Navigating Two Divergent Realities
If we are to create a powerful technology that fosters an incredible evolutionary leap in human intelligence, in addition to appreciating that humans engage in two very different thinking modes that are worlds apart, we need to understand that humans live in two divergent realities at the same time. Similar to the two thinking modes identified by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, which we discussed in a prior article, both realities are necessary for navigating life. And how they operate is also worlds apart.
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Reality is defined as the state of being actual or true. When something is actual, it has a verifiable existence. When something is true, it is a fact. Thus, reality consists of verifiable facts. While this concept may seem rather straightforward, the reality is that reality is not as simple as it may seem. That’s because the two realities that humans navigate are governed by two very different sets of laws. Where humans get into trouble is when we mix and confuse the workings of these very different laws to determine what are verifiable facts.
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Physical Reality
The first reality is physical reality. This realm is experienced through the operations of the universe whose laws apply uniformly to all elements. The laws of physical reality are objective and cannot be altered by human action. Thus, for example, no political body could legislate a change in the speed of light or suspend the laws of gravity. The operating principle for physical reality is: It is what it is. However, while we can’t modify physical laws, we can use these laws to control how we navigate the physical world by discovering and understanding how they work, as happens when pilots fly airplanes. This is the domain of science.
In science, there is no such thing as misinformation. When you are attempting to understand objective physical laws, information is either true, false, or a hypothesis. A true statement is a fact that is based on valid and reliable evidence. Because the realm of physical reality is objective, numbers are the primary tools for constructing the mental models we use to produce evidence and discern truth. While there are times when truth is a constant, such as the speed of light, there are other times when truth is variable, depending upon the context of physical circumstances. For example, whether H2O is a vaper, a liquid, or a solid depends upon the temperature, but once the temperature is known, the verifiable fact is clear and the extent of human action is limited by the laws of physics. While we can manipulate the temperature, we cannot manipulate the immutable laws that determine how the interaction of H2O and temperature work. If the temperature is below freezing, we cannot turn ice into water.
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As for the other two informational possibilities, a false statement is an assertion that is definitively untrue based on valid and reliable evidence, and a hypothesis is any statement about the workings of physical reality that cannot be proved or disproved by evidence and, thus, remains a hypothesis until sufficient data can be gathered that clearly proves the proposition is either true or false.
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Social Reality
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The second reality is social reality. This is the world of interpersonal relationships among family and friends that make up our day-to-day lives. We also experience social reality in the economic and political systems we construct that allow large numbers of people who are unknown to each other to engage in reliable and meaningful social exchange. Unlike physical reality, which operates according to objective immutable laws, the rules of social reality are humanly constructed. In their seminal treatise, The Social Construction of Reality published in 1966, sociologists Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann explore how much of our day-to-day world is not an objective, fixed entity but rather a product of human social processes. They postulate that the “reality” we experience is not a universal truth but a fragile, negotiated order that depends upon constant human reinforcement. ?Thus, the rules of social reality are inherently malleable and subjective and can be modified as societies evolve, especially in response to changing circumstances and new technologies. This explains why social reality is the domain of ideology.
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This ability to construct social reality is a distinctly human characteristic. As Yuval Noah Harari discusses at length in his book, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, the reason humans rule the world is because we are capable of creating shared fictions that allow us to cooperate with countless numbers of strangers. For example, money is a shared fiction. If you were to present a five-dollar bill to a store clerk to purchase a soft drink, the clerk would give you the soda plus change in exchange for the bill. The currency has value only because we have a social agreement about how money works. As a physical reality, the five-dollar bill is just piece of paper. However, as a social reality, the bill has real value, but only as long as we continue to accept the shared fiction.
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Because it is fiction, the primary tool for constructing social reality is language. Words are the ingredients of stories, and stories are the foundation for the myths and narratives that reflect how we imagine the world works. Thus, the mental models of social reality are often products of human imagination that are shaped by perceptions and assumptions rather than evidence. Throughout the ages, our ability to use language to construct social reality has allowed us to build highly advanced civilizations. Without language we could not have built the comprehensive legal, political, economic, and religious systems that are the pillars of developed societies. These social systems are built upon strongly held beliefs that reflect assumptions, norms, and rules that are either shared among or coerced upon communities of people.
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Ideologies are fertile ground for cultivating the notion of misinformation. In social reality, facts are not based on verifiable immutable laws but rather widely accepted norms that reflect the shared or coerced beliefs of social groups. In this realm, facts are shared beliefs that reflect widely accepted norms. In medieval Europe, for example, it was an accepted fact that the Sun revolved around the Earth. Anyone who said otherwise was spreading what we now call misinformation and needed to be censored or even imprisoned as happened when Galileo offered definitive proof that the Earth rotated around the Sun. When a society legitimizes censorship and actively bans the dissemination of information that challenges official narratives, it is a clear sign that ideology rather than science is attempting to preserve beliefs as accepted facts, regardless of contrary evidence.
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Conflicting Realities
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Beliefs are usually useful for supporting productive social exchange, as happens when economic activity is fostered by a strong fiat currency. However, belief-based mental models can sometimes become poor guides, or even harmful, if people in authority become true believers who persist in maintaining a socially constructed reality that conflicts with evidenced-based physical reality. The consummate flaw of these zealots is that no amount of evidence—as Galileo learned—can shake their beliefs. This is especially dangerous when true believers claim to be scientists because when truth is defined by dogma, anything to the contrary—even incontrovertible evidence—gets labelled as misinformation.
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A similar issue exists today as we grapple over whether biological men who identify as transgender women should participate in women’s sporting events or have access to women’s locker rooms. In this case, the physical reality of biological chromosomes divides humans into two sexes. Biological sex, like physical age, operates according to immutable laws. The idea of gender transformation is a humanly constructed social reality whose proponents advocate for the acceptance of subjective identification as the determinant of a person’s sex. However, the notion that gender is a social reality and that individuals can choose their gender—even if it conflicts with their biological sex—is a fiction that is not broadly shared by most people, despite attempts to coerce this notion upon the population.??
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When physical reality and socially constructed reality are at odds, physical reality ultimately wins. In the end, even though it didn’t happen is his lifetime, Galileo was vindicated. Although it may take time, ultimately the evidenced-based observations of true scientists prevail over the faith-based narratives of true believers. That’s because science is a never-ending humble inquiry to expand our understanding of how physical reality works. As much as we may know, there is always more to learn in an ever-expanding complex universe. In science, questions are just as important, if not more important, than answers. That’s why true scientists lead with questions and never dismiss reasonable hypotheses—or worse yet, verified facts—as heresy or misinformation.
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If we are to build artificial intelligence systems that enhance rather than oppress humanity, we need to understand how human intelligence works within the holistic context of the two thinking systems and the two dimensions of reality. With this understanding, we can hopefully build AI systems that are free from the unconscious biases that plague human decision making and properly apply the differing operating rules of the two realities.
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