The Veto Power of Nature

We should have learned a lesson from our study of the stars. You can read anything into the aggregate points of each star. Constellations are our interpretation and attempt at relation with a universe we don’t understand but we can not say they are reality nor do they represent much about the natural world.

Our data tools have exceeded the grasp of our minds now like the stars once did. Nevertheless we know our tools provide objectively correct information. We know we’re right we’re just unsure what we’re right about. The bias that exists in our interpretation of the stars now exists in our interpretation of data through the use of algorithms efficient at dealing with norms but not with exceptions.

Our willingness to give the greatest decisions in our society over to the algorithms that manipulate data into constellations we can understand will ultimately be checked by nature that retains veto power over all of mankind’s fictions. If our interpretations fall too far away from the reality of the natural world then we have removed ourselves from the natural process through which all creatures evolve to fit their environment.

Our best rules and systems are those consistent with the order of the natural world and those that allow for organic incremental improvement coupled with sea changes brought about by epochal events.

Mankind can harness all the data and resources it can fathom in the form of great power to alter nature but we are always subject to it.