What's worse than wrong?

kw: ideas, opinion, theories, testability

In his most recent column in Scientific American, Michael Shermer, publisher of Skeptic, writes about ideas that are "wronger than wrong."

First, an intermediate idea. Wolfgang Pauli said of a proposed theory that made no predictions and couldn't be tested that "it isn't even wrong." He meant, there is no way to determine if it is right or wrong. You can't even call such an idea a theory, for that word is reserved for ideas that can be tested by experiment or observation.

We know, as scientists, that every theory we have is a model, and that it describes some phenomenon, and makes predictions about reproducing that phenomenon; yet that it will be found to "miss" if taken too far. That is because a model is always a simplification; something is of necessity always left out. A theory may be very, very precise (Quantum Electrodynamics makes predictions that have been tested to a numerical accuracy of something like eighteen decimal places). But at some level (maybe the twentieth decimal) its limit will be found. Taken beyond that limit, the theory is "wrong."

To a scientist, "wrong" means testable, provable, and found wanting at some level. Thus, there are degrees of wrongness.

For example, the idea that the earth is flat cannot be sustained once you determine that a vertical plumb line a few miles away isn't parallel to the one next to you (you can see the difference through a telescope). The idea that the earth is a sphere is very ancient, and a rough measurement of the earth's size was made 2,400 years ago. So, most people who know the earth is "round" (a nice, imprecise term) think of it as a sphere. With a little thought, we realize it is a bit lumpy, and so is not really a perfect sphere, but the sphere model is "less wrong" than the flat model.

I was taught when quite young that the earth was an oblate spheroid. That just means the equator is a circle, but the meridians are slightly flattened ellipses. That's a little "less wrong" yet. Later, the term "pear shaped" was used, and so forth.

Now, at some level, every model of the earth's shape is "wrong". However, Shermer makes a great point here: the notion that the "wrongness" of the sphere model is equal to that of the flat model, is "wronger than wrong." With a modicum of thought, we can realize that the sphere model, though a little inaccurate, is much closer to reality than the flat model. It is a lot "less wrong." The kind of thinking that would equate these models in terms of their relative wrongness, is just too wrong to permit discourse.

That is really the problem, here. If someone's thinking is wronger than wrong, you can't talk to them. They can't understand you, and can't even understand why you are bothered.

I remember the very old "black/white versus shades of gray" distinction, impressed on me from way, way back. To a B/W thinker of the pessimistic sort, a single non-white spot makes everything BLACK; an optimist thinks the slightest glimmer means "it's all good." Both are too wrong for reasoned discourse. One must understand, or at least admit, levels of light or dark to get anywhere.

Later, I had a Rorschach test that moved me in a better direction yet. You may know that a few of the blots are multicolored. After my test, the shrink pointed out that, on the black blots, I had lots to say, and tended to pick them apart, like looking for images in clouds; but I had very little to say about the blots with more than one color of ink. I don't know what he said from that point, becuase I began to think furiously, and realized, "There's not just black, white, and gray. There's a rainbow out there."

Let me confess, I was considered almost autistic before that point in my life. Not since. Now, no matter what the issue, I don't only see the "either/or" question, not even the axis between the poles, but I get ideas in all directions perpendicular to that axis. Life may not be "it's all good," but it's better than it once was!