Words and Numbers
Like so many of us at the beginning of the pandemic, I was concerned and confused. The world was suddenly dealing with a global phenomenon of epic proportions that was unprecedented in the experience of most people. The globe was on high alert amid speculation that a novel coronavirus might cause the deaths of very large numbers of people. Amid this concern, most of the world shut down and went into some form of a lockdown. It was an unsettling time.
As it became apparent that attempts to thwart the virus in the short-term would not be successful, and the pathogen was going to be a part of our lives for some time, I began to look for information that would help me understand the many questions I had about what we were dealing with. How serious was the disease? How large was the death rate? Were we all equally vulnerable or were some more at risk than others? Were there treatments? What could we do to protect ourselves against serious infection?
As I searched for information, I quickly noticed a disturbing occurrence. It seemed that only some information was considered acceptable while other information was downplayed or even censored on social media sites. I found this curious because, in the face of an unprecedented virus, how could we think we were in a position to judge what was correct or incorrect so early in the event?
In my search for information, I sought out both mainstream and alternative views to better understand what we were dealing with. As I listened to both sides, a pattern clearly emerged that characterized the different viewpoints. The public health and medical professionals who supported the mainstream approach of wearing masks, practicing social distancing, locking down businesses, closing schools, and moving rapidly to develop a vaccine tended to use words and narratives in guiding and informing the public. On the other hand, the equally highly-credentialed, and often censored, professionals who opposed lockdown policies and supported a risk-based focused protection and treatment development approach—in addition to generating a vaccine—tended to rely on numbers and data to support their position. This struck me as odd because I expected all scientists would welcome deep dives into the full expanse of the data picture. But this wasn’t the case. The mainstream professionals seemed to be presenting little data to support their opinions. In fact, they seemed, at times, to be actively withholding information.
Instead of answering the legitimate questions raised by the alternative professionals or engaging with them in meaningful debate—which is the modus operandi of true science—the mainstream professionals tended to demonize the character of those who thought differently and question their motives rather than addressing their questions. These advocates of “the science” rarely engaged in honest scientific inquiry and instead set up straw men, employed double standards, claimed the alternative professionals were engaged in misinformation while ignoring the preponderance of misinformation they themselves were propagating, especially about the effectiveness of masks and vaccines.
Rather than embracing an open dialogue about numbers and data, the mainstream professionals behaved more like true believers who preferred to shut down any meaningful conversation that would challenge the orthodoxy of the high priests of “the science.” Like the clergy that utilized the Knights Templar as their advance troops in the Crusades to break the opposition lines, the mainstream professionals engaged Big Tech and Big Media in a proactive censorship campaign to silence the voices and destroy the reputations of dissenting scientists who did not subscribe to the Covid orthodoxy.
I found the analyses of the alternative professionals to be more convincing because they provided more comprehensive and detailed evidence to support their observations. In deciding whom to trust, I was reminded of the key lesson that Billy Beane learned in recruiting unrecognized talent for his Oakland A’s baseball team: Trust the evidence of data over the opinions of experts. In other words, when words and numbers conflict, trust the numbers.
Two Realities
One of the things that separates humans from other species of mammals is our cognitive capacity for creating sophisticated systems of language and math. Words and numbers are the primary tools we use to share our understanding of how the world around us works. They are the ingredients that inform both our individual and social thinking processes. If we have different opinions about how things work, we use words and numbers to see where we differ, where we have common ground, and how we can learn from each other to create new knowledge. Words and numbers are the windows through which we can see and participate in the reality that surround us.
Another thing that distinguishes humans is that we are capable of living in two distinct realities at the same time. The first is physical reality. This realm is experienced through the workings of the universe whose laws apply to all elements uniformly and are oblivious to human influence. Thus, for example, no political body could legislate a change in the speed of light or suspend the laws of gravity. However, while we can’t modify or control how physical laws work, we can use these laws to control how we navigate the physical world by translating the laws into math. That’s how, for example, the Wright brothers learned to fly. By translating the properties of wind, air, and speed into numerical models, they were able to invent the airplane. The primary tool for understanding how physical reality works is numbers. And the only way that we can manipulate how we navigate the physical world is to accept that the numbers are the numbers and that, unlike the domain of Harry Potter, in the real world there are no words that can change how the math of physical reality works. It is what it is.
The second reality is social reality. This is the world of the conscious activities and the interpersonal relationships that make up our day-to-day lives. We humans are highly social beings who enjoy being with family, friends, and colleagues as we love, work, and play together. 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 preexisting immutable laws, the rules and laws of social reality are humanly constructed and can be modified as societies change and evolve, especially in response to new technologies. This is what happened when the printing press, the steam engine, and the computer transformed everyday life and spawned new rules and laws as social reality was reconstructed in the Agrarian, Industrial, and Digital Ages.
This ability to construct social reality is another 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 fifty-dollar bill to a store clerk to purchase a magazine, the clerk would give you the publication 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 fifty-dollar bill is just piece of paper. That will never change. However, as a social reality, the bill has real value, but only as long as we accept the shared fiction. Should the value of the dollar collapse, it would become a worthless piece of paper.
Because it is a shared fiction, the primary tool for constructing social reality is words. Words are the ingredients of stories, and stories are the foundation for myths and narratives. Myths and narratives are the oldest models for explaining how the world works, many of which served as the foundation for the development of the world’s religions.
The tools of language and math were not developed concurrently. Language was developed first. This explains why, before the emergence of the scientific disciplines, religions provided the body of knowledge for how both physical and social reality worked, and these two realities were often comingled. For example, in primitive religions, rituals and sacred words were used to attempt to influence the gods and alter physical circumstances, such as the need for rain in the midst of a drought.
As civilizations advanced and mathematical systems were developed, our ability to understand the workings of physical reality grew exponentially with the development of the scientific disciplines. These numerical systems allowed us to measure physical dynamics, which in turn, greatly enhanced our understanding of nature’s laws and how we could use these laws to create inventions that improved the human condition. In numbers, we had found an alternative and more effective tool to explain how physical reality worked.
As humans became equally proficient in language and math, the comingling of the two realities no longer made sense. While words continued to be valuable tools in constructing the shared fictions that are necessary for creating functioning social realities, myths and narratives are no match for measurements and equations for understanding the workings of physical reality. That’s why I was perplexed by the behavior of the mainstream professionals who seemed to be relying heavily on narrative rather than numbers to shape their mental models for how we should handle the pandemic.
Mental Models
Mental models are useful tools we use to understand how the world works and how we fit into the world. They help us process the uncertainty and the ambiguity of the world around us so we may have a shared point of reference around which we can organize a shared understanding. This shared understanding shapes the mindset we use to navigate both physical and social realities.
When words are the foundation for building a mental model, the mindset of the people who embrace this model is usually shaped by a well-constructed narrative that reflects itself in a strongly held belief system. Accordingly, the behavior of people guided by beliefs usually has more in common with the practice of religion than the practice of science.
Although those who hold a narrative-based mindset will protest their thinking is based upon numbers and data, a closer look often reveals that the unconscious biases underlying their mental model causes their words to shape their thinking about numbers rather than the numbers shaping their words. For example, mass vaccination was put forward by the mainstream professionals as the best strategy for stopping the spread of the virus. We were told, if we were fully vaccinated, it was highly unlikely that we would contract the virus. When the numbers did not support this belief and showed the vaccinated and the unvaccinated were equally likely to get the disease, the mainstream professionals insisted the vaccines worked because they would prevent severe disease. However, when recent data from the U.K., which arguably has the world’s most extensive Covid data base, showed more than ninety percent of those dying from Covid were vaccinated, the National Health Service (NHS) announced that it would not be collecting data on vaccine status going forward. The NHS claimed that, because free universal testing was ending in Britain, this change in policy would affect its ability to robustly monitor Covid-19 cases. Perhaps this is so, but it does beg the question of whether this might be an example of stopping the collection of the numbers when the numbers don’t fit the narrative. At no point did the mainstream professionals acknowledge the obvious: the vaccines failed at the job of stopping the acquisition and the transmission of the virus. Instead, they continue to cling to vaccine mandate policies that were never supported by the numbers.
One of the tells of those whose mindsets are based on narratives is that you will rarely, if ever, hear them utter the words, “I was wrong.” Those following a narrative are highly skillful at using words to demonstrate how their belief system has been right all along. A mental model based on belief is often so intractable that it easily dismisses and ignores any contradictory data even if the data is compelling. For example, until Covid, medical and public health professionals agreed with the evidenced-based conclusion that had been held for centuries that the natural immunity gained after recovering from an infectious disease was generally the most effective form of immunization. However, natural immunity was completely dismissed and ignored by the proponents of the Covid narrative. Accordingly, corporate and public Covid policy edicts required everyone to get vaccinated, regardless of previous infection. In the Covid belief system, any person who strayed from the orthodoxy by refusing the vaccine because they had recovered from a previous infection was to be labeled an anti-vaxxer, socially ostracized, and, in some instances, excommunicated by being fired from their jobs.
On the other hand, when numbers are the basis for building a mental model, the mindset for explaining how things work is understood to be our best knowledge at the time. For centuries, the dominant scientific viewpoint that explained how the physical universe worked was based on Isaac Newton’s laws of motion and gravitation. In 1915, Albert Einstein published a paper outlining his theory of relativity, which was a radical departure from the mainstream science at the time. If Einstein had published this paper today, he might have likely been censored by Big Tech for propagating misinformation. Fortunately, in the early twentieth century, science wasn’t being censored and vigorous scientific debate in pursuit of the truth was still the norm.
While many scientists disagreed with Einstein’s theory, all sides acknowledged the best way to close the debate was to let the numbers settle the question. There was no attempt to ostracize Einstein or destroy his reputation because he had the audacity to challenge what many saw as the established science. True science is open to different possibilities and discovering new knowledge. While the true believer thinks he has all the answers and engages in verbal pronouncements, the true scientist knows there’s always more to learn and looks to data for the answers. That is what Arthur Eddington did when, in 1919, he led an eclipse expedition to Principe Island in West Africa where he would observe an eclipse and measure if gravity would bend the path of light as Einstein’s theory predicted. The numbers settled the question and proved Einstein’s theory right.
This new knowledge didn’t repudiate Newton’s viewpoint, but rather broadened the context of our understanding of how the universe works. Both Newton and Einstein expanded our knowledge, and someday someone else will inevitably come along with a new theory that will broaden our knowledge even more. That’s how science and the realm of physical reality works.
There are no belief systems nor are there shared fictions in science. A social agreement about how vaccines work is meaningless when the evidence of data says otherwise. Scientists who behave like true believers following a mental model grounded in a shared fiction and claiming they are following “the science” are not true scientists. There is no such thing as “the science” because scientific inquiry is never ending. Those who thwart scientific inquiry in the name of “the science” are practicing religion not science.
A true scientist is a learner who will modify or even discard a mental model when the data prove the old model no longer makes sense. A true scientist understands the differences between the laws of social and physical realities and never commingles the two realms. Accordingly, the mindset of a true scientist is evidenced based, which explains why, in science, the numbers always shape the words and not the other way around.