Making the Mistakes as Fast as Possible

The great American physicist J. A. Wheeler contends in his A Septet of Sybils: Aids in the Search for Truth:

"Our whole problem is to make the mistakes as fast as possible."

The flip side of our unrivaled success in making the world ever more conveniently inhabitable for us, is our constitutive ignorance. We are so incredibly good at adapting to our environment because our ignorance forces us to keep on searching for more light. We - at least the wisest and the best thinkers and scientists among us - are aware of the limits of our knowledge, unlike the omniscient crocodile that thinks it knows all there is to know. There are many reasons why we are necessarily ignorant, probably the most important one is this: our brain is an organ that evolved primarily to make us survive, serving at best secondarily to map truth accurately (truth being correspondence with the facts). Sure, had our precursors not developed a pretty good ability to adapt to, say, a three dimensional world, they would have dropped from the trees to their death and we would not exist. But the fit between human cognition and the real world is no guarantee for command of the truth, not least because much of what is to be known and much of what affects us lies outside the mesocosmos (the world of medium dimensions to which we are adapted), this outside having evolved (1) prior to, (2) independent of and (3) with no need to be immediately accessible to our mesocosmic faculty of cognition. A situation somewhat analogous to the epistemological fate of Lucky, the Dalmatian I dog-sit, who is fantastically well adapted to our mutual slice of the world, without knowing much about it. The assumptions he works on are often spectacularly erroneous, a circumstance that I amply exploit to create joy and harmony between us.

Adaptive competence (like following the right rules and behaving in a ceratin way) is an alternative to insight, especially when we are to deal successfully with information impossible to be collected and processed by the unaided human brain: markets are such an extension of the brain, they are indeed a veritable prothesis of the brain.

So, we cannot overcome our ignorance ever altogether, but we can reduce it incrementally and improve our conjectural knowledge of the world, by constantly calling into question what we think we already know. This is precisely what markets do, and what science does. We achieve progress by incessantly discovering the flaws in our present and provisional knowledge. The faster we discover the flaws the more advancement we achieve in the course of our unending quest: "our whole problem is to make the mistakes as fast as possible."

All political theories assume, of course, that most individuals are very ignorant. Those who plead for liberty differ from the rest in that they include among the ignorant themselves as well as the wisest.

Hayek, F.A. (1978) The Constitution of Liberty, p.30

From the first page of Karl Popper's autobiography Unended Quest, which is available as a free download here:

When I was twenty I became apprenticed to an old master cabinetmaker
in Vienna whose name was Adalbert Pösch, and I
worked with him from 1922 to 1924, not long after the First
World War. He looked exactly like Georges Clemenceau, but he
was a very mild and kind man. After I had gained his confidence
he would often, when we were alone in his workshop, give me
the benefit of his inexhaustible store of knowledge. Once he told
me that he had worked for many years on various models of a
perpetual motion machine, adding musingly: “They say you
can’t make it; but once it’s been made they’ll talk different!”
(“Da sag’n s’ dass ma’ so was net mach’n kann; aber wann amal
eina ein’s g’macht hat, dann wer’n s’ schon anders red’n!”) A
favourite practice of his was to ask me a historical question and
to answer it himself when it turned out that I did not know the
answer (although I, his pupil, was a University student—a fact
of which he was very proud). “And do you know”, he would ask,

“who invented topboots? You don’t? It was Wallenstein, the
Duke of Friedland, during the Thirty Years War.” After one or
two even more difficult questions, posed by himself and triumphantly
answered by himself, my master would say with
modest pride: “There, you can ask me whatever you like: I know
everything.” (“Da können S’ mi’ frag’n was Sie woll’n: ich weiss
alles.”)

I believe I learned more about the theory of knowledge from
my dear omniscient master Adalbert Pösch than from any other
of my teachers. None did so much to turn me into a disciple of
Socrates. For it was my master who taught me not only how very
little I knew but also that any wisdom to which I might ever
aspire could consist only in realizing more fully the infinity of
my ignorance.

These and other thoughts which belonged to the field of epistemology
were occupying my mind while I was working on a
writing desk. We had at that time a large order for thirty mahogany
kneehole desks, with many, many drawers. I fear that the
quality of some of these desks, and especially their French polish,
suffered badly from my preoccupation with epistemology.
This suggested to my master and also brought home to me that
I was too ignorant and too fallible for this kind of work. So I
made up my mind that on completing my apprenticeship in
October, 1924, I should look for something easier than making
mahogany writing desks. For a year I took up social work with
neglected children, which I had done before and found very
difficult. Then, after five more years spent mainly in studying
and writing, I married and settled down happily as a
schoolteacher. This was in 1930.

At that time I had no professional ambitions beyond schoolteaching,
though I got a little tired of it after I had published
my Logik der Forschung, late in 1934. I therefore felt myself very
fortunate when in 1937 I had an opportunity to give up schoolteaching
and to become a professional philosopher. I was almost thirty-five

and I thought that I had now finally solved the problem
of how to work on a writing desk and yet be preoccupied
with epistemology.

See also my Socrates - Understanding Understanding, Socrates - Objectivity, and Socrates - Science and Politics, Politically Correct Neanderthal, and Greed versus Self-Interest.

Comments

[Ed Stevens]

Georg:

Masterful piece ... especially these three thoughts:

"... the fit between human cognition and the real world is no guarantee for command of the truth ...."

I have long been of the opinion that just because we think is no great reason to expect that we should be able to understand everything; if that were not true there would be no room for faith in this or any other existence. Always, it seems to me, we are fated to see "through a glass darkly".

and

"Adaptive competence (like following the right rules and behaving in a ceratin way) is an alternative to insight ...."

You might have added the word "crucial" in front of "alternative" - without an ability and willingness (however grudging) to follow basic direction from others more experienced than ourselves, most of us would not have survived the first few years - and the post-adolescent years would certainly have been lethal!

and finally, Wheeler's critical insight:

"Our whole problem is to make the mistakes as fast as possible."

I have for much of my adult life been involved avocationally in the problems of alcohol addiction. One of my mentors used to tell people who weren't quite ready to quit boozing ... "Don't buy your liquor in small bottles - buy great big ones. Get done as fast as you can." Some listened, many others didn't, but his point was precisely the same as Wheeler's, i.e., if you must go through Hell, tis better to do it as quickly as you can.

Great post, Georg ... thanks.

[Eric Parks]

A rainy day here today (a welcome rarity). What a delight to read this excellent post. Thanks Georg. And thanks, Ed, for the comments which made it even better!

My childhood included three alcoholics: Dad, Mom and Step-dad. Needless to say, I spent my youth fishing and hiking. :)

[Georg Thomas]

"And thanks, Ed, for the comments which made it even better!"

Spot on, Eric. It is incredibly rewarding for a post's author to receive commentary that augments his points with horizon-broadening insights from a critically thinking, independent mind.

[Eric Parks]

"without an ability and willingness (however grudging) to follow basic direction from others more experienced than ourselves, most of us would not have survived the first few years"

Had to step out but would like to finish. Given the three alcoholic parents, I was fortunate to have the opportunity to follow three experienced mentors: my two uncles who lived adjacent to us and the Dad of a good friend who lived down the road. Their wisdom and demeanor drew me to them like a moth to flame; and, being consummate gentlemen in every respect, they were happy to pass along their knowledge. God only knows what I would have become had they refused their eager young student.

[Georg Thomas]

Ed, I have to thank you.

Your point about faith is so important; people do not begin to understand how much we depend on faith - we receive proportionately far more guidance from faith than from thinking, even in trivial pursuits of everyday life.

Yes, Ed, "crucial" is in fact the word I had "mitgedacht", i.e. I had taken for granted in my thoughts.

As for alcohol see my comment to Eric.

[Georg Thomas]

My parents hardly drank alcohol, my mother had a kidney condition, and my dad got high on productive pursuits like maths or speaking seven foreign languages - and went to bed every night to fall asleep at once.

My parents were incredibly lenient with my habit of drinking alcohol at an early age - in those days in Germany, it was nothing out of the ordinary for a boy of 15 or 16 to drink alcohol, privately or in public.

Severe alcoholism was part of life for a German living in Poland, where my mother spent her childhood and youth in a butcher's family - that may explain her lenience.

Late in his life my dad disclosed that there may have been incidents of severe alcohol abuse in his familial environment. However, he never discouraged me to drink.