 Spiritual: July 04, 2012 Issue [#5134] |
  Spiritual
This week: The Black Swan Problem Edited by: Jeff  
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"To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary.
To one without faith, no explanation is possible."
-- Thomas Aquinas
My name is Jeff and this is my first Spiritual Newsletter. 
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THE BLACK SWAN PROBLEM
In the field of philosophy, there's an inductive reasoning dilemma known as The Black Swan Problem, which goes a little something like this:
If all swans we've ever seen are white,
then all swans are white.
The problem with this kind of logic is that it's falsifiable. Regardless of probability or likelihood, it is theoretically possible for a swan to exist that is not white, which in turn makes false the assertion that "all swans are white." (And black swans do exist, as it happens) Deductive reasoning, by contrast, uses two absolutely true premises to establish an absolutely true conclusion (e.g. from the statements "James must eat every day" and "James only eats pancakes," it can be deductively and absolutely concluded that "James eats pancakes every day.") Inductive reasoning, on the other hand, can suggest truth based on what is likely or probable, but cannot absolutely ensure it... as with the swans. All it takes is one non-white swan to invalidate the statement that all swans are white.
What strikes me about the Black Swan Problem is how eager many people are to absolutely and definitively explain something, even when it's impossible to make those conclusions for certain. There's something comforting about being able to logically reason one's way to a conclusion which one believes to be true, but at the same time, what one believes to be true is not necessarily what is (irrefutably) true.
One of the fiercest battlegrounds in spirituality is over the very existence of God. Some point to the miracle of birth, or the fact that - of all the planets in all the solar systems in all the universe - we somehow happened to exist right here and right now on this one. People cite examples like these as evidence of a divine hand in our lives. Others point to the fact that you can't actually prove the existence of God with any empirical evidence. People will explain the remarkable in whatever way fits with their particular beliefs.
When my wife and I finally took our honeymoon, it was nine months after we got married. We were only able to do so because my wife's car was totaled by a drunk driver who ran into it parked on the street one night. My parents had just bought a new car and were looking to get rid of their old one, which they gave us a great deal on... and we had just enough left over from the insurance settlement to book the Maui honeymoon we hadn't been able to afford until that point. A few months prior, my boss and mentor had left my company and we were looking for a way to stay in touch but never managed more than a few phone calls. As it turned out, his family owns a time share in Maui, and not only did we discover we were going to be in Maui at the same time... but we also ended up being on the exact same flight out of Los Angeles. Our seats were two rows away from one another. We ended up talking on the plane together, our families shared a meal and it was the beginning of what's been a longstanding and meaningful friendship... beyond anything we could have built as mere colleagues and work relations.
Now, some people will hear that story and claim that it was divine work being done. Others will hear it and believe that it's predestination or fate. And others still will marvel at what a coincidence that all was, and delight in considering the sheer odds of such a remarkable instance of happenstance.
The point is, someone of faith who sees a situation like this as evidence of the divine will never convince a non-believer of the divinity involved. And someone who does not have faith will never convince a believer that it's merely coincidence. Blaise Pascal once observed that, "In faith there is enough light for those who want to believe, and enough shadows to blind those who don't." We all bring a different perspective to a situation and most often see what we want to see or believe we see. There is no right or wrong way to view these situations because the existence of God is itself a Black Swan Problem.
God is a Black Swan. Just because we don't see concrete evidence of Him doesn't mean His existence is impossible. Even if everything we experience in our lives points to random chance and pure coincidence, that is not evidence that God does not exist. To those who insist there is no empirical evidence to proof that God does exist, I would challenge them to prove that He doesn't. It's impossible to empirically prove God doesn't exist because all it takes is one example, one instance, one situation to prove that He does. Maybe that will come in our lifetime, or maybe it won't. Maybe, just like the black swans, those of us who remain unconvinced about the existence of the divine are simply unaware that swans of a different color exist somewhere that we just haven't noticed yet.
Blaise Pascal is also famous for positing Pascal's Wager (sometimes called Pascal's Gambit), wherein he argues that there's more to be gained from betting on the existence of God than from betting against it... and thus, a rational person should live as though God exists, even if the truth can't actually be known or proven. After all, if you believe God exists and He doesn't... it won't really matter anyway. But if you don't believe God exists and He does... you've got a heck of a lot to lose if the scriptures of various faiths are to be believed.
In my humble opinion, and as someone who is still exploring his own faith, I believe far too many people spend far too much time trying to convince others of the absolute right of their ideals, or the absolute wrong of someone else's. While there are a multitude of other reasons for all of us to be less judgmental (lessons of acceptance, freedom of religion, etc.), I find the most compelling one to be that spirituality is a Black Swan Problem. No matter what we believe or how devoutly we believe it, none of us are able to overcome the obstacle of falsifiability... the possibility (no matter how remote) that there might just be another facet to our spirituality that we didn't even realize existed.
Until next time,
-- Jeff
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