The Uncertainty Principle

[John Smith]

I was asking myself, "Life or death for Terri Schiavo?", and the best answer I could come up with was something like "78% sure that she should be allowed to die". I would think most people would also be uncertain about what is the "right" thing to do in her case.

Yet the "right" thing must be somewhere out there. My Uncertainty Principle postulates that the truth lives in a N-dimensional space, and whenever you are not sure what or where it is, it means that you are looking in a lower-dimensional space. Imagine that you are looking for a fish, which is motionless on the bottom of the sea. You don't have the equipment to go down below the water surface, so all you can do is move left and right, forward and backward. As you move around, you can actually get closer to the fish, but never quite reach it.

It's something like that with Terry Schiavo. The dimensions that you can move around in this situation are economic, political, moral, and religious. Yet no matter how far you move along those axes, the solution you find doesn't seem satisfactory. The only obvious conclusion is that the "right" point is not bounded by the four dimensions -- it requires another one (or several additional ones).

In summary, the uncertainty is an artifact of the geometry of the solution space -- that space is often curved more than we are willing to admit.

[Nick George]

Originally posted by John Smith:

As you move around, you can actually get closer to the fish, but never quite reach it.

What if you've got really long arms?

[Dave Lenton]

Originally posted by John Smith:
Yet the "right" thing must be somewhere out there. ....

It's something like that with Terry Schiavo. The dimensions that you can move around in this situation are economic, political, moral, and religious. Yet no matter how far you move along those axes, the solution you find doesn't seem satisfactory. The only obvious conclusion is that the "right" point is not bounded by the four dimensions -- it requires another one (or several additional ones).
...

Cases like this one most likely do not have a "right" thing that can be done. One person's "right" is another person's "not right". Terms like "right" and "wrong" are also slightly constrictive in that they assume a bipolar view of each situation - that something is inherintly right or wrong. Maybe the difficulty you describe in reaching the right solution comes from the fact that solutions to situations like this sit somewhere in the grey area between right and wrong. The "right" solution cannot be reached because it doesn't exist.

The biggest flaw that I can see with labelling things as being "right" or "wrong" is that it leads to an almost fundamentalist view point where things become 100% right and cannot be questioned or evaluated. If something is seen as completely right, then people may be less likely to reconsider it at a later date. If something is instead seen as being "90% right", then it is more likely to be re-evaluated.

This problem is evident in this particular case because people are rushing to label themselves as being on one "side" of the argument, and labelling the sides as "right" and "wrong". Instead they should accept that there is a broad spectrum of positions, none of them inherintly better than others.

For this reason, this statement

and the best answer I could come up with was something like "78% sure that...

is probably the best way to approach these kinds of issues, especially if a disclaimer is attached saying "... but I will regularly reconsider".

[John Smith]

Maybe the difficulty you describe in reaching the right solution comes from the fact that solutions to situations like this sit somewhere in the grey area between right and wrong. The "right" solution cannot be reached because it doesn't exist.

Ah, but the whole essense of my argument is that the "right" does exist. The grey area is the uncertainty that stems from the incorrectly bounded solution space.

[Max Habibi]

Even given your premise, it's not logically forced to believe that we can perceive such 'right's. Maybe we just muddle through, and do the best we can.

M

[Mark Fletcher]

The Uncertainty Principle

Are you talking about subjecting Terri Schiavo to the Schrodinger Cat experiment? Ye gads...

[John Smith]

Max: Even given your premise, it's not logically forced to believe that we can perceive such 'right's. Maybe we just muddle through, and do the best we can.

I think when we say "I am 87% in support to disconnect the tube", it's the same as saying "I can perceive the truth, it's somewhere 13% away from me, but I need a wormhole out of my box to get any closer". In other words, whenever we don't have confidence in a given "right", that's a direct proof that we can perceive that right, or rather the 13% lack of thereof.

[Max Habibi]

Originally posted by John Smith:
Max: Even given your premise, it's not logically forced to believe that we can perceive such 'right's. Maybe we just muddle through, and do the best we can.

I think when we say "I am 87% in support to disconnect the tube", it's the same as saying "I can perceive the truth, it's somewhere 13% away from me, but I need a wormhole out of my box to get any closer". In other words, whenever we don't have confidence in a given "right", that's a direct proof that we can perceive that right, or rather the 13% lack of thereof.

As a great man once said, you can be convinced, and still be wrong.

Your conviction there is this a Great Truth, and your further conviction that you are some 13% away from does not validate either conviction: it simply asserts that you have these convictions. Fine and good: but these are subjective truths, not objective ones, and I suspect you know you this. Of course, that's my subjective opinion.

M

[Dave Lenton]

Originally posted by John Smith:
Maybe the difficulty you describe in reaching the right solution comes from the fact that solutions to situations like this sit somewhere in the grey area between right and wrong. The "right" solution cannot be reached because it doesn't exist.

Ah, but the whole essense of my argument is that the "right" does exist. The grey area is the uncertainty that stems from the incorrectly bounded solution space.

This seems to be similar to a discussion on here a while back about if morality was absolute or relative : https://coderanch.com/t/41010/md/Morality-relative-or-absolute

It seems to me that if a person declares that there is a definite "right" solution to every problem, then this is coming close to absolute morality. Worse yet, once something is declared as the "right solution" to a particular problem, a person with an absolute morality view point is likely to apply the same solution to similar problems, without consideration for the differences. Before long we then end up with a small set of "right" things which are applied to a whole load of situations.

The danger with things being declared right or wrong, is that it fosters a view point where by everything is either right or wrong, which leads to an inflexible relationship with moral issues. In reality most issues are not clearly right or wrong - different people will see each situation in different ways, and the same issue may appear more acceptable in some situations to others.

One example of the pitfalls of absolute morality is the issue eating pork. At one point in time it was considered unhealthy to do so, and so many people began to say that it was morally wrong to eat or feed people pork. Over time pork has become healthy to eat, but the absolute morality position has lead many people to continue to declare that eating pork is immoral. If we were to be in a hypothetical situation where there is a large shortage of food, but lots of spare pigs, the people with the absolute morality view point may needlessly starve.

In the case of if a person should be allowed to die or not, if one position is labelled as being right, there is a danger that it could be applied to all people in similar situations, without really looking at the nuances of each case.