THE SOVIET-HARVARD DEPARTMENT OF ORNITHOLOGY

THE SOVIET-HARVARD DEPARTMENT OF ORNITHOLOGY

Now, since a very large share of technological know-how comes from the antifragility, the optionality, of trial and error, some people and some institutions want to hide the fact from us (and themselves), or downplay its role.

Consider two types of knowledge. The first type is not exactly "knowledge"; its ambiguous character prevents us from associating it with the strict definitions of knowledge. It is a way of doing things that we cannot really express in clear and direct language—it is sometimes called apophatic—but that we do nevertheless, and do well. The second type is more like what we call "knowledge"; it is what you acquire in school, can get grades for, can codify, what is explainable, academizable, rationalizable, formalizable, theoretizable, codifiable, Sovietizable, bureaucratizable, Harvardifiable, provable, etc.

The error of naive rationalism leads to overestimating the role and necessity of the second type, academic knowledge, in human affairs—and degrading the uncodifiable, more complex, intuitive, or experience-based type.

There is no proof against the statement that the role such explainable knowledge plays in life is so minor that it is not even funny.

We are very likely to believe that skills and ideas that we actually acquired by antifragile doing, or that came naturally to us (from our innate biological instinct), came from books, ideas, and reasoning. We get blinded by it; there may even be something in our brains that makes us suckers for the point. Let us see how.

I recently looked for definitions of technology. Most texts define it as the application of scientific knowledge to practical projects—leading us to believe in a flow of knowledge going chiefly, even exclusively, from lofty "science" (organized around a priestly group of persons with titles before their names) to lowly practice (exercised by uninitiated people without the intellectual attainments to gain membership into the priestly group).

So, in the corpus, knowledge is presented as derived in the following manner: basic research yields scientific knowledge, which in turn generates technologies, which in turn lead to practical applications, which in turn lead to economic growth and other seemingly interesting matters. The payoff from the "investment" in basic research will be partly directed to more investments in basic research, and the citizens will prosper and enjoy the benefits of such knowledge-derived wealth with Volvo cars, ski vacations, Mediterranean diets, and long summer hikes in beautifully maintained public parks.

This is called the Baconian linear model, after the philosopher of science Francis Bacon; I am adapting its representation by the scientist Terence Kealey (who, crucially, as a biochemist, is a practicing scientist, not a historian of science) as follows:

Academia → Applied Science and Technology → Practice

While this model may be valid in some very narrow (but highly advertised instances), such as building the atomic bomb, the exact reverse seems to be true in most of the domains I’ve examined. Or, at least, this model is not guaranteed to be true and, what is shocking, we have no rigorous evidence that it is true. It may be that academia helps science and technology, which in turn help practice, but in unintended, nonteleological ways, as we will see later (in other words, it is directed research that may well be an illusion).

Let us return to the metaphor of the birds. Think of the following event: A collection of hieratic persons (from Harvard or some such place) lecture birds on how to fly. Imagine bald males in their sixties, dressed in black robes, officiating in a form of English that is full of jargon, with equations here and there for good measure. The bird flies. Wonderful confirmation! They rush to the department of ornithology to write books, articles, and reports stating that the bird has obeyed them, an impeccable causal inference. The Harvard Department of Ornithology is now indispensable for bird flying. It will get government research funds for its contribution.

Mathematics → Ornithological navigation and wing-flapping technologies → (ungrateful) birds fly

It also happens that birds write no such papers and books, conceivably because they are just birds, so we never get their side of the story. Meanwhile, the priests keep broadcasting theirs to the new generation of humans who are completely unaware of the conditions of the pre-Harvard lecturing days. Nobody discusses the possibility of the birds’ not needing lectures—and nobody has any incentive to look at the number of birds that fly without such help from the great scientific establishment.

The problem is that what I wrote above looks ridiculous, but a change of domain makes it look reasonable. Clearly, we never think that it is thanks to ornithologists that birds learn to fly—and if some people do hold such a belief, it would be hard for them to convince the birds. But why is it that when we anthropomorphize and replace "birds" with "men," the idea that people learn to do things thanks to lectures becomes plausible? When it comes to human agency, matters suddenly become confusing to us.

So the illusion grows and grows, with government funding, tax dollars, swelling (and self-feeding) bureaucracies in Washington all devoted to helping birds fly better. Problems occur when people start cutting such funding—with a spate of accusations of killing birds by not helping them fly.

As per the Yiddish saying: "If the student is smart, the teacher takes the credit." These illusions of contribution result largely from confirmation fallacies: in addition to the sad fact that history belongs to those who can write about it (whether winners or losers), a second bias appears, as those who write the accounts can deliver confirmatory facts (what has worked) but not a complete picture of what has worked and what has failed. For instance, directed research would tell you what has worked from funding (like AIDS drugs or some modern designer drugs), not what has failed—so you may have the impression that it fares better than random.

And of course iatrogenics is never part of the discourse. They never tell you if education hurt you in some places.

So we are blind to the possibility of the alternative process, or the role of such a process, a loop:

Random Tinkering (antifragile) → Heuristics (technology) → Practice and Apprenticeship → Random Tinkering (antifragile) → Heuristics (technology) → Practice and Apprenticeship …

In parallel to the above loop,

Practice → Academic Theories → Academic Theories → Academic Theories → Academic Theories … (with of course some exceptions, some accidental leaks, though these are indeed rare and overhyped and grossly generalized).

Now, crucially, one can detect the scam in the so-called Baconian model by looking at events in the days that preceded the Harvard lectures on flying and examining the birds. This is what I accidentally found (indeed, accidentally) in my own career as practitioner turned researcher in volatility, thanks to some lucky turn of events. But before that, let me explain epiphenomena and the arrow of education.