Sometimes secrets are justifiable. But that seems only to be the case in a circumscribed sphere of knowledge. And—in the United States, at least—information remains classified for only so long before it becomes legally accessible to the average citizen and the press. This fact alone suggests an acknowledgement of certain short term risks associated with knowledge, while also admitting that over the long run we value knowledge over its absence or suppression. So, with these concessions in mind, let us further interrogate our intuition.
Would it be better not to know that the Earth orbits the sun? Before Copernicus revived the heliocentric hypothesis, widely accepted by ancient Greek philosophers, Europeans in Christendom could reasonably assume that they were the center of the solar system. Galileo’s observations helped rob us of this comforting myth. Clear thinking clergy at the time certainly guessed what the consequences might be. The leader of the most powerful religious organization on the planet, the Pope, felt that we would all be better off not knowing. At play was a moral calculus intended to sort out whether certain knowledge might be dangerous. In this case, it might cause people to lose their faith (or erode the power of the church, somehow). Of course, the heretics were correct about our place in the solar system. But the rumor of civilization’s great moral demise was vastly overstated.
We may have lost our centrality to the universe, but we retained our special stature as beings created in the image of the Almighty. In 1859, however, that changed too. Charles Darwin upset our intuitions in a way most people still haven’t fully grasped. Darwin understood the subversive consequences of his theory clearly, which partly explains why he waited so long to publish his book on evolution by natural selection, and why he confided to his friend Joseph Hooker that it was like “confessing to a murder” to show that species are not immutable, and that evolution is not a synonym for progress.
46 thoughts on “Is It Ever Better Not to Know? | Quillette”
Comments are closed.
Secrets are power. If information about the nature of the world we live in is being concealed, one does have to wonder who gains power from that.
Of course, this should not be read as support for secret systems that let cars be fueled with water that the oil industry doesn’t want you to know about.Report
Commissioner Pravin Lal, “U.N. Declaration of Rights”Report
You should really link to the videoReport
“As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth’s final century, free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny.”
I wasn’t aware of any tyranny here in America. I wonder which tyranny he is babbling about.Report
I wasn’t aware we were in Earth’s final century, you absolute [Redacted].Report
There you go again with these personal attacks. This is the second time today. I ask the mods, Will or Burt to please do something.Report
Never let anyone say you can’t count to two, dude.Report
Wamp wamp wamp.
Snowflake wants a safe space!Report
That’s the spirit! Effing posting rules don’t apply when you’re dealing with stupid conservatives!Report
@notme will say absolutely anything, no matter how dishonest, flatly bigoted, hypocritical, or generally reprehensible, if he thinks it will annoy a liberal. It is glaringly obvious that this how he operates.
So fuck him. And if the posting rules preclude saying, “So fuck him,” well, so much worse for the rules.Report
Well, I’m in no position of authority here, but I’d say that if you don’t like the rules here, you really ought to take your comments to one of the 10 bajillion blogs out there that are perfectly content to have commenters swearing at conservatives.Report
I suppose that’s probably what will happen.
It’s too bad, because I don’t want to swear at “conservatives”, just notme.Report
Dude, it’s calling being mature or a “grown up”.
Wasn’t there a whole damn thread about the concept freedom speech, especially for the views detested by the in groups?
Man/woman up and relax.Report
I’m not preventing notme from posting whatever bit of noxious nitwittery flickers through the pile of moldy gym socks that passes for his brain, just like you aren’t preventing me calling him an asshole by posting good advice that I’m going to disregard because meh.
It’s all speech.Report
My comment wasn’t directed at you trying to limit his posting. It was directed at you using language unneeded on this site…you know, the kind that gets “[Redacted].”
Saul is very good at insulting libertarians and those he thinks are libertarian without actually, you know, insulting them directly.Report
Notme lobs these obvious grenades, and you guys jump on them like you got a room full of 1st graders to save.
If he says stupid shit, don’t engage.Report
+1
Once every few months I forget to take that advice and I always end up regretting it. Same goes for a few others.Report
…lobs these obvious grenades, and you guys jump on them like you got a room full of 1st graders to save.
I’ve got an idea: train the first graders to rush the bomb thrower.Report
“It’s important for the good of society to teach first graders the true way of altruism.”Report
I don’t ask for any special treatment just what everyone else gets under the same rules. Don’t I derseve the same treatment, Kazzy? Tell me, yes or no?Report
Kazzy:
Was the question too simple for you?Report
[Redacted]Report
OK, point taken.Report
That’s too bad. I was hoping you typed “redacted” yourself.Report
I’m not remotely cool or clever enough to think of that.Report
See here.Report
So you really can’t answer the question. I’m not surprised but it’s nice to know I’m right.Report
Now this comment is gold.Report
Fiction, how does it work?Report
You tell me smart guy.Report
@notme
It’s from a science fiction game called Alpha Centauri, one of the classics of the strategy genre. It’s is not a description of the United States as it presently exists.Report
I’ve never heard heard of it. I appreciate your politeness about my ignorance. See Pillsy it isn’t that hard, to be a class act.Report
@notme
If I hadn’t posted from my iPad I would have included a link to make the source clearer, apologies for the confusion.Report
Oscar,
The military. The liberals (whose ideology conflicts with reality). Even Television.
Of course, sometimes the products of secrets are “freely” available. (drug research, say… — sell the drug that mysteriously works, and refuse to tell where you tested it.)Report
Typical, horrible misrepresentation of the Galileo controversy.Report
Yeah; but it’s become one of those stories that’s too good to check, like “Columbus learned the Earth was round, before that Christians all thought it was flat” and “I can see Russia from my house”.Report
These are all the more unnerving in an article about the spread of knowledge. Indeed, it seems particularly common for this kind of myth to be spread this way. We all lie to ourselves about “them” – the Dunning-Kruger people who aren’t as smart as we are – but we’re all idiots about something.Report
I think it’s a harder question than my side likes to acknowledge.
If we take as an assumption that political sausage making is a nasty business that can be “disinfected” by openness, is it better to do that disinfecting and risk not having sausage made, or just focus on whether the resulting sausage is good?
I’d posit, for example, that part of the dysfunction in Washington is that we no longer have tools like earmarks to quietly slip into bills at the last second in order to get things done. I honestly don’t know if that’s a good or bad thing, since the earmarks themselves were often wasteful but not usually enough to tilt a given policy from “good” to “bad.”Report
An important skill for watching political sausage-making is learning to not care when you see tongues going into the mixer.
And some people just can’t do that. Some worry that the tongues were unsustainably harvested using non-carbon-neutral means. Some thing the tongue is haram. Some throw up at the thought of eating tongues.Report
Indeed. I think not focusing on minor distractions is going to be a real problem going forward, as we’ll soon have political candidates who got drunk in College and posted pictures on facebook/twitter/etc. instead of those who did so without leaving a digital trail.
People are going to need to learn not to care about imperfections rather than moralize over them. I predict it’ll be a long hard slog.Report
Remember when Douglas Ginsburg’s Supreme Court nomination was derailed because it came out that he liked to blow a doob or two in college?
Remember the same thing happening to Neil Gorsuch? Didn’t think so. It never even came up as a thing. (Not saying Gorsuch did or didn’t. He’s just of an age that it’s unlikely that he didn’t at least try it.)Report
Norms are different. I think the garbage digital panopticon we’ve entangled ourselves in is more likely to trip up candidates who said stupid shit then who did stupid shit.
Then again, we have President C-List Twitter Troll, so what do I know.Report
I’m worried about that changing when there are tons of photos in the bowels of the internet archives.Report
One of the characteristics of digital media is that the official word on things is no longer the official word.
That’s a paraphrase. You can find the original in Pavlik & McIntosh.Report
Arguing in the affirmative against Commissioner Val is Agent Kay
Report
Youtube believes that you really don’t want to see pictures of cats removing people’s eyes.
I could give you half a hundred other examples of things you probably don’t want to know about.
The issue is that if you don’t know about it, Law Enforcement also doesn’t know about it.
Kid sits around all day playing video games in a diaper. Other kid videotapes this (including kid yelling at his mom to get his diaper changed)… Child Services gets called. But to do that, you need to leave the video up.Report