Uninformation (4)

Information is not identical with experience

We often assume that because someone is experienced in a field that they are therefore well informed about it. One is particularly likely to believe this if the person involved is oneself. One might as well argue that because I take the streetcar every day that I am an expert on public transportation, or that because I watch television every day I'm an expert on television. Obviously you acquire some knowledge from your experience, but it does not necessarily constitute an understanding of your experience.

And we may simply fail to learn from our experience. Psychologists talk about the consulting room phenomenon — faced with evidence that a diagnostic test such as the Rorschach test doesn't work the way it's supposed to, some psychologists and psychiatrists will reply that they've seen it work in their consulting rooms. In fact, individual practitioners have little opportunity to establish in their practice that a test actually works. The chief criterion they can use is the success of treatment, and even a correct diagnosis may lead to unsuccessful treatment, while an incorrect one may lead to successful treatment. We can also sometimes be a little lenient in deciding how successful we’ve been.

We have seen how authorities — people with great experience in their fields — usually disagree with each other. That is, their experience has led them to contradictory conclusions, and those conclusions cannot all be informative.

We derive information from our experience — we don't just pick it up by accident. We derive it by analyzing our experience in certain ways, acting on the conclusions we’ve drawn from our analysis, and then testing the adequacy of our conclusions.

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Uninformation (4) © 2011, John FitzGerald

Uninformation (3)

The opinions of authorities are not necessarily informative

We often treat anything printed in an authoritative journal or asserted by an expert to be informative. Although authorities and experts do tend to be far better informed about their subjects than the average person, we still cannot assume that whatever they say is informative or even true . All you have to do to learn why we have no justification is to read what authoritative foreign journals and experts have to say about your own country. The influential journal Le monde diplomatique once published an article whose author claimed that Canada had no constitution, but rather “a collection of texts with the force of a constitution”, and that these onstitutional texts could not be challenged in lower courts . Well, the latest of this collection of texts explicitly defines it as the national constitution, and it explicitly gives all courts the power to review all matters of law, which of course includes the constitution.

Our lives are rife today with experts and expert opinions. The news media are constantly presenting experts and their opinions about every topic under the sun, the implication being that an expert=s opinion is more informative than the opinion of someone who is not an expert..

For an assertion to be informative to us, though, we have to have some idea of the likelihood that it’s true. If the expert is an expert on gardening or cooking, verifying the accuracy of what he or she says is fairly easy. If, however, the expert is an expert on politics or medicine or some other field which requires special or complicated knowledge which you do not have, you may well have no way of verifying his or her opinion. A few years ago we saw experts queuing up to predict that the stock market would rise, if not forever, at least for a long, long time to come. Certainly these experts made arguments for their positions, but usually they were adducing as evidence for their opinion facts which the ordinary person could not verify.

Another problem about expert forecasts is that the experts are rarely experts in forecasting. J. Scott Armstrong and Kesten Green have observed that the scientific forecasts we are often encouraged to believe in are too often forecasts by scientists rather than forecasts arrived at scientifically.

Another problem is that experts are not impersonal compendia of information but human beings who advocate certain disputed positions in their field. They are advocates for ideas which other experts in their fields dispute. The Western intellectual tradition is to have as many people as possible arguing about ideas. Many of these ideas have the same quality that ideas about what was going to happen on January 1, 2000 had – they are founded on data which are not fully understood.

We can hardly expect experts to be perfect. If we cannot expect them to be perfect, then we have to assess the soundness of their opinions. If we are unable to assess the soundness of their opinions, then their opinions are not informative to us. They may well be valid, but if we cannot verify that they are valid then they are not informative. At the same time as all those experts were predicting that the stock market would rise forever, some experts were predicting that the bubble was going to burst. Those experts were right, but most of us had no way of verifying that they were. Therefore, even though they were right, they were not providing us with information.

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Uninformation (2)

2. The logical or reasonable is not necessarily informative

People often believe that if they can construct a chain of reasoning which supports their beliefs that therefore they have demonstrated that their belief is true and informative. For example, many people reasoned out arguments which they seriously believed demonstrated that on January 1, 2000 the world would be thrown into chaos. I say their beliefs were serious because they acted on them – they stockpiled food, for example, they bought portable electric generators, and some even created fortified shelters to protect themselves from people who hadn't stockpiled food or bought generators.

As we found out, they were wrong. However, I can’t say that their conclusion was any less sound than the conclusion I and most other people drew that any disruption that might occur on January 1, 2000 would be minor. The people who drew this conclusion were sane and their reasoning from their data was sound. It was probably as sound or sounder than my own. In the end, one reason I and most other people were right and they were wrong is that we were using better data – data which were more informative. Another reason is that we were just luckier. In fact, no one fully understood all the factors one would have to assess to produce an accurate forecast of what would happen to the power grid on January 1, 2000. Furthermore, we probably weren’t aware of all the factors that would have to be considered.

If sound reasoning is based on invalid and inadequate data, it will reach invalid and inadequate conclusions. None of us is perfect – not even, as unlikely as it may seem, you or I – and we all at one time or another base logical conclusions on unsound data. And sometimes our reasoning just slips a gear, too. Even if our reasoning is perfect, none of us is omniscient, either. We can easily overlook important considerations.

That’s why the betting industry exists. If you’ve ever heard some of the explanations – often vehement ones – which horseplayers come up with to explain why the sure thing they bet in the last race ran as if he was pulling a milk wagon, you’ll know that relying too much on reason can not only cost you money but also lead you into an unjustified skepticism about the honesty and competence of one’s fellow human beings.

Obviously logic is involved in the development of information, just as facts are involved. It is not by itself informative, though. Two plus two equals four, but if the right answer is five you’re still wrong. That is why conclusions drawn from data need to be tested before they can be accepted as sound. If you think the 5-horse in the next race is going to romp, you won’t know that you’re right till the race has been run. And no matter what the weather report says, you won’t know whether it’s going to rain tomorrow or not until tomorrow arrives.

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Next: Information is not the statement of an authority

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Uninformation (2) © 2011, John FitzGerald

Uninformation (1)

Information consists of data which establish whether or not an assertion is false. Not all data do this. One of the reasons we have difficulty becoming and staying informed is that we sometimes accept as informative things which really aren’t, or least aren’t necessarily. This is the first in a series of posts in which we’ll look at a few things which are not information.

1. Information is not synonymous with facts

People often confuse information with facts. Someone who knows a lot of facts is considered to be well informed. A fact is only informative, though, if it helps you settle a question you need to know the answer to. If someone is on trial for armed robbery, the Crown does not submit evidence that the defendant is a skilled bridge player, true as that evidence may be.

Here's a fact: Churchill, Manitoba, is named for John Churchill, first governor of the Hudson's Bay Company. That=s a fact. Despite being a fact, though, it doesn't help me answer the question “Where do I find the men’s shirts?” whenever I drop in to one of the Bay’s branches. So for me that datum is not informative, factual though it be.

Furthermore, there are plenty of items of information that are not factual. The idea of intelligence, for example, cannot be said to be a fact, since there is widespread disagreement about just what intelligence is. However, the concept of intelligence is informative because in speculating about it we discover useful things. We have even discovered some of the shortcomings of the idea of intelligence.

Information is always derived from facts, and it always helps to predict facts. However, it need not be factual itself, and something which is factual need not be informative. As someone who has spent his life filling his memory with facts whose relevance to my life is highly questionable (see note about John Churchill above), I realize that collecting trivia can be enjoyable. Until they tell you something useful, though, trivia are just trivial.

Next: The logical or reasonable is not necessarily informative

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Uninformation (1) © 2011, John FitzGerald