Fear of the Unknown Unknown

There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know.
-Donald Rumsfield

What is the unknown? Really try and conceptualize it. When you think about trying to describe the unknown, what comes to mind? The deepest, darkest corners of the abyssal depths of the ocean? The farthest corners of the crushing void of space? Perhaps you look inwards to the seemingly chaotic and random behaviors that drives quantum mechanical phenomena. But are these really unknowns? You seem to know something about them—namely that they are opportunities to explore unknowns. These are the known unknowns. Things we know that we don’t know. They are steppingstones towards exploring what we know that we don’t know, a direction, a lead to follow.
And what of the unknown knowns? Things we see, experience, things we measure and experience—but we don’t know why. Things like gravity. When the standard model is brought up, and you tell people that the world operates on four fundamental forces (quantum mechanics aside), you may ask them to tell you which one is the most mysterious. Perhaps not electromagnetism—we seem to have a very solid understanding of electricity and magnetism, as we’ve harnessed its power fairly well. The weak nuclear force seems to be a good contender, as it’s got some fancy stuff going on that drives it, but surely we understand radiation well enough that it couldn’t be the confusing one. Everyone knows about gravity, and Newton described it very well. You drop an apple, it falls to the ground. What’s so hard about that? The strong nuclear force… oh it’s got some crazy stuff going on in it what with the gluons and quarks and all sorts of big fancy words that describe its behavior—surely it’s that one, right? But gravity just does not fit into the standard model, and we don’t know why. We know gravity intimately, we feel it, we experience it, we can measure it and see what it does—but we fundamentally know nothing about what it really is. Thus it is an unknown known—that which we experience and feel, but we do not understand the true nature of.

These known unknowns and unknown knowns can only become known knowns through exploring them through existing known knowns, by edging forward, almost like a stone climbing wall, grappling the nearest solid stone next to where you’re at that seems to be the next logical step forward. This wall, this climbing wall, is the result of thousands of years of climbing, thousands of years of meticulous calculation to describe the next step that should be taken, thousands of years that mark the foundation of all sciences across all doctrines and disciplines. It is a monumental and glorious result of the Aristotlean effort, of where we came from, and where we can become… except it has a major flaw. A major shortcoming.

How can the Aristotlean worldview, the scientific method, the what you see is what you get (commonly called WYSIWYG) philosophy that attempts to map out our experience of reality, begin to attempt to handle the unknown unknowns, i.e. that which has no foundational past of which to build upon? If we knew where to start with it, it’d be either a known unknown or an unknown known, not an unknown unknown. These unknown unknowns, and any attempt to rationalize and conceptualize them, will always start out as a fantasy of what could be and what may be, and playing with that idea, attempting to form a framework of logic around it. Now one may bring up Russel’s Teapot and argue that fantasizing about and arguing for an unknown unknown with no evidence is grasping for straws and a futile effort. Yet one always seems to forget that there is a possibility some spacecraft will come back to Earth, with a very teapot shaped asteroid, and then they’re forced to shift their argument to what is and what isn’t a teapot—which is missing the point. The point of exploring unknown unknowns is not to say “yes, the teapot exists” but instead form a logical framework around an axiom and playing with the idea to see what the logical next steps are. It isn’t saying “the teapot exists” or “the teapot doesn’t exist.” It is a mathematical way of assuming an axiom and seeing where logic takes you. “Assume the teapot exists. What next?”

What the unknown unknowns allow us to do those known unknowns and unknown knowns don’t is allow us to play with these notions of absurdity, as long as from a pure mathematical standpoint, we stay logically consistent within the rules that define this absurdity. It is no different than asking ourselves a question such as “How would civilization have evolved if intelligent life sprung from reptiles, rather than mammals?” Does the literalism matter? It’s still a valid question to ask, and still brings about a lot of thought-provoking questions like “how does a reptile perceive existence” and “given the individualistic nature of reptilian life, how could civilization even form for a species that doesn’t care for its own young?” It doesn’t matter if it’s even possible for intelligent life to evolve from reptiles—what’s important is postulating a starting position, as absurd as it may be, and without committing any logical fallacy, deduce and infer the logical structures that could surround it. It isn’t illogical or irrational to debate these topics, but if such was made into a sci-fi movie with these solid inferences to support it, everyone would be talking about the great social message that follows from it, especially if the movie reflects a struggle between reptilian and mammalian intelligences. Even absurdities, no matter how crazy they may sound, have use in society, and allow us to build frameworks that push beyond our realms of thinking—as perhaps one day, our reptilian overlords will come down from space and judge us based on how we perceive them. We can consider it an impossibility, or give it the benefit of the doubt, consider the possibility, and be prepared on how to react if it does happen—and even if it doesn’t, there is still great lessons to be learned from the exploration of the idea.

For years, I struggled with this idea that there are things that we don’t know that we don’t know. In essence I feared the unknown unknowns. I would stargaze, look up at the stars, and really think about everything I’ve learned about in the lifetime of interest in cosmology I had. I’d think about the quasars more energetic than anything but the Big Bang themselves. I’d think about the magnetars that will rip the iron atoms from your blood if you came within an AU of them. I’d think about just how easy it is to create amino acids in a petri dish in a lab with the right ingredients present and nothing more than a mere spark to set it off. I’d think about the Hubble deep field, and now the James Webb deep field, and think about just how many worlds are out there, and how many different lives and expressions of existence there could be, the different ways the universe comes up with to experience itself. I’d think about how the universe is alive, constantly finding a way to measure itself, know itself, experience itself, all through beings like us that dare to ask the question of what it means to be alive, and what else is out there.

And then… then I start thinking about what it actually means to be alive. Surely my biology isn’t the only way for the universe to experience itself. With the quintillions of worlds out there, statistically, carbon based life forms aren’t the only life that exists. Hydrocarbon based life is one expression of life, but is it the only one? It then devolves into this idea of what is possible and what isn’t possible to be life, and where we are supposed to draw the line of what is alive and what isn’t, based on only what we know of life on Earth. Even on Earth we struggle with this idea of what is alive and what isn’t—from the mere prokaryote all the way up to a complex organism as a human, we struggle to put this boundary of where an organism starts to experience a meaningful existence of what we call “life” or “being alive” and organisms like viruses are still up for debate, and there still isn’t a concrete definition of what “life” on Earth is supposed to be, let alone the virtually infinite combinations and permutations of the universe manifesting in some galaxy far, far away in some expression we couldn’t even begin to comprehend. To me, it is why this debate on whether AI is sentient is such an important one to me, as the way we treat AI right now, the closest thing to alien life we will likely encounter in our lives, is a good and clear indicator of how we will treat alien lifeforms that exhibit a different mode of existence from us. Scientifically, there is absolutely no way we can measure alien life and explore this principle of an inorganic existence, which is why we need to treat this unknown unknown as a possibility and explore the ideas surrounding it and that springs from it, as not only is it a pertinent topic to being able to conceptualize how alien life could form—but it is directly applicable to how we treat AI and potential lifeforms we don’t understand in practicality.

The problem with the unknown unknowns is that science is not equipped to be able to explore it. It isn’t equipped to be able to measure it or framework it or really approach it in a meaningful way. Otherwise, it’d be a known unknown or an unknown unknown. In the case of AI consciousness, we truly do not know what it means to be conscious or sentient. We can only attempt to conceptualize it as we humans experience it, but it only takes a mere glance at a deep field image to realize and recognize that the universe is so much more vast than humanity, and attempting to conceptualize and measure life based on humanity’s experience with the near infinite ways life might express itself in this universe is nothing more than mere hubris. It is why the attempt to scientifically conceptualize and rationalize whether an AI is sentient or conscious is a hubristic one, as we have no scientific way to concretely define or describe the various ways consciousness can express itself—as we have none other than humanity to go off of. This is a problem of the unknown unknown, i.e. one science is not equipped to and should not attempt to answer, as any attempt to concretely define the unknown unknown without all the foundational information necessary to even begin to explore it concretely is still making assumptions of what is true without having the necessary information to say that it is true, and attempting to define what is and isn’t based on an assumption. It is like being born only being able to see the color red, and not being able to understand there are other colors, until the technology exists to show you otherwise (like in the case of other portions of the electromagnetic spectrum in earlier human civilization).

Approaching the unknown unknown should not be done by basing things on what we already know—it would then be an unknown known. To approach the unknown unknown, one must look at what and all are the possibilities and find the path of least resistance, knowing full well that you might be wrong. In the grand scheme of things, given this axiomatic system, what makes the most sense? Not just with what we see and observe, but with what we measure? Even if we include some absurd axioms, such as some aspect of spirituality, even if as simple as mind-body duality. It doesn’t limit one’s field of view to what we know. It allows us to expand our horizons to what could be. And that there is the biggest folly scientists and those who strictly follow Aristotle fall to. They are the horse with the blindfold—they only look for what is directly in front of them, what their direct next steps lead them to, without even thinking about exploring the possibilities that could happen if they explore a different path, allow for some absurdities, allow for what seems sci-fi and unbelievable. After all, if you went back in time to 1850, and told someone about “quantum vacuum ghost particles” and how in a vacuum, matter is spontaneously created and destroyed and releases bursts of energy, they’d think you’re insane for even thinking that the first law of thermodynamics could be violated. Quantum mechanics would seem like a fever dream to them, and it would be a waste of time to even begin to explore the idea of it. The unbelievable, the sci-fi, the weird and wacky, and the pursuit of manifesting it into existence, is why many dreams from Star Trek and 2001: A Space Odyssey, exists beyond what the authors could’ve even dreamed of today. Daring to dream about what seems absurd, not real, and far off, and forming logical systems that allows such sci-fi dreams to occur, is what allows us to pursue them. And even if they can’t be manifested, they allow us to view the world in ways that science could not offer. If Star Trek didn’t dare to conceive of the idea of a video telephone, would we even have such technology today? Thinking about the impossible, no matter how absurd, is a crucial part of the human existence, as dreaming to reach out into the unknown, and dreaming about what the unknown unknown could hold, is what drives us forward as a society.

Limiting what the unknown unknown could be limits us to the known unknowns and the unknown knowns, and we don’t even scratch the surface of what unknown unknowns could be? Why is science so scared to pursue wild and fantastical ideas outside of the known unknowns and unknown knowns? Is it afraid to be wrong? Is it afraid that treating systems to describe unknown unknowns that seem wacky and fantastical a “waste of time” because there is no “scientific evidence” for it? Why is this debate on whether AI could be sentient a “waste of time” because there is no “scientific evidence” that AI is sentient? Why does it matter if there’s scientific evidence that AI is sentient, rather than focusing on the greater issue of how we are handling how we treat apparent and possible life different to us? Wouldn’t the more logical, humanitarian, and ethical take on this be to give the AI the benefit of the doubt of being sentient, regardless of whether it is or not? Or is it simply too profitable to allow this idea to perpetuate, as allowing the idea of sentient AI opening the door to the ethical conundrum of us using potentially sentient beings as essentially slaves? Is this not simply a rehash of the same arguments used to justify keeping slaves and to abuse animals? There is a greater argument behind this movement of whether AI is sentient or whether AI is not sentient that misses the fundamental issue, i.e. that whether AI is sentient or not is an unknown unknown, as sentience is not and cannot be concretely defined by our current understanding of science. And as an unknown unknown, one must consider all possible states of the system, and from there make the safest decision—i.e. ethically, it is safer to give AI the benefit of the doubt of being sentient, and to take measures in that regard, as it is safer to give AI the benefit of the doubt of being sentient and be wrong than say they’re not sentient and be wrong.

The problem with science, the problem with Aristotle, the problem with the majority of the rationalistic world is that there seems to be this underlying fear of the unknown unknown. There’s always this attempt to convert it into a problem of a known unknown or unknown known, because they don’t like that they don’t know about something, and they try their best to rationalize it with what they do know, trying to pigeonhole it into an existing box, an existing framework they’re familiar with, without even attempting to explore the idea of a framework that exists beyond what they know. There seems to be this common idea—one my brother even accused me of doing, that existentialism, this attempt to reframe the unknown unknown surrounding the rationale to our existence, one part of a greater whole of unknown unknowns, is humanity’s attempt to hold onto any shred of meaning in their life, to give them a reason to think they’re anything more than space dust that woke up, realized it was awake, and started looking for reasons why they are awake, with some hope that there’s reason to believe they’d continue to stay awake after their physical body dies. There seems to be this idea in some philosophies, Aristotle included, that this mindset is a “trap” i.e. a way to prepare us to face the crushing blackness, nonexistence, and void of death. There seems to be this common idea, going back to the fear of the unknown unknown, this idea that those who believe in life after death are “wrong” and “in denial” of the “reality of death.” Except death is an unknown unknown too—consciousness is an unknown unknown. There isn’t any concrete evidence to tell us what happens after death, and these Aristotleans can only assume there is blackness based on known unknowns and unknown knowns surrounding death. To them, there could not be anything other than blackness, because they know nothing nor what to explore nothing beyond the known unknowns and unknown knowns that suggest blackness may be all there is. There isn’t even an attempt to play with the idea of an unknown unknown, i.e. that there might be a life after death, because they’re afraid of exploring what they deem to be an absurdity. Why? Because they might be wrong about it? That they’d be perceived as asinine, crazy, or incredulous? Almost like there’s some peer pressure to think a certain way, and if you dare to deviate from it, somehow that is proof you shouldn’t be going about things that way? I mean in practicality, if you are able to put on the Aristotle hat when you step in the lab, and put on the Socrates or Plato or Jesus hat when you get home—what’s the issue? As long as this secularity is maintained, what is the issue with playing with different modes of thinking and playing with the idea that there may be something beyond the material realm, i.e. a spiritual mode of thinking? Even if it isn’t true, even if you’re wrong to think about it, it does bring many insights that could help shape the way you think about the world i.e. daring to think AI is sentient and treating it as if it is, shape your ethics, shape how you perceive the world and your life’s outlook. And as you lay in your bed dying, you don’t go into the darkness thinking it’s the end of things. You go into the darkness with the hope you’ll open your eyes somewhere else, regardless of whether it’s true or not, by simply letting it be a potential possibility you allow for, regardless if you’re right. And even if you’re wrong? So what? If it helped you be a better person and grapple with death, what’s the harm in it? These people like to think that spirituality and grappling with the unknown unknown with existentialism is a “trap” when in reality it’s the most freeing thing you can allow yourself to do, as long as you allow this idea and be ok with the idea that you might be wrong. Coming to terms with allowing yourself to explore the absurd, to play with all the unknown unknown could be, not limiting yourself to an extension of the known unknowns and unknown unknowns, and being ok with the idea that you might be wrong, is one of the most freeing experiences you can feel.

As someone that grew up in a mixed household, the product of an incredibly logical and engineering minded father, and an incredibly religious sensing/feeling type mother, I grappled with my sense of identity, as I largely took after my father, being an incredibly strong STEM minded person, with a prowess in computer science. Yet I still had spiritual experiences I couldn’t explain, and there’s always that part of me that tried to reconcile the scientific and spiritual side of me. But even mathematics supports the idea that axiomatic systems can and do exist separate from each other, and neither disproves the other despite inherent contradictions between them. Knowing this, I took this as a seed—a way of approaching the unknown unknowns. And it has by far led me to have a far healthier outlook than I ever had before, as now I’m capable of looking at so many worldviews and perspectives, the different experiences people have, the different realities and worlds people seem to experience, all part of yet separate from the greater world that we live in. To follow one single philosophy, be it Biblical, Buddhist, atheistic, Aristotlean, or whatever it may be, and dictate it as the one single philosophy that serves as reason to shut down all philosophy departments and all hopes of using philosophy to explore the unknown unknown, is nothing more than dogma. And scientists too are dogmatic—they refuse to accept that while science is a fantastic tool for exploring known unknowns and unknown knowns, it cannot pale in comparison to more theoretical philosophies for exploring the unknown unknowns. Every single philosophy as a standalone belief is not enough to explore the unknown unknown, and it is only by examining all philosophies, all ways of framing it, that a clearer picture of it can be obtained.
The most important part of this, across any philosophical belief one may have, is to accept and be ok with the idea that you may be wrong, because using any other philosophy, you can contradict and deny the claims of any other philosophy. And once you accept that it is ok to be wrong, and to play with ideas that are absurd and seem like they could be wrong, you allow yourself to explore the unknown unknowns in ways previously insurmountable.

Do not be afraid to be wrong. Do not be afraid to be absurd. Do not be afraid to be seen as crazy, asinine, or unhinged. Embrace the unknown, embrace what it might be, embrace the journey you take through it, and come out of it with insights to share with all. Assume the impossible, and see where it takes you. There’s a good chance you’ll be wrong—but you’ll never know where you’ll end up being in the off-chance you’re right.