So . . . congrats to the Green Bay Packers, the best team in the NFL for the 2010-2011 season. Or something like that. Maybe. What do we really know about the Packers that we didn't 24 hours ago, other than that they won one (important) game? Today I'm writing about how we know what we know, or what we don't know, or what we know about what we don't know. You know, epistemology. More verbal twistage after the jump.
I've written related posts before on the topic what what sports championships really mean, even within the limited context of sports (most directly here). But when it comes to general knowledge, what it comes down to are concepts like epistemology (the study of knowledge), definitions, and generalizability.
I wrote last week about some consumer research that I was conducting. I had a sample size of about fifty people, and I took those results to be generalizable to the overall population of North Americans. Is this right, fair, or accurate? I don't know, and for that research I don't have to know, because there are standard procedures based on experience and statistics that say that the results are generalizable enough. But it could just be that there's something about those people, or the context that I put them in, or the questions that I asked, that makes for a unique result (the bribes I gave them to fill out the questionnaires the way I wanted couldn't have hurt - kidding, kidding). And then the results would not be generalizable.
Definitions are also important. What does it mean, in the NFL, to be the best? If the definition of the best is "the team that wins the Super Bowl," then the Packers are the best. But there are other ways that you can define the best, such as "the team that does not have a sexual predator for a QB" (in which case the Packers still probably win). It may seem academic to try to define the "best," especially in sports where you have a clear winner and clear loser, but a) I'm an academic, so to that I say "duh!" and b) if our definitions are flawed, our knowledge is suspect.
Take something as seemingly simple to define as life and death. As Lewis Black said, you can take all of the other [stuff] and throw it out, because if we can't define what is alive and what is dead, then we're totally [screwed]. But the thing is, we can't. We can't agree on when life begins, and in some cases (like the Terry Schiavo situation from several years back, which is actually what Black was referring to at the time) we can't agree on when life ends. Definitions are important.
And all of this leads to epistemology, which is the study of knowledge itself. Nassim Nicholas Taleb has a lot to say about this in his books (largely in The Black Swan, which I'm angry that you still haven't read despite my repeated references to it). An example: investment bankers prior to the 2008 crash believed they knew something about options and hedging, and they didn't know what they thought they did (mostly because they ignored a low-probability but important possibility and removed it from their predictive models). And how do we define what we know and what we don't? Mostly by what we know of what we don't. Again, from Black Swan, I use Taleb's example of two libraries. One is of books that you have read, and the other is of books that you own but have not read. Which is more telling about the owner of the library?
It's the latter. Because what happens (or should happen) when we learn things is that it brings to our attention more things that we want to know. If you look at your library (figuratively or literally) and feel that it encompasses everything you would like to know, you're needlessly limiting yourself and probably deluding yourself (unless you're Ken Jennings; he goes up against a computer on Jeopardy! next week. No, I'm not joking). If you're certain that Green Bay fielded the best team in the NFL this season because they won last night, you're putting a lot of stock in the definitions and generalizations of others, and not considering how we know what we know about winning and champions.
Keep building your second library, even if you'll never read all the books in it. It helps a person remember the scope of the unknown.
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