In business and legal settings, the term "privileged information" refers to info meant for restricted eyes-- knowledge shrouded in secrecy and kept from prying eyes. But the term shouldn't be restricted just to these settings. All the raw, objective facts about our world fall upon a continuous spectrum of knowability.
On one end of the spectrum there are measurable phenomena which happen in front of our very eyes. Most people accept these without question, and it would take a real philosophical devil's advocate to argue against them. The argument would go something like Plato's "The Cave", that is, it would hinge upon the subjectivity of reality in general. In short, if we can really know anything, then we can know the things on this end of the spectrum. This includes things like where you're currently sitting, what your name is, how many fingers you have on each hand, and so on.
On the opposite side of the continuum are the profound unknowables of the universe. These are things that all the genius of mankind could never hope to deduce. Knowledge here includes things like: "How many atoms exist beyond the event horizon of a given black hole?" (The "event horizon" is the point beyond which the terminal velocity-- the speed a particle would need to reach to escape the pull of gravity-- exceeds the speed of light. As long as the speed of light is unpassable, no info can escape from beyond the event horizon.) This remote corner of the knowledge band includes the answers to paradoxical-sounding questions like: "What's the shortest true mathematical statement that can't be proven nor disproven?" (If you could prove that some particular statement was the answer, you'd violate the fact that its truth was unprovable.)
This metric of knowability varies from individual to individual. For me, the thoughts currently going through my head are very low on the privilege spectrum. But to you, they're not much more accessible than the stuff behind a black hole. Sure, you could ask me what I'm thinking, but you'd have no way, in principle, to know whether I answered truthfully. (Actually I'm a very honest and open kinda guy, but of course I'm arguing hypothetically in this example.)
There's a certain point on the spectrum beyond which the exact position of a piece of information becomes less and less relevant. See, for all I'm concerned, it's about as easy for me to calculate how many quantum particles exist in the entire universe, as it is for me to calculate what my girlfriend's doing while I'm at school. The former is a deep confounding mystery, whereas the latter is a fairly mundane piece of trivia. But, unless I call her on the cell phone and ask her what she's doing, I have just about as much chance of somehow figuring it out on my own, as I do of counting the quantum particles.
One of the distinguishing characteristics of knowledge beyond this "easily calculatable" threshold, is what I call the Ripple Question. The Ripple Question is true of some facts, false of others. It goes as follows: "Consider some fact, X. If you were transported to an alternate reality, which was completely identical to the current one, with the sole exception that the truth of X were changed, then would you be able to detect the change?"
For example, I'm currently typing this article on my girlfriend's PC. If I was suddenly transported to an alternate reality where I was typing it on a Mac, I'd definitely notice the difference. The Ripple Question is true about the fact I'm typing on a PC. On the other hand, if I was merely whisked off to a universe where some pebble on the surface of Planet Mercury was deleted, I'd never know anything had changed. Even if I cared about remote extraplanetary rocks, I'd have no hope of detecting such an obscure change. The Ripple Question is false about whether that pebble exists on Mercury.
There is a practical side to all this theoretical philosophizing about privileged information. When it comes to knowledge for which the Ripple Question fails, I can make whatever assumptions I feel like. If my assumptions happen to be wrong, I'll never suffer for it-- if I would, then that suffering would be a means of measuring the truth of the trivia in question, but no such means exists, by definition.
Thus, when it comes to questions which fail the criterion, questions which lie too far away on the knowability continuum, we may as well believe whatever is most convenient. Rather than reach for truth, which is unreachable by definition, we may as well reach for practicality. There's nothing "unscientific" about this: science is the realm of measurable phenomena, and if it were measurable, it would've passed the ripple criterion.
For all practical intents and purposes, it's impossible for me to deduce what Abraham Lincoln ate for breakfast on the morning of his fifteenth birthday. I may as well not even try. If, for some strange reason, I actually cared about this at all, I may as well make up an answer which is most convenient to me: "He ate alphabet soup, and the letters lined up to spell 'Glowing Face Man rocks!'"
To give a more down-to-earth example, when I'm in class, I can't tell what my girlfriend's doing. There's no practical way for me to find out. Basically, it's beyond the point on the spectrum where I can measure it. In this situation, I can fill it whatever my imagination can come up with, but I should ask what's the most useful. I could imagine her having an affair or something, but that would do me pointless self-harm, distracting me from the lecture I'm supposed to be following. It's more productive to imagine her fixing a delicious Japanese dinner for us to enjoy together when I come home :)
FURTHER READING Trivial Knowledge - Models of Reality - Reality Expansion
On one end of the spectrum there are measurable phenomena which happen in front of our very eyes. Most people accept these without question, and it would take a real philosophical devil's advocate to argue against them. The argument would go something like Plato's "The Cave", that is, it would hinge upon the subjectivity of reality in general. In short, if we can really know anything, then we can know the things on this end of the spectrum. This includes things like where you're currently sitting, what your name is, how many fingers you have on each hand, and so on.
On the opposite side of the continuum are the profound unknowables of the universe. These are things that all the genius of mankind could never hope to deduce. Knowledge here includes things like: "How many atoms exist beyond the event horizon of a given black hole?" (The "event horizon" is the point beyond which the terminal velocity-- the speed a particle would need to reach to escape the pull of gravity-- exceeds the speed of light. As long as the speed of light is unpassable, no info can escape from beyond the event horizon.) This remote corner of the knowledge band includes the answers to paradoxical-sounding questions like: "What's the shortest true mathematical statement that can't be proven nor disproven?" (If you could prove that some particular statement was the answer, you'd violate the fact that its truth was unprovable.)
This metric of knowability varies from individual to individual. For me, the thoughts currently going through my head are very low on the privilege spectrum. But to you, they're not much more accessible than the stuff behind a black hole. Sure, you could ask me what I'm thinking, but you'd have no way, in principle, to know whether I answered truthfully. (Actually I'm a very honest and open kinda guy, but of course I'm arguing hypothetically in this example.)
There's a certain point on the spectrum beyond which the exact position of a piece of information becomes less and less relevant. See, for all I'm concerned, it's about as easy for me to calculate how many quantum particles exist in the entire universe, as it is for me to calculate what my girlfriend's doing while I'm at school. The former is a deep confounding mystery, whereas the latter is a fairly mundane piece of trivia. But, unless I call her on the cell phone and ask her what she's doing, I have just about as much chance of somehow figuring it out on my own, as I do of counting the quantum particles.
One of the distinguishing characteristics of knowledge beyond this "easily calculatable" threshold, is what I call the Ripple Question. The Ripple Question is true of some facts, false of others. It goes as follows: "Consider some fact, X. If you were transported to an alternate reality, which was completely identical to the current one, with the sole exception that the truth of X were changed, then would you be able to detect the change?"
For example, I'm currently typing this article on my girlfriend's PC. If I was suddenly transported to an alternate reality where I was typing it on a Mac, I'd definitely notice the difference. The Ripple Question is true about the fact I'm typing on a PC. On the other hand, if I was merely whisked off to a universe where some pebble on the surface of Planet Mercury was deleted, I'd never know anything had changed. Even if I cared about remote extraplanetary rocks, I'd have no hope of detecting such an obscure change. The Ripple Question is false about whether that pebble exists on Mercury.
There is a practical side to all this theoretical philosophizing about privileged information. When it comes to knowledge for which the Ripple Question fails, I can make whatever assumptions I feel like. If my assumptions happen to be wrong, I'll never suffer for it-- if I would, then that suffering would be a means of measuring the truth of the trivia in question, but no such means exists, by definition.
Thus, when it comes to questions which fail the criterion, questions which lie too far away on the knowability continuum, we may as well believe whatever is most convenient. Rather than reach for truth, which is unreachable by definition, we may as well reach for practicality. There's nothing "unscientific" about this: science is the realm of measurable phenomena, and if it were measurable, it would've passed the ripple criterion.
For all practical intents and purposes, it's impossible for me to deduce what Abraham Lincoln ate for breakfast on the morning of his fifteenth birthday. I may as well not even try. If, for some strange reason, I actually cared about this at all, I may as well make up an answer which is most convenient to me: "He ate alphabet soup, and the letters lined up to spell 'Glowing Face Man rocks!'"
To give a more down-to-earth example, when I'm in class, I can't tell what my girlfriend's doing. There's no practical way for me to find out. Basically, it's beyond the point on the spectrum where I can measure it. In this situation, I can fill it whatever my imagination can come up with, but I should ask what's the most useful. I could imagine her having an affair or something, but that would do me pointless self-harm, distracting me from the lecture I'm supposed to be following. It's more productive to imagine her fixing a delicious Japanese dinner for us to enjoy together when I come home :)
FURTHER READING Trivial Knowledge - Models of Reality - Reality Expansion
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