A Choice

Our currently interesting times are also very instructive, if only we can find the willingness to heed this instruction. As in other critical moments we are faced with a stark choice: do we acknowledge the full gravity of our situation? This would mean opening our imaginations to some pretty horrifying scenes – hospitals overflowing again in more places than earlier this year, many more long term illnesses among us and premature death for thousands more of our friends, neighbors and family members. Or do we attempt to hide behind false assurances that things are not so bad, or that the perception that they really are That Bad is nothing but another example of the exaggeration of the liberal media?

And behind this choice lies another choice about how to make sense of the upheavals we find ourselves living in. Do we take the slow, methodical approach to of science, always remembering to hedge our claims with degrees of likelihood but willing to state clearly when things are not going so well, and what needs to be done to change that. Or do we desperately cling to the vivid fantasies of conspiracy theories in an attempt to make this all somebody else’s fault and not a predictable but uncaring natural phenomenon, the damage of which we are tasked with containing. Add to this the “novelty” of the virus that began it all. Its unknowns can lead to more data collection and the slow but steady revisions of best explanations, as well as recommendations of best practices. Or they can lead us to fall back on the grand narrative that it’s all a plot by __<Fill in the blank with your nefarious THEM.>__ to keep us quiet under their crushing power. Add to the mix the widespread but false idea that the constant revision of scientific understanding of what’s going on around us, is a sign of the weakness of science as a guide. In fact it is in its willingness to change explanations, diagnoses, and recommendations for action that makes science such a crucial guide for us all. Science is not magic – it will not solve all of our problems without effort. It is nothing but a self-organizing way of taking seriously the advice not to say more than you really know. Science is self organizing in that it is constantly revising itself according to critical reflection on its own methods and tools. It is a collective process as well and this is what enables it to claim “objectivity” above all. As Linus’ Law (one motto of the open-source software movement) has it,

“Given enough eyeballs all bugs are shallow.”

This, in short, in the choice we all face as individuals, and in the many diverse and overlapping social networks that we are part of. It is choice essentially about what role we should play in our own lives.