that researchers the world over took the approach to just publish some results and state them as fact, and then left the costly exercise of disproving their nonsense to someone else. One needs to go far to find a business or economics paper that does not consist of mere supposition with supporting anecdotes. Of course the rigour behind the discovery of these anecdotes is quite intense, but theory is not tested, it is only created. Then in the perversion that is the science of certainty, one must disprove the theory in the method of Popper, and unless so done, criticism is invalid and disingenuous.
The current climate debate is a perfect exemplar of this. One sees how researchers that express doubt, or present findings that do not conform, can lose their jobs. For me this is the best example of global institutionalized certainty, but the rejection of doubt is prevalent in the innovation projects I work on too. Think of how much an innovation project costs. The costs of international patenting fees alone can build houses for several families – per project. Then there are the millions spent on R&D. Most of these projects go nowhere. They have less impact on society than if the money had simply been spent building homes. One would think that doubt would be the most important faculty applied to an innovation project, but I have seen that people who express doubts are removed from projects in punishment. Many innovation projects have become mere parodies of the economic drivers that they are supposed to be.
It seems to me that we find ourselves in a time where we celebrate innovation but the word sounds increasingly euphemistic – like an opportunity to be re-educated in the USSR. Nothing wrong with a bit of re-education right? Government directs our taxes to innovation projects. Such funding only goes to projects approved by government, with ends and outputs that are approved by government. The keepers of certain knowledge. Companies take our pensions and direct them towards innovations, with incentives created by government, to these same outcomes. These companies are also keepers of certain knowledge. This certainty is obviously a good thing, because such certain outcomes can be captured on balance sheets in the long-term that create bonuses in the short-term. We can thank the sponsors of state capture, Steinhoff, and Enron for such certainty in company financials.
The inheritors of the legacy of doubt and its power to improve the human condition have failed. All fields of intellectual endeavour have failed to feed the flame of doubt and to keep it burning bright. Scientists, economists, accountants, lawyers, they have all failed us. We see herbal soaps sold as nanotechnology innovations. We see electric passenger aircraft that cannot carry a payload. We see a cattle kraal that is apparently cutting edge biotechnology. An artistic representation of a windmill becomes a great invention. The polar ice caps have melted several times. We have great entrepreneurs that have never sold a thing. We have creative geniuses that have never created anything. Gilded dog turds are lilies. Pigs with lipstick are princesses. Of course, no one with a creative and innovative mind, would ever doubt. Expressed doubt is of course the surest sign that these attributes of success in the modern economy are not present. A reluctance to waste millions is not in fact a characteristic of the critical thinker.
Economic rewards favour certainty, and in innovation, certainty is rewarded too. Bullshitters that pronounce with confidence used to be called con-men. Now they are Nobel laureates and CEO’s, burning through taxes and pensions. Doubt is slow, doubt is methodical, and yes, doubt is more expensive; but look back at the history of the dark ages and ask what the cost is of living under a regime of intellectual certainty.
Bring back doubt to your profession. Next time someone makes a claim, ask ‘How do you know that?’ Bold claims require bold evidence, and inference is not inevitable. Don’t fear your own ignorance, it’s for the claimant to educate you. Doubt is not a reflection of knowledge or intelligence. The last glows of the enlightenment are now gone, but its bright light can rise again.
Backseat Creator 