The Information (deluge) Age and The Integration Age

I just read the NY Times Room for Debate on whether email should be banned in the workplace. It’s an interesting discussion, but it’s really about a much bigger issue that is becoming far more important to all of us. Let me explain.

First, I think they’re all wrong when they say we need to eliminate the Reply-To-All button. I’m an engineer and email mostly with other engineers – and we legitimately use Reply-To-All every day to correct and revise the information we’re “discussing.”

Yes, there are other ways for this to be done, but the email “trail” is a useful record – and you never know when you’re going to need to look at the “history” of a discussion six months of two years into the future. Sometimes that’s petty, by sometimes it’s very, very important.

Some social networking tools don’t address that historical trail (such as collaboratively edited documents). Even though that’s what some of these emails are ultimately accomplishing, the discussion is still an useful – and sometimes important – record.

Other tools are just “discussion boards” but they ultimately require the right people read and assess the information and too often the person that’s doing the latest writing isn’t 100% sure who needs to receive the information – so they CC or Reply-To-All – with a certain amount of error. Simply choosing to not CC or Reply-To-All would create a whole new cost problem – you may have excluded people that needed to know that information. Resolving those exclusions (especially if systemic) and their consequences – which could be huge – also adds up quickly.

What we’re really talking about is the limits and costs of human information processing – how fast you can read and accurately assess information.

Suppose we live in a different world where we can all plug into a neural-interface whenever we want. When we’re connected like this, “the internet” becomes directly accessible to us just as we access anything else we “know” or “remember.” So in this world, when I send you an email, you instantly become aware of the email and the information it contains just as you would any memory. Furthermore, you wouldn’t need to take time to understand this information – imagine that process of integrating the information and it’s implications (if any) into the rest of your memories was done instantly. I realize this may never be a reality, but if it were, there would be no penalty to CC’ing “the world” on everything, except where keeping a secret was preferred.

The purpose of that analogy isn’t to dream about some distant future technology. The purpose is to demonstrate that this problem isn’t really about email. It’s about the aggregate capacity of human beings to get messages into their brains and then assess, process, or integrate that information into all the rest of what they know. We’re not just talking about about the cost of too-many-CC’s – we’re talking about the problems of The Blogosphere, Fox News, the Republican Party, Political Polarization, Dishonest Campaign Ads, misunderstandings about Economics, the efficiency of Democracy – and on and on. These are all restatements of the same basic problem – the limits of human information processing, and the degree to which we are teaching future generations how to do it better.

This matters because the number of people on the planet is only growing. The number of people getting online is only growing. And we’re storing more and more information – and more and more of what everyone is saying. Trying to weed out false or inaccurate statements is already virtually impossible. Imagine the day when a great lie is told but the correction is found by almost no one. Are we living in that day already?

Fox News is an interesting problem here. I think it’s obvious that most viewers of Fox News want to get “fair and balanced” – and accurate – information. And I think for the most part, the providers of information at Fox News intend to provide that most of the time. The problem is that even if all of those ratios are 90%:10%, that’s still an enormous amount of false information – and there are huge societal and economic costs associated with it.

Also, assume with me that the average Fox News viewer wants accurate information. Suppose many of those viewers know Fox News is wrong some of the time. Is that knowledge enough to solve the problem? No. Those viewers need to believe that they have a reasonably good chance of going online and checking facts in an acceptable time frame. This is clearly not the case now and may never be the case simply because they wouldn’t know what facts to check. They’d have to know which facts are suspect and which aren’t.

So what, you ask? “Easy solution: Don’t watch Fox News.” Well, yes, perhaps. But that’s missing the even bigger point of how you came to that conclusion. How do you know that what you think you know is really true, or that there are key facts you don’t know? “You don’t know that – you never do.” True. I can tell you what I do to resolve that – I try to learn everything I can about everything I can and just hope I get a truly “fair and balanced” – and accurate – view of the world. But I also know this is impossible – and to the extent I ever truly achieve accuracy, I can’t really take any credit for it. It’s really all about chance and luck.

And here’s the really important thing. Fox News viewers are in the same boat. If you’re like me and thoroughly understand and endorse Evolution, then you know what I mean when I say I have zero desire – nay – a repulsion – to learning about how the ancient vikings believe Thor caused life to arise on Earth – for its own sake. As a historical curiosity – to be briefly summarized, okay. But we have no desire to invest time on it because it’s almost sure to be a pointless endeavor – and has an opportunity cost – we could be spending our time learning things that really matter. It’s an Information Processing problem – a tradeoff. If the information was “free,” then, “Why not?” But it’s not, so we don’t want it.

Well, that’s how a Fox News viewer feels about most of what Fox News gets wrong. They are making the same calculation but on other terms. And since neither you nor they can truly take credit for knowing enough to identify errors when you see them, your ability to blame those Fox News viewers for being wrong and supporting a fake news service is – shall we say – compromised.

What we really need here is an improvement to the human ability to acquire and assess information. We need to read faster and think more clearly. Otherwise, we need to have a centralized system of flagging and sorting out erroneous information. Why centralized? Well, I’m not suggesting we delete false information everywhere in the internet – but the internet as it currently exists doesn’t lend itself presenting a blog in Iran that’s really propaganda, or inaccurate product information on a South American manufacturer’s website – along with the corrections embedded in those pages. The internet is totally free in it’s current technological form. A new kind of centralized system would be needed to ensure corrections are presented along with erroneous information.

But even that doesn’t solve the problem, of course. Having a correction adjacent to errors doesn’t ensure it is read or that is understood. But it helps. It would be an improvement. But it would be at risk of abuse, too, of course. But the free structure of the internet currently creates the problem that you don’t know what is true and what isn’t – same as the diligent Fox News viewer. You can do your own fact checking all you want but you’re still in the same boat of not knowing what you don’t know – not knowing if someone out there has the perfect rebuttal to what you think is true.

Notice, importantly, that I’m not talking at all about our inability to truly “know” what is “true” or not. I think anyone that’s informed nowadays knows that we can’t ever truly know anything. But we can have a good idea. We use probability to assess what we believe to be true. In this respect, faith is an everyday part of all our lives. We all believe – have faith – that the sun will rise tomorrow, so we live our lives despite not truly knowing whether we’re in some kind of “Matrix” or are all going to die from an asteroid impact tomorrow. No, that’s not what this is about.

This problem makes what I think is a safe assumption, that there is information out there that would effectively convince you of an ideological or factual error, and the problem is simply getting that information to you, and enabling you to assess and integrate it – realize what it means.

What I’m saying is that anything we can do to speed this process up will be a very, very good thing that would affect all aspects of life. I’m saying that most people probably haven’t even appreciated the nature of the problem – we’ve all experienced a discussion with someone where we knew what that other person believed and we knew why they are wrong, but we were unable to present enough information to them (credibly) for them to assess and integrate that information. But even though we’ve all experienced that, I think most of us haven’t really appreciated that this is much bigger problem that’s just getting worse in the Information Age.

It could easily be the case that the Information Age must be followed by an information Integration Age – an age where our technological efforts become primarily focused on how we improve the speed with which humans get information into their brains and correctly use it.

Who is Robert Lanza and how did he get an M.D.?

Robert Lanza writes an article for PsychologyToday “Is Death an Illusion” expounding something called “Biocentrism” that alleges that Quantum Mechanics somehow makes sense “if you add life and consciousness to the equation, you can explain some of the biggest puzzles of science.” Really?

This guy is somewhat well informed about advanced physics experiments, but when he follows, for instance, a discussion of the entangled photons with a conclusion that somehow our minds are part of what’s affecting the photon behavior, it’s like he’s surrendered his brain to mystic credulity.

Did he ever consider that when photons “know” what their twin will do in the future, that the simple explanation is that “time” doesn’t apply to particles in this state in the way we’re used to? This is an observer-independent explanation – and happens to be the one that the experimenters endorse, as opposed to his supposition that these experiments somehow show some mystical impact of the mind on reality.

If it was our minds influencing the particles in the experiment, what happens to the experiment when it’s your mind versus my mind? Do you suppose the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle can be tricked by one observer measuring position and another observer measuring velocity?

LOL…. Of course not. So I ask, how did this guy become an M.D. while seemingly completely surrendering his critical faculties?

And another thing. His discussion of the twin-slits wave-particle duality experiments is just plain wrong. When many photons pass through two slits they show it’s wave nature in the resulting interference pattern. But when the number of photons is reduced to being something like “one at a time” they pass through, as he says, “like a bullet”, choosing one or the other slit. But he left out the really important detail, that the accumulated impacts of those “bullets” measured over time replicates the interference pattern – meaning, again, that “time” is not meaningfully affecting the photons (else the impact distribution from single photons would be a Gaussian distribution).

These results need not be very profound at all, given that, as Relativity explains, anything moving at the speed of light no longer perceives the passage of time “outside” it’s observer frame (or restated for people who think that by “perceives” I’ve left open the door for observer-dependent reality – time stops outside of your “space-ship” when your “space-ship” is moving at the speed of light. There’s no “perception” about it, except that you have a brain that observes the reality around you). Photons move at the speed of light, so while mind-blowing in its outcomes, it need not imply any scientific misunderstanding of reality that time as we perceive it doesn’t play the same role in the life of particles like this. And these effects need not be reserved to photons. All particles are ultimately a “wave-packet” so should also exhibit light-speed time paradoxes in some circumstances, too.

“Biocentrism” may, thus, be an apt name. Just as ethnocentrism causes one culture to misunderstand another, “biocentrism” may just be the process of (some) “living things” using their consciousness-centric outlook to misinterpret reality, under the guise of scientific-sounding explanations.

“Time is what keeps everything from happening at once,” but that doesn’t mean it exists just because we perceive it. But regardless of whether it really exists, being dead is still being dead. Lanza says, “We believe in death because we’ve been taught we die.” No, we don’t. We believe in death because everyone with any life experience has observed the death of something else.

Keep “The Secret” To Yourself

Recently, a friend of a family-member of mine posted on Facebook that she’d just watched “The Secret” for the first time and it left her in tears. That family-member replied with instructions of where she could find more “Secret” references. I don’t mean to be rude or insensitive, but ideas, just like viruses, can infect people and do real damage – and the idea “The Secret” conveys has damaged my family, so I feel compelled to speak up against it.

“The Secret” is a damaging mind-viruses of our day. If believing or hoping something into existence really worked then a lot of bad things would be true, not just good things. But more importantly, you could see actual evidence that it influences outcomes in objective studies. It does not. In fact, believing and hoping something to be true is the basic mechanism by which many, many bad things have happened in human history due to self-deception, “Selective Perception,” and, ultimately, mass-delusion.

We’re not talking about “The Placebo Effect” here. We’re talking about “The Secret’s” ideology that by obsessively wishing for something to happen in your life, The Universe will (eventually?) grant that wish like some cosmic genie (in the DVD, said genie actually makes several appearances). Apparently, if you believe strong-enough for long-enough almost anything will happen for you.

These viral ideas (eg, religion) are attractive to us for a reason, but it is not a virtuous reason – not unless they are ultimately grounded in objective truth. If “The Secret” brings tears to your eyes, there is a deeper and more meaningful reason you feel that. I urge people not to settle for “comforting” beliefs. Truth and reality must ultimately be our comfort. If not – if whatever we each separately imagine and wish for is “our reality” – then you have really just conceded that your life is truly as meaningless and whimsical as your latest imagination… and what could possibly be more depressing than that? What meaning does such a life really have?

“The Secret” is a deception. Life does have meaning. There are no cosmic genies waiting around to capriciously grant your most fervent wishes. Reality is what it appears (through the process we loosely call science). The Universe does not condescend to us to grant either our desires or what is “best for” us. We have to take responsibility for our reality and make it happen. A positive attitude is productive, helpful, even great! But believing that wishes come true, ultimately, only because you wished for them, is just a recipe for self-deception, a “house-of-cards.” It is just frivolously waiting for some random event to give you some glimmer of validation that “The Universe” really does grant you your dreams.

Sorry, but consider that if that’s how it works, you’re casting a horrible, awful insult at everyone that has tried and believed but not succeeded… at everyone that fell along the way… at, most lately, thousands of Japanese who, apparently, didn’t wish/believe hard-enough, and so were killed by the tsunami or had their half-fulfilled dreams reduced to rubble by it. Should the survivors pick themselves up and start again, if they are able? Of course! Will that be easier if they have a positive attitude? Definitely. But many are not going to be able to restore their pre-tsunami lives, for one reason of another, none of which has anything to do with lack of belief in “The Universe.” It is the height of arrogance and foolishness to think for one moment that the people that fail do so because they haven’t wished hard enough…

In fact, like prayer – which is usually harmless (even if you believe in God, you implicitly believe that most the people on the planet are – and that ever lived were -  praying to the wrong God, and so wasting their time…) it is when life really gets hard that we most need to stop relying on imaginary beliefs and take deliberate action to deal with the problems at hand. It is at these times that supernatural “faith” and “belief” do the most harm by suppressing a certain and significant amount of real action in favor of pointless prayers and other forms of willing God or “The Universe” to provide.

Finally, if “The Universe” did it for you, then you deserve none of the credit. If the Universe merely “set up the conditions for you” and your belief gave you the final push, you still don’t really deserve the credit. What is more hollow than “achievement” without actually achieving it? Does a test have any point if you only passed it by cheating?

“The glory and thanks be to God,” some say, but then why did God hand out the test in the first place? If God did it knowing (he is all-knowing, right?) it would only really be to his own glory, what kind of person is God? Isn’t he some kind of self-congratulatory egotist? Isn’t that the being we’re really talking about if he places you in tests that you “overcome” only after a little (or a lot) of help from him, and then requires that you thank him for said help? If you want to worship that, you’re living in a slave-mentality. I propose that either the test is yours to overcome on your own and God will praise and honor you if you pass it, or there is no “test” – or “tester” – and the real meaning of life is to simply help each other wherever we can, simply because there’s no such thing as a human being that doesn’t like a little help and companionship (of one flavor or another).

To believe that some cosmic force is intervening in your life may make you feel less lonely and, somehow, more loved, it ultimately plays the role of a bad parent, granting you gifts you did not earn and do not deserve. At least (if you believe in “The Secret”) that’s how you will ultimately assign value to your life’s “accomplishments,” whether consciously or subconsciously. This is a recipe for more depression – and ever more band-aids, sustaining books, and motivational DVDs (hence, the “dealer” sales-model unfolds). Mental viruses like “The Secret” just setup an addictive, manic-depressive cycle built on creating an artificial “support-system” outside the one you should really be addressing.

For your own good, don’t take that drug. Choose for yourself to do something good for others. Accept that you did it, not The Universe. Do it because you love other people, not because the Universe will grant you good karma in return. If your motives are to serve other people, you will feel better about yourself and have true meaning in your life – for the right reasons – because of the genuine, pure-affection from your fellow human beings – not out of (your estimation of) the adoration of some unseen cosmic genie or imaginary friend.

Just watched “The Secret” DVD

A brief review of The Secret DVD…. The Secret is a masterpiece of circular logic. A triumph of selective perception over scientific rigor. If you have time to waste and a free copy (for goodness sake, don’t buy it–that’s just what they want you to do–’prove’ them more right by making them wealthy!!!), slap this baby into your DVD player and prepare to hurt from the gullibility and absurdity. Warning: if you know someone that’s caught up in “The Secret” method, this may be an agonizing experience, too….