Understanding Ourselves and Our Societies

B. W. Wojciechowski

I find it quite improbable that such order came out of chaos.

There has to be some organizing principle.

God to me is a mystery, but is the explanation for the miracle of existence,

why is there something instead of nothing?

Allan Sandage, American astronomer 1926–2010

We live in an era where Hard Sciences have made our civilization surge ahead as never before. I need not enumerate the successes of Hard Science and Technology; the evidence is all around us.

The astounding achievements of modern Hard Science have exposed the commensurate developmental inadequacies in what one might call Soft Sciences. These subjects may use some mathematical methods that dominate the Hard Sciences, but their output lacks the certainty of causality. The Soft Sciences, though also based on causes, tend to be probabilistic. It is Soft Sciences that urgently need to be better organized. That is what I want to address, including its ramifications that need to be considered.

There are topics in both sciences where probabilities play a role. However, in the Hard Sciences, the probabilities are governed by well-defined causality, and even when we cannot establish how an individual item will behave, we can define how a large assembly of particles will behave.

For example, we cannot predict which atom will undergo fission, but we can unambiguously define how many atoms in a large sample will undergo spontaneous fission in a given period. More than that, we can calculate how many atoms will undergo stimulated fission under well-defined conditions. Knowing that, we can build various fission-based power-producing reactors and bombs of various sizes.

Mechanisms in Nature

In all processes, we encounter reactions that result in a change of state. Either a new product is formed, or a new condition is achieved. Most such changes proceed via a Mechanism where many individual elementary steps result in the final state. Many steps, some involving branching, can be present in a mechanism, and a mechanism, and its output, can change with reaction conditions and result in one or more products. Mechanisms in society and nature, in general, may have feedback loops so that the result of a change in input may take a long time to settle down.

In the Hard Sciences, a mechanism can produce different results depending on reaction conditions, but in every case the result is predictable, and the same result will be obtained in a repeat of the experiment. Not so in the case of Soft Sciences.

Soft Sciences

Soft Sciences are not deterministic, they are probabilistic. What that means is that in Hard Sciences, once the conditions are set and reactants introduced, we know for sure what the result will be. In the Soft Sciences setting identical conditions and “reactants” we cannot be certain of the result we will obtain. We can at best estimate the probability of various possible results. More than that, each such result has a range of confidence in the numbers produced. That and feedback loops are the bane of Soft Sciences and the uncertainties of social interactions. Governing a society is much less well-understood than building a nuclear reactor.

Before we get any deeper, we should define a Soft Science. These studies are mostly concerned with biological systems and social systems in biology. Population dynamics, economics, politics, and general studies dealing with human societies are hard to quantify. The main problem is “free will,” an aspect of human societies that tends to be labile and makes long-term predictions highly uncertain. All animals have some choices in their activities, but humans are outstandingly unpredictable. The mechanisms of policies in society are not only probabilistic from the start but have a short Lyapunov Time of applicability. Current “5-year plans” are an attempt at dealing with this problem. It turns out to be helpful but crude. Ideally, plans should be updated annually or even continuously if society is to deal with changing circumstances.

Problems with such a rapid adjustment of policy are twofold: the lack of valid current data and the “inertia” of social organizations. This can be solved by maintaining constant surveillance of what is going on. Adequate surveillance is impossible using current polling methods with their suspected lack of reliability. Electronic surveillance in detail and adequate in reliability will be preceded by a protracted period of privacy debates. To steer a society based on information will play havoc with privacy and civil rights as we know them.

Economics is the Soft Science that is ahead of others due to its access to reasonably reliable Hard financial information, even there, incomplete transparency and clever maneuvers of participants make some decisions less than well-informed. The discipline also lacks adequate quantification of popular moods. Bank rates, liquidity, and so on are guided by a good estimate of the expected response because they depend on a subset of the population that deals with gross financial matters. However, an estimate of the effect of inflation involves a more widespread and less organized population that can distort reality from expectations.

Soft Sciences aspire to quantification. I wish them well and hope their progress will accelerate. However, some issues are divorced from quantification. In this essay, I want to examine an important social issue, because it may be the one that can give us a framework for building societies. Theology is such a study. It is Soft Science.

The God Hypothesis

Perhaps you have not seen it this way, but theology is a study of mechanisms and in that sense, it is a science. Mechanisms are systems where individual steps combine to form a series of events that result in the observed product. Let me restate it differently; a mechanism consists of several essential intermediate events that lead to an identifiable result. In the case of Theology, the steps are the events that have taken place in our past and how their combination has resulted in what we are and observe.

In this study causality is still the guiding principle but probabilities of occurrence are malleable. A lot of what we see in nature is understood to be determined by random events. But all of nature is governed by mechanisms. Most things in nature are due to causality and follow mechanisms that involve a series of reasonably foreseeable happenings. However, some events in the history of our universe are so unlikely that they seem to be directed by an unknown influence. Mechanisms that include these unlikely events have a profound influence on biological life on Earth, and perhaps on the universe. One such event in the mechanism of the universe is the recent appearance of technologically adept, deep-thinking beings, humans. How did this happen and where does it lead?

Rare but Necessary Events for Intelligent Life to Arise

Let me construct a partial list of the necessary items and events that make our existence possible.

1. The Big Bang (BB) is an event for which there is no explanation. Without it, the universe would not exist.

2. The BB resulted in the setting of 26 fundamental constants. These constants limit all that is possible in the universe, they make the emergence of life possible.

3. The constants have values that are fine-tuned for a universe such as ours to form.

4. The probability that this particular set of constants would be formed in the BB by chance has been estimated to be:

1 in 1045 or 1/10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.

5. Compare this to the total number of stars in the universe:

1024 i.e.1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.

It looks small compared to the chance that the universal parameters would form by chance.

6. These numbers make it highly unlikely that the values of the universal parameters are a chance occurrence. The expectation is that on average only 1 in 1045 BBs will form a universe such as ours.

7. Moreover, one of the 26 parameters has a very narrowly defined value that allows the formation of Carbon atoms, essential for biological life to form.

8. The dimensionless Fine Structure Constant (read all about it, it has mystified many a physicist) must be exactly what it is for Carbon to form in the nascent universe. Carbon is not only essential to biological life, it is a bottleneck on the road to the formation of heavier atoms.

9. Rocky planets such as the Earth could not exist without Carbon as a precursor of its heavier elements.

10. The Gravitational Constant must also be close to its measured value for stars to grow to the point where compression makes nuclear reactions take place in their interiors to form these heavier elements.

11. Among the heavier atoms formed by these stars is Oxygen16, which is made by Carbon12 reacting with Helium4, a product of the original BB.

12. The mechanisms of heavier atom formation are such that many early generations of stars had to explode as Novas to seed the universe with Oxygen and the heavy atoms of rocky planets.

13. There must be enough of this debris for later generations of stars to form planetary systems, including some with rocky planets about the size of the Earth and largely made up of heavier elements.

14. The appearance of Oxygen in the debris of exploded stars allows for the formation of water, H2O, using a plentiful product of the original BB, Hydrogen. Oxygen is so reactive that very little is free in the form of a gas and much of it is now present as water.

15. Water is so common in cosmic debris that it is a major component of planets, even rocky planets.

16. Water is indispensable for complex biological life to form. It is a solvent that promotes chemical reactions that eventually lead to biological life. No water → no biology.

17. Water is a very efficient solvent and a “catalyst” in facilitating many reactions. It can exist in all three phases, vapor, liquid, and solid at temperatures where spontaneous chemical reactions are common, and the products formed are stable.

18. Water is also a rare material whose solid phase is less dense than its liquid. In large bodies of water, chemistry can continue to function, and life can survive when temperatures fall below freezing. Under an ice cover, there is liquid water where reactions can proceed, and life can survive.

19. Among the highly unlikely complex organic molecules that have appeared in our biology in this aqueous medium is DNA.

20. DNA carries the code not only for duplicating itself but for the assembly of succeeding generations of the organism that it comes from, no matter how complex. The chances of this kind of molecule being formed by random molecular reactions are very small.

21. One can postulate circumstances where the probability of chance formation of DNA is increased from a basic 1 in 10300 (I do not know the error limits on this value) to something more reasonable. But then the probability of encountering the necessary conditions also has a very low probability.

22. All the self-reproducing cellular organisms have DNA as the genome. The DNA and its code are specific for each type of organism. However, single-celled organisms carrying an RNA genome also exist. RNA is present in viruses and may have been a precursor of the far better-designed, more stable, and more capable DNA. If it was a precursor, it too was a rare product, and much had to be changed in its composition and structure to form the incredibly clever DNA.

23. Biological life took several billion years to prosper on Earth. Early attempts were unable to survive climate changes, or led to little improvement with succeeding generations.

24. In the early millions of years and perhaps more, the Earth underwent a series of destructive events before vulcanism, climate change, and asteroid bombardment subsided and allowed for some stability. Progress in biological development was slow all that time.

25. Slow progress would likely take place anywhere else where biological life may germinate. Or can it germinate elsewhere at all, if DNA is as rare as one might suspect?

26. Other requirements for life to prosper on a planet are many and Earth has them all fulfilled. Those who think biological life is common in the universe need to give it more thought.

27. Our Earth is in a Goldilocks orbit around our Sun. The orbit is nearly circular and at a distance where water can exist in all three phases.

28. Our planet has plenty of water and life can flourish at its moderate temperatures.

29. Our Moon is unusually large relative to its planet and acts as a gyroscope to keep the direction of our axis of rotation reasonably stable and upright in its orbit. This and the points listed above keep seasonal changes within narrow limits conducive to life on the surface. This stability has continued for billions of years.

· The Moon is the result of a collision of the original Earth with a hypothetical planetesimal called Theia. This cataclysmic event took place early in the first half billion years of the solar system and made Earth habitable.

· The result was not only the formation of our stabilizing Moon, but also the creation of a large metallic core in the Earth containing the core of Theia and the original Earth. The resulting molten metallic core has survived and creates a magnetic field to protect us from ionizing radiation originating in the Cosmos and the Sun.

· The Moon is also responsible for tides which moderate the rotation of the Earth and provide the daily inundation of shorelines, an environment conducive to the appearance of life.

30. As it happens early life on Earth consumed Carbon Dioxide in the original atmosphere and excreted Oxygen.

31. This reaction was dependent on solar radiation or hydrothermal vents for energy and slowly converted Earth’s atmosphere from its original inactive composition to a mix of Nitrogen and Oxygen plus some Carbon Dioxide and minor amounts of other gases.

32. The Oxygen formed had an initial malign effect in that it removed our thermal blanket of methane from the atmosphere causing the surface temperature to plummet resulting in total glaciation of our globe. It took some 300 million years for volcanos to produce enough Carbon Dioxide to trap enough solar radiation to melt the glaciers.

33. The species that survived the presence of Oxygen continued living and now their descendants populate the Earth with vegetation.

34. In this atmosphere, water vapors from the seas collect into clouds, moderating the infrared radiation of the Sun and producing rain. Conditions became very good for Eukaryotic organisms, whose cells contain a nucleus and delicate membrane-bound organelles, to thrive. The complexity of life forms was increasing.

35. Carbon Dioxide-consuming plants colonized the solid surface of Earth and supplied more Oxygen-producing organisms.

36. Oxygen is a very reactive gas that oxidizes the surface minerals of the Earth but much of the plant material was not re-oxidized and became deposited as limestone, coal, peat, and so on. The result was the development of the unnaturally Oxygen-rich atmosphere we have. This is critically important for animal biological life to function.

37. All the life that initially formed was plant life. The Oxygen in the new atmosphere allowed animals to evolve. Animals move and need a lot of energy to hunt and survive. Animal digestion systems “burn” plant food with the Oxygen they breathe and produce the energy animals need to move and do things.

38. Animals became symbiotic with plants; plants consume Carbon Dioxide and excrete Oxygen while animals use Oxygen to digest plants and excrete Oxygen-consuming wastes and Carbon Dioxide. The many steps of this mechanism are in balance and have been for a billion years. We could not have evolved in the original Carbon Dioxide-rich atmosphere. Nor would we survive an atmosphere containing much more Oxygen.

39. For life to survive on the surface the Earth had to have even more specific properties and features.

· It needed to be shielded from Cosmic and Sun’s damaging charged particle radiation. It has a magnetic shield against this, generated by its spinning molten metallic core. Earth is large enough that its core has remained molten and geologically active long enough for us to evolve. Mars was too small and is dead.

· The geological activity of the core makes sure that Eart’s solid surface is not eroded by rains but is renewed by volcanic activity, continental plate collisions, and general restlessness of its surface due to the molten core.

· The presence of Oxygen in the atmosphere protects biological beings from solar radiation by forming Ozone, a highly reactive gas composed of three oxygen atoms. This shields us from dangerously energetic ultraviolet radiation from the Sun. Now that is lucky. The magnetic shield cannot do that.

40. The initial animal life failed to develop intelligence and technology. It did evolve several forms of social organization and to this day ours is largely based on this early development.

41. A lucky strike by a massive asteroid some 65 million years ago eliminated the then-dominant animal life form, the dinosaurs. They were holding up progress.

42. That branch of evolution had several millions of years to evolve intelligent life, it did not.

43. Many other “experimental” species became extinct, but mammals survived and came to dominate the fauna of Earth. We are descendants of these survivors.

44. Recently, in no more than half a million years, one of the ape/humanoid species started to dominate that genre and eventually became homo sapiens, having eliminated all rivals and overcome several chances of becoming extinct.

45. Lightning fast, within some twenty thousand years we came to dominate the Earth and even visit our moon! Truly an impressive rate of evolution in capabilities.

46. For no identifiable reason we have developed technologies and begun to study our universe in ever more detail. Why? Surviving apes and their fellow mammals do not need this knowledge or capabilities and continue to thrive.

47. We harbor the ambition to become space travelers and inhabit the cosmos. We think, perhaps hope, that there are ancient civilizations and that they are watching us evolve. We are not sure how they may interact with us, but we do hope they are there.

48. To understand what we are doing we have hypothesized a Creator who maneuvered probabilities to make our existence a fact. Have a look at the preceding recitation and you will see why we have trouble ascribing the elemental steps to random events.

49. We are now increasingly capable of altering probabilities and creating “progress.” Intelligent life, given enough energy, can make things that have zero probability of forming spontaneously, into a certainty. Think of cell phones.

50. But where are we headed? Archaic social systems threaten our future. Are we on the road to nowhere, like the dinosaurs? Or is the Creator interested in our success, and will quietly alter probabilities to save us? He will not micromanage things; we will be left to look after ourselves, acquire a better understanding of His creation, and make good decisions for our future. Are we diligently looking for those? Or are we squabbling over trivia which could lead to our destruction?

I have said that Theology is a Probabilistic Science. Considering the probabilities of fulfilling all the needs I have enumerated I am inclined to accept the Hypothesis that a superior intelligence, with far advanced capabilities, is manipulating probabilities to achieve some purpose that involves us. Humans seem to be important in this plan. But why are we excelling in Hard Sciences while wading in the swamps of social studies? We need help, our technology threatens to destroy us for lack of social wisdom.

The Future of Social Sciences

If we accept this Hypothesis, our technological advances and increasing understanding of the cosmos must have a purpose. One thing seems to stand out; we are gaining the ability to control probabilities so they suit our needs. What are we to do with that?

An urgent matter is to organize better societies using technology and our wits. At present our leaders are the ones who find quarrels to pursue, destroying much of what the world needs to have, peace, security, and comfort. It has been like that since the beginning of history. Our hostilities can be personal or social. Personal hostilities we handle using legal systems, though we should be firmer and more consistent in using the apparatus of justice. However, social hostilities are not abetting. International organizations we have designed to date in an attempt to defuse them are largely powerless and tend to be clannish and corrupt.

The Soft Sciences need to be more aware of the capabilities of Technology. So far, they have concentrated on using it for surveillance and control. Fine, but subtle human issues are important when it comes to how technology is used for social purposes. Technology, applied to social matters, is a multi-pronged tool. We need more technology and a change of ethos in society and the Soft Sciences. Misuse of technology can enslave or even destroy us.

Human nature is quarrelsome and full of free will surprises. In Hard Science, these aspects are present but well-controlled because they deal with measurements, mathematics, and facts. Not so with the Social Sciences, they still deal with beliefs, ideologies, and impossible dreams. As a result, governing is as tricky as herding cats. Practitioners are usually believers in an inviolable postulate of their choice. They seldom resort to unbiased studies of alternatives. They concentrate on “proving” their point. Social ideologies resemble atheistic, fundamentalist, religions.

To solve this, Social Sciences need to change their ethos. I sense that proving one is smarter than others is more important than establishing a fact. Hence the sophistry that dominates discussion and the distorted polls carried out at the behest of partisans, causing a shortage of firm, factual foundations.

Above I discussed evidence supporting the God Hypothesis. Social ideologues should urgently undertake a search for similarly convincing evidence supporting their needs and beliefs. That would be progress.

Social scholars do not want to have their beliefs challenged. That is not science. It is a quasi-religious cult, and there are several. The result is that social policies are not optimized, they are imposed by fundamentalists, while they are in power. This might work in small homogeneous communities but in large heterogeneous ones, many are unhappy and complain about the government. The policy to-and-fro as power changes hands leaves behind few robust structures, a mess of costly, shoddy, and often unnecessary structures, and much debris. Which of these is accumulating more rapidly?

While this goes on, the drain on social resources continues to grow. There is no doubt that there is a point where “the masses” will decide there are too many burdens and too little freedom; then what?

My Position

Enough said, I should state my position on social issues. Here are some structural and policy issues I would like to see implemented.

1. Governments should be required to strive for a minimalist mode of operation.

2. A modern structure of jurisprudence, employing technology, should be established.

3. Justice must be consistent and firmly enforced.

4. Fringe social interests should be left to their own devices.

5. National budgets must be balanced every two years.

6. Legislators should be held to account if budget overruns take place.

7. Legislators should be limited to two terms of two or four years depending on the office.

8. Legislators should be personally responsible for any abuse of office.

9. Abuse of office should include votes which are seen to be convenient for the legislator.

10. Legislators should recuse themselves if there is any reason to suspect personal interest.

11. Freedom of choice should be assured if others are not negatively impacted.

12. The government needs access to reliable information to formulate rational policies.

13. Severe penalties should punish abuse of power or of government-collected information.

14. Information held by the government should be verified by independent bodies.

15. Voting on government actions should be compulsory and limited to documented citizens.

16. Weighted voting should be used wherever possible.

17. Referenda should be held on all budgetary and legal issues.

18. Civil servants should be treated the same as private business employees.

19. But government employees should have a limited right to strike.

20. Employees in critical occupations should have no right to strike.

21. Civil service strikes should be subject to a non-binding, advisory, popular, referendum.

22. International military activity should be approved by referendum.

These and similar positions must be investigated for utility and applicability using appropriate experience, information, and technologies. The decay of democratic societies must be reversed if we do not want to be ruled by hard men with no compunctions and pursue personal agendas.

A Little Fable to Relieve the Stress of Hard Thinking

Mathematics is the Queen of all sciences. Yet, the Soft Sciences do not fully recognize her as the sovereign of understanding. Hard Sciences have developed variants of mathematics, Courtiers of the Queen, to handle the array of phenomena with which they deal. These are based on the hereditary functions of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. They are the foundation of all mathematics and help to surround the Queen with her court. Using those operators, we quantified fields such as geometry, topology, matrix operations, and more. Supporting those there is calculus, introducing differentiation and integration. There are “transforms” of various kinds. Among all these courtiers of the Queen, statistics stand out as a possible Lady in Waiting in the Court of the Queen of Sciences. Statistics could be the Princess of Soft Sciences.

There is much to be done in building mathematical structures that deal with the Soft, Probabilistic, Sciences. All social Mechanisms, indeed all Sciences, need mathematics which can deal conveniently and rigorously with the phenomena they set out to examine. I am not the one to discover such Courtiers who would serve the Princess of Soft Sciences, but I can be the instigator of a search for them.

A DISCLAIMER

At this point, I want to explain what may appear to be an inconsistency in my arguments.

Here is a taste of what statistics is all about.

P(A), P(A | B), P(A∪B), E(X), var(X), std(X), σX, corr(X,Y), ρX,Y, n(λ),

Kurtosis, Average, Variance, Binomial test, Causation, F-test, t-test,

Post hoc test, Regression analysis, Statistical inference, Mean, Standard deviation.

I am promoting the field of statistics despite its shoddy reputation. Shoddy? Well, a damning commentary by Disraeli sums up a widely held opinion.

There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.

Benjamin Disraeli, English Politician 1804–1881

Disraeli was a politician and given to hyperbole and clever sayings. The lines below the heading attest that Statistics is a serious branch of mathematics with specific vocabulary, notation, and measures. However, problems persist, and the unfavorable reputation is hard to shake. If you read my comments, you will find that I am promoting an evolution in statistics. One that yields reliable results that will clarify issues in social studies. We do not have a satisfactory version yet.

But, it is not simply a failure of statistics as a branch of mathematics. Data collection is a serious problem causing difficulties in improving the reputation of statistical social studies. Another is the human temptation to mishandle or “comb” the collected input data for “outliers” and other unacceptable (?) points, often an excuse for unfair manipulation to achieve preconceived results. Statistics (and modeling?) is a branch of mathematics prone to distortion due to human frailties and ingenuity. The expected range of uncertainty in statistical results is often ignored, implying that the number produced is as reliable as a number generated in the Hard Sciences,

Disraeli knew all that, more than a century ago. The claimed reliability of statistical results remains disturbingly ill-defined and is often configured to suit the user of the result. This continues to be a major weakness. But in dealing with human failings, statistics seem to be the perfect tool, if only we can improve its credibility and keep statistical results from being badly done or/and misrepresented by partisans.

What is the probability of that, before we blow up the world?