Evan Jones, Guest Commentator*

You have already outlined the problem: I agree with your description and analysis of the limited capacity of any individual. Where I differ with you somewhat is with your tinge of pessimism. Yes, if knowledge is wealth, we have amassed too much for any one man to carry. But we must not fall into Yogi’s fallacy that “the place is so crowded that no one goes there anymore”.

Mankind has worked long and hard in order to learn what he has learned. The problem is that it all seems so overwhelming. The solution lies in finding an effective way to manage and access this knowledge. We live in such a complex world that the Enlightenment definition of the “universal man” is no longer possible. Yet it should be noted that the Enlightenment itself is to a great extent responsible for setting in motion what has become our current state of affairs. We must not shrink from this, we must embrace it.

We have to address the problem in realistic terms. A man can warehouse a considerable, but limited amount of knowledge. But he can make a little go a long way. After all, a mathematician does not need to memorize a logarithmic table in order to be a log wizard. All he needs to do is to understand the underlying theory and be able to access the data.

This can be taken even further. When one is playing a real-time strategy computer game, a player does not have to know the statistics of his “armies” or even the calculations involved in resolving combat. All he needs to know is the rough capabilities of his units and a few crude rock-scissor-paper operational analogues. In actual terms of data or even the algorithms involved, the player may know but the tiniest percentage. But what little he does know leverages everything else. En taro Tassadar!

The same theory applies to the layman trying to arrive at intelligent policy decisions. Therefore, what the layman requires is merely the correct set of relevant facts, questions, and points of dispute.

Your concept of a core of knowledge surrounded by a series of islets is indeed correct. What we require is a way of keeping the “links” organized and further linking the islets together, creating a net-like structure. Yes, there are limits. But a man does not have to warehouse the entire net. All he has to do is to have a general familiarity with it and to be able to access and correlate it at proximate need. After all, a good librarian can find almost any fact in a library, yet he certainly has not read every book in it even once, much less memorized them. What that librarian is doing is making the knowledge he has serve for ten, a hundred, a thousand times what is actually stored in his brain.

Fortunately, a voter, even in this complex age, does not need to be able to access that amount of data. All he needs to do is to have a handle on a half dozen to a dozen important issues.

Some issues, such as those included in what we used to refer to as “civics”, are old hat, have been long debated, and have been boiled down fairly well. Others are partly but not fully understood, such as those comprising basic economics and foreign policy.

But sometimes an odd issue comes out of the blue and the layman finds himself confronted with a hot yet highly technical potato. To wit, Global Warming. As I have previously expressed, it is we, the laymen, who must decide such issues. We decide them through voting directly on the issues and/or indirectly for representatives, and through influencing the votes of others.

We have an obligation not to give in to a mass of randomly cast votes while attempting to win over a thin slice of capable intelligentsia to tip the balance. It won’t do. If (and when) the sea shifts even slightly, the capable populace will be swept away by the tide. We need to expand the base. We need to. And we can. But we won’t do it by giving up and giving in. We need a “can do” attitude.

How then is the voting public to assemble the knowledge necessary for intelligent decision? Well, most voters will not and cannot do it themselves. But that is not their job. It is our job.

I agree that very few of our staunch citizens have the knowledge to vote intelligently on the issue of Global Warming. I even agree that given the current method at hand two out of five will be quite unable to do so. The answer is not to throw up one’s hands in despair. The problem is to develop a milieu with will enable fully four out of five to discuss the issue with reasonable intelligence. It is up to the experts and teachers among us to provide.

And that is what we are looking for: the right lever. A fulcrum to move worlds.

Yes, it is on the experts, assisted by the educators, who are responsible for developing those intellectual filecards. It is our role. Our responsibility. How we earn our pay. We cannot, must not, throw up our hands and despair a the state of modern man. We have a new problem, and we will find a new solution. The great minds of the Enlightenment had to come up with new solutions for the great questions that confronted their societies. Now it is on us to stand on their shoulders and boost mankind to even greater heights, powers, and wisdom. No one said it was going to be easy.

But we have tools at our disposal that we did not have at any time in the past. Powerful, compelling, fungible tools. Means of organization and communication. Vast, accessible reservoirs of accumulated knowledge at our fingertips. The awesome power of electronic search and filter. All a body has to do to keep the herd from going over a cliff is to divert a few of the head sheep. And it turns out that sheep, properly trained, can often be a heck of a lot sharper than we give them credit for.

We must not allow humanity to drown in our modern flood of knowledge. We must instead harness that knowledge, bend it to our purpose, and make it available to all.

I am currently working on those “filecards” on the somewhat narrow subject of Global Warming. (More properly, it is a series of tiered subject titles.)

I am a skeptic, but in order properly to “own” my skepticism, I must be able to argue from both sides. I must be able to point to the factors that inform my opinions and what factors would have to change or turn out different from what I expect in order to change them (I.e., the scientific premise of “falsifiability”).

I am currently looking at:
A.) Basic science issues and controversies pertaining to climate change
B.) Climate history, so far as it is known
C.) Measurements, adjustments, equipment (Rat’s Nest or Can of Worms?)
D.) The History of the current GW debate (mostly for fun, but also as an object lesson)

Each of these categories has a number of subheadings (E.g., The first category would include Greenhouse Gasses, Solar Cycles, Oceanic Oscillations, Albedo, Ice Cover, Sea Level, etc.)

In a mere couple of pages, absorbing fewer words than in this essay, a body should be able to come away with a much greater understanding of the Global Warming issue than one would normally get through exposure to modern media. No memorization required either: the idea is to create a reference set that one can access at need, then put aside until again needed.

This will not make anyone an expert on the issue, but it will list main the questions and points under consideration/dispute. It will provide a skeletal framework on which to hang further information. And, perhaps most important, it will impart a basic context, so lacking in the current debate.

It has been claimed that democracy and even the scientific method is obsolete and what we need is a “new scientism”. No! A thousand times, no! What we need is a new approach to the human assimilation of knowledge. Call it “meta-education”.

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* Evan Jones continues the expanded discussion of educating the mass of voters to understand complex issues such as climate change and anthropogenic global warming.  This piece replies specifically my ‘Postcards into a Fearsome Future – A Dialogue with Evan Jones’