Andromeda Strain Revisited

The Andromeda Strain (1971) ranks as one of my top five favorite ‘hard’ science fiction movies, (as opposed to fantasy sci-fi).

I was about 14 years old when a junior high school teacher, (whose husband happened to be a personal friend of Michael Crichton’s) made the bold decision to take a room full of giggling 8^th graders to see a movie that, technically speaking, was somewhat ‘beyond’ the intellectual and emotional capacity of most of those (often rowdy) students.

Her approach was simple: Mrs. Parks read us the first chapter of the book aloud, and then asked which of us wanted to hear the rest of the story – in the form of a movie that afternoon as a field trip.

She must have known all hands would enthusiastically shoot up, if only because it meant a trip away from school. (She also could not have failed to notice that almost eerie silence that had settled over the class as she read that first nail-biting chapter.)

We went to see the movie. I, for one, was literally nailed motionless to my seat for the movie’s entire 131 minutes. (This was a minor miracle in itself, considering my constant hyperactive state, then as now.)

When we returned to school, I meekly asked Mrs. Parks if I could borrow the copy of the book from which she had read to us, with a promise to return it that following Monday. If she doubted I could finish its almost 300 pages of truly hard science and data in that timeframe, she did not voice it. (Michael Crichton, a scientist and doctor himself, filled the book with page after page of real and faux scientific data and hypotheses, making it a challenging read for even a well-educated adult.)

She lent it to me, and, as promised, I read the entire book between getting out of school that Friday afternoon, and returning to her class the following Monday afternoon.

Both the book and the movie electrified my brain, introducing me, in one ‘fell swoop’ to computers, scientists and real science, research and the tackling of unsolvable mysteries. It also demonstrated that, despite their differences (which were several) a diverse group of equally brilliant, dedicated scientists from vastly different fields could come together to solve a puzzle while the fate of an entire planet teetered in the balance, and succeed.

The story was science fiction, not far-fetched or unrealistic, but based rather in real, hard science and actual scientific research methods. The scientists (or the actors cast to portray them) were real people, not those typically cast in movies today (super-young folk with perfect skin and perfectly coiffured hair.)

The Andromeda Strain would be indirectly responsible for my introduction to the worlds of ‘adult’ science, cutting edge technology, the love of research for both research’s sake, AND for the practical use of and to the benefit of all humanity.

I think I will be watching it again this weekend.

The Andromeda Strain (1971)

How Do I Know What I Know Is Right?

 Knowledge is like an I.O.U.

It represents some future value to the one who issues it, and perhaps less to the person it is given to, until it either is paid in full or proved false. Like a good bank (or a reliable person), the value of that I.O.U. is based largely on the reputation of the one who issues it, and what is known about that person; the same holds for knowledge. Each is a currency based on trust and past performance. Each is based on what we think we know about the person issuing the currency, such as reputation, or station in life.

Human beings, for the sake of simplicity and expediency, tend to have a default, almost basic trust in each other, or, at least professionals they depend on (doctors, teachers) and their well-known acquaintances and friends. (In other words, ‘I trust you until you show that I cannot trust you’.) That reputation adds to or detracts from the value of that ‘I.O.U.’ of knowledge whether it is offered as opinion, or fact.

We inherently trust and depend on that person being correct, based on past performance and experience. Failing the presence of both of those, we depend on professional title and assumed knowledge associated with that title. Either way, we except what they offer to be true, at least until proven otherwise.

However, what about ourselves, how do we know what we (personally) know is right? How do we know that what we know about what others know, and are telling us, is also right? By extension, how do we know what we think we know about others is factually correct, and not influenced by emotion, relationship, pre-formed assumptions, or even physical or ideological attraction?

How can we tell if our own long-held opinions, which may or may not be based on fact, are, in fact, correct? How can anybody tell whether anything in his or her vast storehouse of personal knowledge is at all correct, or still correct, from the time it was originally learned? (Things change over time. What was once held as fact may no longer be considered so.)

How do we know how we know anything about the world, and whether it is correct, is actually valid? After all, some forms of ‘misinformation’ can be deadly, such as which mushrooms are poisonous, or which household cleaning chemicals can be safely mixed.

Persons of vast intellect are especially susceptible to this problem, because their storehouse of knowledge contains so much more to keep track of. Like a library of too many books, or a house filled with a lifetime of collected knickknacks and memorabilia, at what point do we eventually ‘lose track of it all’, and forget some of the things we think we know, or worse, confuse it with other things we thought we knew? How long before it all gets lost in the shuffle?

Let us bring back the analogy of knowledge being like an I.O.U. and bump it up to being more like money. Rich people have considerably more money to keep track of, just as the very knowledgeable have more information of which to keep track. This calls for constant relearning, fact checking, and in professions such as medicine and technology, constant recertifying and retraining. That’s fine for professionals, though many doctors (especially older ones) probably don’t retrain as often as they should. (In the technology field, retraining and recertifying cannot be avoided, because of the rate at which the information in that field changes.)

The typical person has it a bit harder, since they have to (or should) ‘re-certify’ on their own, by constant checking and rechecking their facts, and being parsimonious in what they proclaim or ‘say’ as fact.  Geniuses, or the highly intelligent, have an even greater responsibility in this area of fact checking. If all else fails, such people have to be willing to (humbly) admit that they were wrong, and take pains to rectify the problem, and again, by reviewing and if necessary, re-learning, and perhaps be less adamant about what they say is fact.

Part of the problem with knowledge (correct or incorrect) is that because it’s so commonplace, not many of stopped to think what it is, or more importantly, what it is not. I have written about this before on this forum and others:

"There are several types of 'knowledge processes’, which people have access to:

1. Firsthand knowledge based on personal experience and discovery.

2. Secondhand knowledge, which, at its most basic, is something someone told you, or TAUGHT you.

3. Personal hypotheses, theories, and epiphanies or revelations, which may or may not be sound, true, or based on truth, or derived from personal observations and deductions, which may have originated from the interpretation (correct or not) of the first type of knowledge.

The problem comes in confusing these. There are probably hundreds (if not thousands) of people in the world who have degrees based on secondhand knowledge who also think they are very intelligent, from PhDs down to associate degrees. They may not be as smart as they think, especially if their understanding does not also contain an equal or greater amount of firsthand knowledge, and discovery based on it.

Having equal helpings of firsthand and secondhand knowledge makes personal hypotheses, theories, and epiphanies more likely to be valid, with the result that those types of erudition (help) create NEW knowledge and result in new discoveries, which add to the overall sum of human understanding and, knowledge."

An entire field of study of the knowledge of knowledge has been around for quite some time, and has gained new immediacy and currency with the advent of the Internet, search engines like Google, and the formulation of  ‘expert systems’ as they are implemented in the growing field of Artificial Intelligence.

Perhaps now is as good a time as any to verify what we know about what we know – before we teach it to the computers that will no doubt soon run our world, and control more critical life sustaining and enhancing systems.

The Analysis of Knowledge