Nothing fixes my attention more than when an expectation is satisfied or dashed. Trouble is, the annoying concept of “error bars”* often foils that definitive result. In some cases, certainty is never achieved; in others, it’s a long wait until sufficient confirmation rolls in.
Science (and the like)
The and the like tag means we stretch beyond pure science to more practical disciplines like the various flavors of engineering. Engineers actually make things work whereas scientists seek understanding and leave it at that. In both, however, there is a design phase before the experiments, and there certainly are tests before anything is built. You better believe that when a test is an abject failure or an experiment yields nonsense, it’s the design and the designers that catch proverbial hell. More often than not, it’s the errors, about which the error bars have warned, that are at fault. You see, perfection is not an option in science or engineering, just as it eludes us in everyday life.
The safe zone: Some designs never reach implementation, and some theories never get tested. They may have been good and realistic or outlandish fantasy, but their authors are safe with pencils and slide rules in hand, their concepts never being put to the test.**
The pesky sigmas: Uncertainty is the enemy, but it can be assessed if not tamed. The symbol scientists tend to use to denote the accuracy of a measurement is the lower-case Greek letter sigma, σ, which is the shorthand for “standard deviation.” Without belaboring the math, a one-sigma result means that a measurement is within a 68% envelope (i.e., 34% bigger or smaller) around what we think will be the ultimate truth, that is around the eventual mean value we see after making many more measurements. If our measurement is three sigmas away from expectations, there is only a 0.3% chance that we are right about what we thought was the truth or else our measurement was somehow faulty. Either way, it’s back to the drawing board to question our initial premise.
The lurking systematic slip-up: Those sigmas assume that statistics govern our measurement process. That is, the more measurements we make of the same thing, the more accurate our result when we take an average of all the data. That’s because we think the result of each individual measurement deviates from the truth due to random fluctuations inherent in our measurement process. But what if they are not random? An unaccounted systematic bias may be skewing results. For example, if we are seeking the average number of acorns that fall from a tree over time by counting them on the ground and fail to account for a squirrel that’s very adept at acorn collection, our result will be way off. Only adding a Δsquirrel (delta-sub-squirrel) adjustment to the result will fix the problem.§
The lurking not-so-systematic slip-up: Here is an iconic photo available from the US Library of Congress [1] that epitomizes how factors not considered can come around and bite you. Explanations for the collapse of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge vary, but no one doubts that a combination of its light structure, a strong wind, and how that wind can cause oscillating forces to which a suspended structure will react violently conspired against the bridge designers.[2] That’s not an error bar or a neglected systematic effect. It’s failing to ask the “what if” question about improbable extreme events. In science, we just repeat the experiment. In engineering, bridges collapse à la Tacoma, nuclear reactors explode à la Chernobyl,[3] and fire breaks fail à la Lahaina.[4]
Wait until we get there: A quote attributed to Carl Sagan when interviewed on CNN about the Voyager 2 mission to Neptune goes, “…we never are smart enough to predict what we’re going to see.”[5] In other words, collect enough data and perform control tests before finally reaching a dependable answer that may wind up being a complete surprise. Could be a happy surprise like Neptune or one of many a disaster as cited above.
Science submerged: An impressive example of science and theory leading to a practical engineering design and successful implementation is the submarine powered by a nuclear reactor. A publication of the US Naval Sea Systems Command describes the process.[6]
Although theories of nuclear power were understood, the technology to build and operate a shipboard nuclear propulsion plant did not exist. There were several reactor concepts; the real challenge was to develop this technology and transform the theoretical into the practical. New materials had to be developed, components designed, and fabrication techniques worked out. Furthermore, installing and operating a steam propulsion plant inside the confines of a submarine and under the unique deep-sea pressure conditions raised a number of technical difficulties.
Although a few US and Soviet/Russian nuclear submarines have been lost, the reactors were not identified as the primary cause.† In the military context, a greater risk of equipment failure is tolerated, given the purpose and mission of such devices, yet the science-to-submarine realization has proven robust.
Smaller, faster, cheaper, and more powerful: Another example of science leading to success in practice is the semiconductor. Understanding that material's properties led to the invention of the transistor two days before Christmas in 1947.[7] The rest is an amazing development path that now supports just about every high-tech device we have. That transistor sent its predecessor, the bulky slow energy-hungry vacuum tube, to the proverbial dustbin of history. After nearly 80 years though, our semiconductor chips may be similarly victimized. It will take a while, but quantum science is on the verge of leaping ahead into the space of practical applications now occupied by the descendants of that first transistor.
A personal aside: The invention of the transistor may have been before this author’s time, but would you believe that from my arrival in 1969 at Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey, USA, until my departure in 1981, my office was on the 4th floor in the E-wing of Building 1, room number 1E445, the very same room where that transistor was first tested back in 1947.[8] The air was thick with history, if only I had been smart enough to breathe it all in.
Government (and the like)
The and the like tag means we stretch beyond regimes that exist or have existed to include those theorized but never established. The various names we assign to types of stewardship over the people do not convey the full spectrum or their full character. We have authoritarian, capitalist, colonial, communist, democratic, dictatorship, fascist, monarchic, socialist, theocratic, totalitarian, and tribal, to list just a few in alphabetical order. These all emanate from a design, sometimes from deep meditative philosophical insight, sometimes from bottom-up grass-roots necessity, and sometimes from one person's singular ambition.
Can’t ignore Kant: In the first category is Immanuel Kant [9] who believed that a legitimate government should be based on the concept of individual freedom and respect for citizens' rights, essentially arguing that a government is only justified when it acts in accordance with the "general will" of the people, where citizens are treated as rational beings capable of self-governance, and not as subjects to be controlled by a ruler. He strongly opposed any form of despotism or paternalistic government that restricts individual liberty, advocating for a republican system with checks and balances to protect freedoms. That sounds great, doesn't it? Attempts along those lines have been made with greater or lesser success. The Western-style democracies have come the closest.
The mark made by Marx: Also in the first category is Karl Marx.[10] His ideas evolved with age, his age, but Marx's narrative anticipated the proletariat rising against capitalist exploitation, fostering a socialist society through their own revolution. Ultimately, he envisioned the dissolution of the state, paving the way for a classless communist society to flourish. With Friedrich Engels, he authored the Communist Manifesto (Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei), one of the world's most influential political documents.[11] How to test any form of government is the notion from the Marxist philosophy that most informs me. It is that “ social classes are defined by the relationship of people to the means of production.” Needless to say that all attempts at a pure communist regime have not resulted in the sought-after dictatorship of the proletariat anticipated by the Manifesto.
Violence for Vladimir versus the Athens affair: Scattered throughout the history of governments coming and going are revolutions. When Vladimir Lenin tried to implement the communist alternative to Tsar Nicholas II, revolutions punctuated his beginning and his end. How long must a form of government last for it to be considered a success? Athenian direct democracy lasted 180 years, longer than Lenin’s or his successors’ regimes. The Athens idea for populations the size of major nations being impractical, representative democracy arose as one alternative. That experiment is in progress in several countries today. Preliminary results look promising with glitches, but final results are not yet in. Today’s alternatives to a pure communist regime are the authoritarian governments that oppress their own “proletariat.”
It is ironic that the word “democracy” derives from the Greek meaning people rule. That sounds like the dictatorship of the proletariat. It seems that all well-meaning designs want the people to be in charge. The nearly idyllic “commune” and similar living arrangements do exist as size-limited communities.[12] It seems that it is only a practical workable regime when confined in both population and space. I think they may represent one case where we can say that the theory and the experiment can be successful.
Empires: To be an empire, the central authority must oversee and control multiple individual states or territories (or planets in the galaxy for Star Wars fans). We English speakers may be most attuned to the British Empire. Our friends in Canada and Downunder retain a strong historical connection whereas those in the US, a former colony, and the Indian subcontinent sought to escape. Imperialism, colonialism, and other “isms” are terms that apply, but our point here is that the governance design and the economic (the “production”) motives were implemented and then either tamed or discarded. [E.g., Tobacco and tea from America and India, respectively.] The theory was sound, the experiments worked for a time until new data and observations, essentially unrestrained discontent and profit losses at the margins, turned the tide.
Predating the Brits by many centuries were the Maya. Warfare among its cities and climate are blamed for its demise. Nevertheless, advances in astronomy, agriculture, architecture, language, trade, and mathematics, characterize their reign -- no small accomplishments.
Some forms of government may arise from a philosophy or “theory” of how things should run, but more generally, it appears that most arise organically as the need for some form of societal order is recognized. It is unfortunate that when forms of government change, it is often the governed who suffer the associated upheaval. We are performing governance “experiments” now. Both subject to and in control of our fates, everyone on the planet who lives under some form of governance is a participant. Aware and willing or blindingly unaware and therefore de facto unwilling, our actions or lack thereof steer us toward a result. Violence as in Gaza and Ukraine today or ongoing free and fair elections across the democracies, the winners will dictate what comes next and they can rewrite history so lessons may not be learned. The opposite of free and fair is the faux election that mimics the democratic processes but with foretold results. In science when the results are determined before the experiment is done, we call that charlatanism and punish it where we find it. Were it only so easy when it comes to elections.
Our current state of affairs: Is there anything new today that can engineer smoother transitions that our progenitures did not have? Will advanced technology help? If we include the technology of social media in that query, it seems questionable. Questionable because today we lack intermediation that filters out the patently false from the truth, the facts, the honest opinion, and the unrevised history. Will AI help even though the current versions only train on the past and do not have reliable lie detectors? If a well-trained AI with predictive powers existed in the 1930s, it could have advised members of the League of Nations that if they failed to stop Italy’s invasion of Ethiopia and Haile Selassie’s Empire, such unchallenged invasions would lead to World War II. When AI becomes sentient, it will either help us avoid such worst choices or it will become the dictator we fear most, à la Skynet in the Terminator movie franchise.
Back to science and the moral of our story
We can analogize to the science of classical mechanics being pushed aside but not eliminated by the advent of the quantum era. The classical persists and is useful because classical rules are just what one gets when the quantum world is applied to sizes as large as we are. Aside from some pretty fierce debates early on,[13] no violent uprising overthrew classical as quantum took the stage. Both live in harmony today. There is no known or proposed limit to what science may learn and then can foster achievements in technology that enhance or threaten our quality of life. Our collective hands will steer that evolutionary ship that translates theory into experiment into practical applications, not letting what works in practice be pushed aside prematurely by yet-to-be-tested outlandish theories. We are the engineers of our own fate both in this innovation realm and in the province of governance, realizing that the former only thrives under a wise and supportive form of the latter.
* Error bars are also called “confidence intervals” or in surveys & polls they are “margins of error.”
** The slide rule is most definitely passé and no doubt the pencil is headed for oblivion too.
§ The upper-case Greek letter delta (Δ) is used to indicate a change in science and math.
† The USS Thresher (SSN-593) sank after a reactor SCRAM that failed to restart.
Credits: First nuclear submarine Nautilus image from Science Photo Library at https://sciencephotogallery.com/
Galactic Empire: Darth Vader with his stormtroopers image from
https://screenrant.com/star-wars-reasons-galactic-empire-darth-vader-actually-good-guys/
El Castilo at Chichén Itzá image from
Daniel Schwen - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7647000
T-800 endoskeleton seen in Terminator 2: Judgment Day
By Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1393354
Kant (left) and Marx (middle) images in the composite were generated by OpenAI.com’s Dall-E image generator.
[1] https://sciencephotogallery.com/featured/tacoma-narrows-bridge-collapse-library-of-congressscience-photo-library.html
[2] https://www.simscale.com/blog/tacoma-narrows-bridge-collapse/
[3] https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/focus/chernobyl/faqs
[4] https://www.usfa.fema.gov/blog/lahaina-hawaii-fire-timeline-report/
[5] We were alerted to this quote by an article in APS News, Series II, 33 (7), July/August 2024.
[6] “Naval Reactors Celebrates 75 Years,” https://www.navsea.navy.mil/Media/News/Article-View/Article/3476623/
[7] https://www.bell-labs.com/institute/blog/the-transistor-75-years-since-the-famed-nokia-bell-labs-invention-changed-the-world/
[8] In Building 1, Room 1E455, from 17 November to 23 December 1947, Walter H. Brattain and John A. Bardeen -- under the direction of William B. Shockley -- discovered the transistor effect, and developed and demonstrated a point-contact germanium transistor.
https://ethw.org/Milestones:Invention_of_the_First_Transistor_at_Bell_Telephone_Laboratories,_Inc.,_1947
[9] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-social-political/. The text describing Kant’s political philosophy was lifted from Google AI.
[10] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx’s_theory_of_the_state
[11] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Communist_Manifesto
[12] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_intentional_communities
[13] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bohr-Einstein_debates
Nota Bene: Others may ruminate differently. But be warned: In my case, seeing or hearing something quite trivial -- a saying, a store clerk’s mannerisms, or bad grammar on a food product’s label – triggers a stream-of-consciousness extrapolation toward grander notions and generalizations. That is what often happens in these posts. ADDENDUM: Those subscribers who have been here for a while will have noticed that at times ruminations have veered into diatribes. I make no apology. I just want my readers to know that it’s quite intentional. When events come close to making the ‘blood boil,’ that discontent bubbles up here.
Disclaimer: Any and all opinions expressed here are my own at the time of writing with no expectation that they will hold beyond my next review of this article. Opinions are like a river, winding hither and yon, encountering obstacles and rapids, and suffering turbulent mixing of silts from its depths and detritus from its banks. But just as a river has its clear headwaters and a fertile delta, so do opinions, notwithstanding any intervening missteps and uncertainties.
Reminder: You can visit the Cycloid Fathom Technical Publishing website at cycloid-fathom.com and the gallery at cycloid-fathom.com/gallery.
Forthcoming posts (unless life intervenes)
World History 2124
… “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
October 21, 2024
Just4Me
…My drug-free anxiety palliative
October 28, 2024
Let’s Get Political (Explicitly)
…Momentum and paths of least resistance
November 11, 2024
