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We already Know this, but�

This is Our World

We think we live in a world we create and control, one of predictable outcomes based on known inputs. But many of our outcomes are the result of chance and contingency. This is why the future is so hard to predict. If human experience was primary driven by controllable inputs yielding knowable output results, the future would be reliably predictable. We are fooled by the operation of the iron laws of deterministic cause and effect with mathematical precision at the level of inanimate objects and moving bodies where physics defines for us known causes and predictable effects, but this does not translate into predictable or predetermined human actions, reactions, and behaviors. Also, chance, fluke and contingency occurring within the deterministic order of nature, e.g., genetic mutations, simply become incorporated into the ongoing deterministic flow of cause and effect. This is because natural determinism is about the complex chain of interlocking cause and effect, not predictability in human relations or actions. Cause and effect relationships, outside of scientific laws, are not known in advance. This is why the author says every moment counts for human beings, at any moment a random event or chance fluctuation can change the trajectory of the deterministic (not predetermined) future in which we exist.

What Does This Mean to Us?

So, every moment counts, what are we do with this knowledge? How are we to live? Brian Klass answers this with a quote from Kurt Vonnegut, “A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved�. For me, the of condition uncertainty is the basis for a more empathetic existence. When we learn to accept that human existence and reality itself is uncertain and stop living the comfortable lie of predictable cause and effect outcomes, we can learn to appreciate what we do have and each other. We are inextricably linked to one another across space and time. Every little thing we do affects the lives of other people. We live an entangled existence such that our connections to each other are more important than our individualism. As the author says, we control little but influence much. Our lives create ripple effects through the complex interconnected system of existence. Everything is connected to everything else, including us to each other. In a very real way, we do not exist individually, we exist relationally. We can learn empathy by understanding that everyone does not get their just deserts and that we are all subjects in a world defined by discord, chance, and chaos. When we stop trying to deceive ourselves into thinking that we can impose order, certainty, control and rationality on all, we will become humble enough to treat each other with empathy, compassion and understanding. Our mutual existence and continued progress is bewilderingly fragile and constructed upon a shaky foundation, but it cannot be any other way.

The Anti-Bible

The version of human relations governed exclusively by the known laws of cause and effect is the simplified version of existence we use to help navigate our experience. Given the choice between complex uncertainty and comforting assurance, most people prefer the comforting assurance and this the basis of religious belief and all religious books such as the Bible which purport to be the only guide to the present and guarantee of the future. A desire to be certain and obtain guarantees about the future as well as complete explanations about the present is the basis of conspiracy theories, religious beliefs and the invention of God. The fake certainty of religion clouds judgement.

Brian Klass is no Pragmatist

This sentence on page 35 jump off the page. “But we’ve focused so much on what is useful that we’ve forgotten what is true.� Pragmaticism holds that truth just is that which is useful. This does mean that which is true is also good, beneficial or desirable, only that it is actionable for human purposes in the world. As Richard Rorty once said, pragmaticism does not give one a reason for not being a NAZI, but nor does it give one a reason for being a NAZI. If contingency is true, it is so just because it is part of the human condition. There are no transcendent, foundational, or fundamental truths. Brian Klass uses the word truth without telling us what he thinks makes something true, is it some transcendent knowledge? He allows for the possibility of fixed truth which I think is preposterous, at least within the realm of human action.

The author talks about the “Fitness Beats Truth� theorem. But if fitness, call it usefulness, beats truth, then fitness or usefulness is truth. The author proposes that we cannot have both, fitness and truth. By this he means truth as knowing something fundamental or foundational about reality. But is the quantum ‘truth� of reality versus ‘fitness�, which is a summary level understanding of the world, more fit for navigating our experience? Does not fitness become the truth? That is, fitness is the truth at our ontological level of existence in the world of “medium sized dry goods�. We do not interact with reality at the quantum level and how do we know that our understanding of the quantum level is even correct (true) since it is only our understanding based on our cognitive and sensory equipment as well as our mathematical expressions? How can this be called the truth of reality? The author points out that the way we view the world is filtered through our senses, but this is also the case with the way we see the so-called underlying fundamental or foundation quantum reality; it proves out mathematically but does not make any sense intuitively. Therefore, is not our understanding of the subatomic world just that, our understanding? Just something that is useful to us, anther for of fitness. Thus, it earns the noble title of ‘truth�.

In Summary

Continuity is real because the world is not in complete chaos; it is a network of events, forming various successions which reveal necessary and determinable relations. But discontinuity is also real, for the order we discern in the various events is not a single order. The successions we observe are independent and the points where they intersect cannot be predicted from within the successive events themselves. Brute contingency is therefore as real as any scientific law. Consequently, though the world may be known, it can never be reduced to a predictable scheme.