“Weakness and ignorance are not barriers to survival, but arrogance is” is an aphorism from Cixin Liu’s book Death’s End, a masterpiece of hard science fiction.
Why an article about this phrase?
In the current, mostly ‘locked’ down, state of human civilization, this phrase has profound relevance than in normal times.
Also I love aphoristic phrases, for they reveal the wisdom passed down the ages of our human civilization. Aphoristic phrases are ‘Lindy.’ The longer the phrase has been around since their origin, the longer they can be expected to survive going forward.
About Death’s End
The novel, third in the Remembrance of Earth’s Past Trilogy (better known as The Three-Body Problem trilogy), paints a ‘big picture’ view of how civilizations would evolve into a space-faring species and the inevitable interstellar threats they would face.
The story narrates how these civilizations may deal with the risks from a new-discovered unknown civilization – whether the threat is real or perceived or whether immediate or far off in the future is immaterial to the debate.
Read more about Cixin Liu’s work.
Definitions
I like to start with the definitions of the words used to ensure my readers and I have the same understanding of the discussion in this article.
Weakness refers to the state or condition of being weak.
Ignorance refers to a lack of knowledge or information.
Arrogance refers to having or revealing an exaggerated sense of one’s importance or abilities.
Survival refers to the state or fact of continuing to live or exist, typically despite an accident, ordeal, or challenging circumstances.
Black Swan refers to an event that is rare, unpredictable and has potentially extreme (positive or negative) consequences.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb has popularized this term through his book Black Swan, part of the must-read Incerto series of books on probability and uncertainty. If this series is not on your reading list, add it. This book is inspired not only by Cixin Liu’s words, but also by Taleb’s thoughts in his books.
Let’s explore the meaning of this aphorism in three parts:
1. Weakness as a barrier to survival
2. Ignorance as a barrier to survival
3. Arrogance as a barrier to survival
Weakness is not a Barrier to Survival
I am not suggesting that the weak will never perish.
I am suggesting that one could be weak and fragile, and yet survive.
Dinosaurs were the dominant species on Earth till their extinction 65 million years ago when an extinction class asteroid hit the planet in a Black Swan event.
Humans, clearly weaker than dinosaurs, have evolved from a line of genes over millions of years to achieve their current dominance on the planet Earth. One would think that it is the strongest species that always survive, but humans are weaker than several species like tigers and gorillas.
How did humans achieve dominance over other species on Earth?
Evolution is survival of the fittest, not the strongest
Evolution needs organisms to die and be replaced by their improved next generation.
- When an organism dies, Nature continues it’s activities at an informational level. This is the genetic code. The gene pool uses environmental shocks to enhance its fitness.
- Nature lets organisms live one lifespan at a time, with tiny alterations to the genetic code and traits between successive generations. These small modifications helps a species overcome environmental shocks. Over a long time, these small modifications result in the survival of the fittest.
Evolution benefits from randomness to cause changes in the traits of the surviving next generations.
Randomness in mutations
Evolution occurs when harm makes the individual organism perish, and the benefits are transferred to –
– Their surviving ones when they learn lessons of ‘what not to do’, and
– Future generations via the genetic code.
Humans evolved to deal with thousands of viruses and bacteria – with some co-opted through a symbiotic relationship – but after paying the price in blood over generations.
Humans today are weaker than COVID-19 currently going around the world, but it will also be one that humans overcome over time. ‘Over time’ being the key words here.
To adapt and evolve to this new development, we (or at least our next generation!) first needs to survive.
Nature has but two roles for those past their reproductive life – use their experience to guide the next generation through the challenges, and sacrifice themselves when needed.
Randomness in the environment
Even when an entire species goes extinct (like dinosaurs) after some extreme event, it is all right. Nature nurtures an infinite number of traits in an infinite number of species as a part of its contingency plan.
This contingency plan is built on layers of redundancy.
Two kidneys for each human where one suffices seems wasteful, but its evolution at work through redundancy. If one kidney cannot deal with environment shocks, the other kidney is around to assure survival.
Similarly, if one species cannot deal with the changes in the environment, the other species that survive are the fittest.
Nature is ruthless. Don’t just take my word for it; ask the dinosaurs.
Human’s are individually weak, but strong as a group
Make a single young, healthy human adult fight a wild animal – a gorilla, a tiger, or even a snake, and one cannot confidently bet on the odds of the human’s survival.
However, none in the animal kingdom is a match for the wily humans working together in a group. Through co-operation and co-ordination, humans have achieved a substantial amount of control over their environment. The whole human civilization is a testimony to our ability to prioritize continued collective survival and progress.
Weakness has not been a barrier to our survival. We have found tools (fire, wheel, metals, gunpowder) to overcome our weaknesses or make them irrelevant.
However, even in groups, human understanding of our environment is not perfect, hence the need to be cautious when faced with the unknown.
Let’s discuss if ignorance is a barrier to survival.
Ignorance is not a Barrier to Survival
Again, I am not saying that the ignorant cannot perish. I am only suggesting that one can be ignorant and yet survive.
Only dinosaurs can say for sure, but my theory is dinosaurs were not aware of things called asteroids in our solar system. They weren’t aware that these asteroids could hit Earth occasionally, causing cataclysmic changes in a few days and months, leaving no time to adapt to the sudden change in the environment.
Dinosaurs were ignorant. Are humans any better?
Human civilization has survived and thrived but not because we are an all-knowing species.
- The level of ignorance in any individual human is mind-boggling. Ask the average voter.
- Even as a species, our knowledge, though growing, is extremely limited in significant areas affecting life.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb‘s examples of Complicated and Complex systems, from his book Antifragile, are relevant in this context.
Humans have a good understanding of Complicated systems
A complicated system is like a car.
The engine, transmission, and electrical systems of the car are too complicated for an individual to make a car or maintain it.
However, a group of humans, with specialized knowledge of different aspects of the car, co-operating and co-ordinating their activities can make a car or deal with any problem with the car. This group understands the causality – the cause and effect relationship about everything that can happen with and inside a car.
The same is valid to a large extent with many areas of life – agriculture, building and construction, mining and industry, transportation, physics, astronomy, space flight, medicine, and surgery, to name a few.
In complicated systems, we know the causes, and we have enough information and experience to deal with the possible effects. We are in control.
We have enough knowledge when dealing with complicated systems. We are not ignorant!
Humans have a poor understanding of Complex systems
Complex systems have far too many inter-dependencies for the human mind – individual or group – to grasp causality wholly and accurately.
Here are three examples of Complex systems that we are all familiar with.
- The human body – Our understanding of the human body as a whole, it’s mechanics, and the cause and effects between diet, environment, exercise, hormone signals, diseases, the immune system, the brain, the genetic code and the function of each gene, etc. is incomplete.
- Our environment – Our understanding of the ecosystem with millions of species co-existing, the global weather, and the factors behind climate change is quite poor.
- Our universe – Our knowledge of the origins of this universe and physical forces that created our world is still evolving. It has grown in leaps and bounds over the last couple of hundred years, and we have a good explanation for many phenomena. However, questions on how it all began still stump us, and we are unable to reconcile the working of massive objects with the functioning of the minutest elements at the quantum level.
Two aspects of how Complex systems affect us – a) Incomplete information and b) Assessing Impact of any action
Incomplete information of cause and effect
Don’t get me wrong here. I am not saying that we don’t know anything at all about complex systems.
We know something about each, and our knowledge is improving every year that passes. However, our understanding is incomplete.
Take weather prediction for a given day at any given location. We generally get weather predictions of adequate accuracy. But there days when expecting a thunderstorm we carry an umbrella, but the weather stays as dry as the Sahara desert.
Asymmetries are the hallmark of complex systems – where what we know is much less than we need to know to make accurate decisions.
Inability to accurately assess impacts of our actions or external events
For most of history, a single human or a small group of humans were insignificant.
- An individual always had full control over his or her body.
- Rarely could an individual or a small group threaten the future of an entire city, region, let alone the survival of the species or the planet itself.
Today, however, our ability to impact our environment has increased by leaps and bounds. Though luckily, we still have no influence on the whole universe.
- An individual has limited control over our environment, and his ability to wreak havoc is limited to a few scenarios. For example, getting hold of nuclear weapons or releasing a bio-engineered virus.
- A group of individuals like companies and countries, however, have a substantial influence on not only our bodies but also our environment. For example, climate change, artificial intelligence, genetically modified organisms.
However, our ability to understand and assess the consequences of our actions or the effects of external events has not kept pace with our ability to impact them.
Take the example of climate change. It is a complex phenomenon where our actions 30 or 50 years ago (or since the beginning of industrial revolution 200 years ago) are driving the changes today.
There is no impact assessment that humans perform that looks at effects of our actions over such a long period. Even if we tried, we may not know what information to gather to exhaustively identify alternate courses of actions and, given how often weather forecasts go wrong today, we may not be able to accurately predict the eventual outcomes.
- A strong enough volcano eruption like Mount Pinatubo has cooled average global temperatures by 0.5 degrees for two years. This is during our lifetimes. Can we predict a volcano eruption and its magnitude? Can we predict a volcano eruption 20 years in advance?
- We are making progress with tracking Near Earth Objects (NEOs), but in 2012, while we were successfully tracking the fly-by of a small asteroid 367943 Duende that was calculated to miss Earth, another high velocity NEO was missed and hit us at Chelyabinsk 16 hours before the 367943 Duende passed by. The B612 Foundation stated “It’s 100 per cent certain we’ll be hit [by a devastating asteroid], but we’re not 100 per cent sure when.”
In summary
Humans just are not equipped with tools and social structures to assess cause and effects in truly complex systems.
The impact to us from extreme outcomes (positive or negative) of rare events in complex systems is high. But our understanding of complex systems is poor.
There are vast areas of our lives that have defied our understanding while we evolved to what we are today. There are vast areas of life that challenge our comprehension even today.
Yet, we have survived our ignorance long enough to write and read this article on a blog or send a spacecraft beyond the solar system.
We are ignorant of crucial aspects when dealing with complex systems. This ignorance has not been a barrier to our survival so far.
- Our ongoing investment in knowledge has gradually converted more and more complex systems into merely complicated ones (vaccines against viruses).
- Humans have survived and thrived by humbly avoiding complex situations where the risks involved a possibility of collective ruin (nuclear arms race).
In complex systems, when we cannot establish a causal relationship between –
- Our actions and the effects we could create, we risk creating something that we do not understand and cannot control. We need to be cautious in our activities. (climate change)
- External events and their effects that may impact our very existence, our actions need to be influenced by an understanding of the risk and uncertainties involved due to incomplete knowledge (asteroid hits, COVID-19).
When faced with existential risks with a lot of unknowns adopting a ‘know-it-all’ attitude is arrogance and a recipe for ruin.
Arrogance is a Barrier to Survival
Reread the definition of arrogance. It means a lack of humility and the absence of a realistic evaluation of our abilities.
“Arrogance refers to having or revealing an exaggerated sense of one’s importance or abilities.”
When a hurricane strikes or a volcano blows up, or a wildfire is burning down vast swaths of a forest, we don’t arrogantly run into their path. We need to be (and usually are) humble enough to know when we face something powerful that is out of our league.
An individual may choose to assume a stupid ‘know-it-all’ attitude when faced with existential risks. But the loss of an individual through arrogance, no matter how sad, has a negligible impact on our species.
Collective arrogance in the face of existential risks – climate change, an asteroid hit, or COVID-19, and many others we aren’t aware of today – inevitably leads us on the road to ruin.
“We cannot afford to be arrogant as a species when faced with the unknown.”
When, as a species, we face the unknown, we need to seek safety, our aim to survive for another day. Whenever we do not follow this advice, we will pay a hefty price with the blood of our species.
Collective arrogance appears in many forms. Let me cover one of my favourite that’s in the form of another aphorism.
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence
Some folks, whom Nassim Nicholas Taleb calls Intellectual Yet Idiots (IYI), have this very human trait of assuming anything unknown as non-existent. This is a form of intellectual arrogance.
An example of COVID-19: This is about debates and visible reluctance in many countries to make masks mandatory in public places. We knew that COVID-19 could result in the death of some people.
- Initially, there was an absence of evidence that COVID-19 is airborne. This absence of evidence about whether COVID-19 spreads through air is not the same as having evidence that COVID-19 does not spread by air.
- There was another debate on the effectiveness of masks. There hasn’t been enough historical research on the efficacy of various categories of medical masks or homemade masks in different situations. The absence of evidence on the effectiveness of masks is not the same as having evidence that masks are ineffective.
In both cases, we faced a complex, rapidly evolving situation with incomplete information.
Even if medical masks were in short supply, the sensible approach is to mandate homemade masks. As long as wearing masks themselves did not result in deaths (they don’t), the right decision is to mandate masks even if research later proves they were ineffective – wholly or partially.
“When faced with hidden, unknown risks, it is sensible to minimise your exposure to known risks.”
COVID-19 – Decision-making during Uncertainty
Today we have a choice – of running into the path of a virus that is out to get us or avoiding it.
The consequences of choosing either course of action below are unpalatable.
- Continuing as before messes up our individual and collective lives. The virus appears not to threaten our survival as a species. But it is early days to assess its impact on our long term health even if we recover.
- Locking everything down to protect our lives messes up our livelihoods. We will survive impacts to our livelihoods for a short time. But it is anyone’s guess of the effect if the duration prolongs and our children go hungry.
How should we approach this situation?
A sensible approach is to –
“Protect yourself from extreme harm (death/ruin/extinction), and let any upside take care of itself.”
The following list is not exhaustive. You should refer to your health authorities for exhaustive guidelines.
As an individual:
- Survive by whatever means possible.
- Wear masks if you need to go to public places
- Reduce or avoid going to areas where social distancing is not feasible
- Keep yourself and family safe
- Seek medical help when necessary
- Prepare better for future risks.
- Create an emergency fund for disruption in income. More about this in a separate article.
- Create healthy habits – exercise, nutrition, weight control
As a species:
- Buy time to overcome our weaknesses (immunity, treatment, testing, and hospital capacity) and ignorance (virus behaviour, virus impact on the human body – short term and longer-term).
- Minimize the losses (balance between lives and livelihoods, experiment with unproven treatments in severe cases, increase capacity to test and hospital, provide economic support to those affected)
- Progress actions to gain control of the situation (research on anti-virals and vaccines, use tracking technologies to identify and isolate at-risk people)
- Stop being arrogant, Prepare better for future fat-tailed risks in a complex environment (climate change, genetic modifications, artificial intelligence, asteroid hits, ..)
Are we unprepared to deal with survival risks in complex systems?
We have some tools to face these risks.
The human brain has evolved over thousands of years and equipped us with instincts, emotions, reflex actions that aid decision-making when faced with uncertainty and incomplete information, when we are ignorant of the forces at play. We may not be able to understand or explain how this process works, but we all have experienced it in the face of danger – big or small. We instinctively know what to do in some situations.
Our history of adapting to environmental shocks and overcoming long odds should give comfort. When we are collectively smart (Ozone hole, bans on nuclear testing), we can achieve a lot – but assuming that we have become all-powerful and entirely in control of our complex environment is delusional.
Ongoing investment to build our knowledge of complex systems.
We, generally, adopt rational behaviours when faced with the unknown
- Protect your self for extreme harm. Survive to see another day.
- Play for time so that you can overcome your weaknesses and ignorance.
- Avoid arrogance.
Conclusion
Dinosaurs went extinct.
But Mother Nature is still around having groomed forth a line of genes over millions of years that is today studying dinosaur fossils and tracking the trajectory of Earth-bound asteroids.
We have reasons to be optimistic in the face of our weaknesses and ignorance. But there is no room for arrogance.
These are the rules of the game of civilization:
The first priority is to guarantee the existence of the human race and their comfortable life.
Everything else is secondary.
Cixin Liu, The Three-Body Problem
The Universe does not owe us anything.
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Fantastic thoughts and reflections too in this Pandamic situation how positive thoughts can be survival factors and the negative ones like Aurogance should be avoided. I am touched… Thanks Satyajit for this one.