Chapter Content
Okay, so like, let's talk about something I've been thinking about, you know, these vicious cycles we get stuck in. And it's all about, like, circularity and, uh, kind of the undead, almost, in the sense of ideas that should be dead but aren't.
Basically, something is only really worth anything if it, like, survives, right? It has to actually work in the real world, and its design needs to, you know, reflect and tackle real problems.
But, here's the thing. A lot of science and engineering has kind of become… circular. Like, progress is often measured by what, you know, benefits the *field*, not actually solving real-world problems. It’s kind of weird, right?
Like, think about genetics. We hear about "advances" all the time, but like, how much progress have we actually made in curing or reliably treating diseases? Not a whole lot, actually. What we call “progress” is often just making the *current* way of doing things more efficient. Like, better ways to separate genes or fancy new imaging tech. And, yeah, it sounds good, like we're understanding things better, but that’s, like, a reductionist view, you know? Just because we can look closer at isolated stuff doesn't mean we understand how things *really* work, like how diseases happen.
Being able to see tiny things better doesn’t magically translate to real-world results, and I mean, we've talked about why before. And it's not just genetics, either. A *lot* of science is based on the same, like, faulty premise. This focus on reductionist "progress" keeps a lot of science going that, frankly, probably shouldn't be. Institutions get away with calling stuff "advancements" when, in reality, they just reinforce these, like, bad ideas about how progress and complexity happen.
So, how do we fix this? We have to go "meta," right? That's the only way to really validate anything. We can’t, you know, validate something *inside* the system. We have to look at it from the *outside*. It's the only way to avoid, like, these outdated ideas that have kind of run their course. You have to look at it from the outside in to figure out if something's actually worth continuing. If you just use the current way of thinking to prove what you're doing is right, you're, like, completely stuck in a loop.
Think about IQ, for example. If you argue with someone who’s really into IQ, and you say, hey, maybe it doesn't really measure intelligence, they'll point to all these studies that show correlations, you know? Like, how IQ is supposedly linked to doing well in school or having a good job. And that's what they use as proof. So, the only way they'll maybe admit IQ is flawed is if you can prove the *statistics* are wrong.
But, that's not even the real problem, because the *whole idea* is flawed, not the stats! It's like, someone who believes in a conspiracy theory can always make a logically sound argument if they stay within that conspiracy theory's framework, right? It’s the same with science. People can make perfectly good arguments, as long as they stay within the system. With IQ, those connections appear because, well, what IQ really says is that someone who’s good at taking tests is good at taking tests. And if, you know, society uses test-taking to decide who gets opportunities, then, yeah, IQ is going to seem related to success.
That’s why you gotta step outside the system. That's the only way to break free. When you do that with IQ, you realize the problem isn't the stats, which, you know, work fine in their own little world. It's how those stats are being used in the real world. It’s like when we talked about formal systems and paradoxes, where you can only resolve the paradox by going meta.
It’s this circularity – never stepping outside the box – that makes things *appear* like they're surviving when they're really not. They're like the undead, kept alive by hidden assumptions in what sounds like a perfectly reasonable argument.
And it's like, complexity. That's not the answer a lot of scientists want to hear. They want things to be neat and simple. Complexity is, like, messy, uncertain. It doesn’t fit with the need for inner knowledge and control. Scientists have been taught that knowing the world means, you know, peeling back layers, digging deeper, revealing the pieces inside.
So, if you try to explain something by saying it's complex, they'll often dismiss it as a cop-out. The current way of thinking is that to know nature, you have to draw a straight line from cause to effect. All sciences, from physics to sociology, want clear definitions and simple causal stories. Anything else is seen as, you know, not scientific enough.
So, anything that sounds like complexity is dismissed as magic. Like, if you can't explain something causally, what's the explanation worth? But the thing is, we can *always* make reductionist explanations! We can always find pieces of a system and fit them into a story, because the current idea is that pieces connect to the whole. The thing is, some discovery can be real, but still be totally unrelated to how things work in reality.
So, the unwillingness to accept complexity is, like, a straw man argument. It's avoiding the fact that there's no visible inner causality in almost everything in nature. Instead of dealing with actual arguments about complexity, scientists try to tear down something else, something vague or "magical."
The disconnect between parts and observable stuff breaks down the old ideas about science and truth. Not having a causal story is actually *more* scientific than making up some fairy tale about how pieces bump into each other. Nature computes answers in multiple ways, not through simple paths.
Dismissing complexity as a non-answer is a distorted version of serious arguments that use the properties of complexity. To criticize science today doesn't require some grand authority. It just requires good science. The emphasis on reductionism and the rejection of complexity just hides failures. A lot of science lives on through prestige, awards, and outdated ideas about rigor, not by really understanding nature.
Science itself shows us the flaw introduced by the Enlightenment. Taking things apart, isolating them, refines them, but takes us *away* from what we observe, not *towards* it. Society assumes there’s a connection between pieces and human experience, but there isn’t. This leads people to believe something unscientific that’s pushed by a self-serving scientific system that hasn't made as much progress as it wants you to think.
It's not magic that makes the complex world hard to explain. It's the properties that emerge at the scale where everything matters. No amount of digging can uncover a causality that's not there. There's no path from pieces to properties. There are no atoms of behavior. No one's ever shown a clear line from the insides of physical systems to what we see on the surface.
Science marks the current way of thinking as dead. Not magic. *Science*. There's nothing smart about dismissing criticism against science as pointless abstraction. That's a distortion, a crutch, a misrepresentation of science itself. The people who load up on categories and symbols to "explain" the world are the ones reading tea leaves. Trying to understand the world through reductionist analysis is the real mysticism.
And, you know, a big reason we can't escape this reductionist thinking is our education system. The whole idea of education, what I call the "academic narrative," is based on the idea that there's a strong connection between education and real-world innovation. It’s like, you need a plan to build things. Only if the stuff in textbooks can be used in designs does a foundation in education make sense.
But, in an age of complexity, that narrative falls apart. There's a bigger and bigger gap between what’s taught in school and what you need to solve real-world problems. It’s not just unrealistic, the academic narrative goes *against* complexity. Complexity works in one direction. The structures and behaviors that let complex things solve problems appear *after* the fact. That means that designing things isn't possible, and that the academic narrative is wrong.
Deciding how to build things can't be based on, like, the isolated knowledge taught in universities. The goal isn’t putting existing knowledge into designs, it’s about letting designs emerge on their own. To build like nature, the next generation needs to try things out and learn from their mistakes, rather than just memorizing facts.
The best education is building real things. When we create, we learn way better than from textbooks and teachers. To build something that works is to make deep connections to nature. By working like nature, through trial and error, we understand the properties that nature follows. It’s not about memorizing, it’s about intuition and application. That's what it means to be skilled in an age of complexity. Like how the best doctors and technicians show the softer side of problem solving, future generations of professionals must do the same.
Even though the education system is opposite to how life works, we're told the opposite. We're taught that knowing small pieces means you know how big things work. During the industrial revolution, that was true, right? Machines had few parts that bumped into each other predictably. So, learning about the parts was useful. But, as we try to solve really hard problems, which require building really complex things, academia is outdated.
And I talked about this before, about how institutions filter people, and it's a problem. The people with the best grades get the best opportunities. The gatekeepers think that passing tests means you're smart and have potential. But exams are a narrow view of intelligence and promise. Since nature's solutions involve group selection and multiple ways of achieving the same result, we should expect that everyone has a variety of skills and experiences. The *group* solves the problem, not the individual. Today's academia hurts society's ability to solve problems because it takes a reductionist, unscientific approach to defining human potential.
The truth is, people can do the same things in different ways. And that's not just a feel-good saying, that’s how nature works. Today's education system is because of outdated science and a broken paradigm. It made sense when we built simple things, but now it goes against how we must build things in the future.