On the CCG list RML had posted a good article on how public engagement is critical to solving climate crisis, ignoring the special problem that science still trys to describe uncontrolled systems with control theory…
RML,
Well, one of the major barriers to using science to communicate the choices available to individuals is that scientific models, confusingly, represent the parts of systems as having no individual choices… Equations represent systems as composed of controlled variables and actual physical systems are generally composed of individually learning parts. It produces a multi-fold miscommunication, leaving both sides confused by each other’s view. I think our micro views of systems (that of individual people, say) is as wrong about the macro view (that of science, say) about as much as the reverse.
Science has been simply leaving out the role of the parts of complex systems in learning new behaviors that no model could ever predict. It just doesn’t fit a deterministic approach to life at all. That gap calls for inventing a different sort of learning process, both for scientists more interested in the large scale properties of systems and people more interested in understanding their own options for changing the systems.
The main hazard and greatest misinformation resulting from ignoring that is seen in the idea widely accepted socially, politically and scientifically that the way to relieve a growth system of conflicts is to apply pressures to favor “goods” and disfavor “bads”. What that does in a growth system with independently learning parts is multiply internal conflict, quite the opposite of “relieve” the system of conflicts.
The traditional problem of communicating science is still there, but applying ‘control theory’ to describing uncontrolled environmental systems full of independently learning parts is an absolutely huge mistake, suggesting the need for new modes of explanation more than excuses. I’m finding, though, that even with help ecologists feel uncomfortable in admitting that nature has more than rules and equations for us to acknowledge. I think the public would much better understand the rules and equations if science was better at being truthful about their limits and the new kinds of questions our information gaps raise.
Phil Henshaw ¸¸¸¸.•´ ¯ `•.¸¸¸¸
NY NY www.synapse9.com