Complexity and uncertainty

As we mature, we gain in our awareness of, and to some extent our ability to manage, two features of human life: complexity and uncertainty. But we can never avoid them entirely, nor can we ever control them completely.

Complexity confronts us everywhere: as our knowledge grows, we notice more of the variables in, and more of the interrelationships among, objects and processes in the natural world and within society. Emotional lives are complicated; emotions are often mixed. People, objects, situations and events produce both positive and negative feelings. And these are not easily disentangled: we try to maximize the good and minimize the bad, but we cannot refine our circumstances to remove altogether the undesired, unpleasant aspects.

Real-life situations, as opposed to the simplified, abstract cases that we invent in our efforts to master some concepts and control some parts of our world, are always complex; there are always many factors to consider, and these are not easily sorted or evaluated. Among the factors with which we have to grapple as we make an ethical, legal or practical decision are the harm an action might cause, the pleasure or pain it might bring, the financial gain or loss it might produce, the example it might give, the precedent it might set.

And uncertainty attends the pressures on us to make choices. We always find ourselves in particular environments at particular times--sets of circumstances that influence our thoughts and feelings. Try as we may, we cannot absolutely transcend the material world or the culture. The range of our vision and the scope of our understanding are always restricted; we can never grasp the total context of any given situation.

Moreover, in any situation involving human interactions, bargaining is always possible; in a flash, people can alter the balance of power, redistribute resources, convince or persuade others to change their minds. And to the very end, people have the ability to modify their attitudes towards situations, so the very thoughts and feelings that might serve as grounds for decision-making can shift. All this generates even more factors to consider, more options to evaluate.

And so we can be ignorant of relevant facts and unaware that certain basic assumptions make undesired impacts on our decision-making. Limitations on our knowledge can impair our judgments. And in any event, we can never predict exactly what effects our actions will have.

Many ethical questions involve no clear choice between good and evil, but rather how to maximize the good and minimize the evil that results from particular decisions. And in many cases, we have problems even defining what is good and bad. There is a range of views about how we should consider global warming and the use of our resources, and genetic engineering, and certain advanced and heroic medical and surgical treatments, to give just a few examples.

Aside from a few simple cases, we cannot categorize people, objects and actions as either good or bad. Most produce both good and bad effects; they are by nature multidimensional, and each dimension of a particular subject can have a different ethical value.

Although we try to conceive universal solutions to our problems, our limited understanding practically guarantees that we will at best solve only most of them, or perhaps just a few and then even make some matters worse.

In many areas, particularly in new technologies, rules do not yet exist. And too often, even when we have them, simple rules do not serve us well as guides to our conduct in complicated circumstances. Where rules do exist, various systems of regulations, some of which are in conflict, may exist contemporaneously.

Yet even in the face of complexity and uncertainly, we are not altogether without hope. In most situations, we can rather easily enumerate all the ethical, legal and practical issues that will matter to us. The difficulty usually lies in the evaluation of the factors we have identified: we have to determine whether we can discount any factors, and decide how much weight to give to each of those remaining. Our greatest challenges come when we have factors of equal weight, and we have to trade off one or more of them.

Human life is not as simple as rocket science or brain surgery. Human history is as rich as it is in part because of the complexities and uncertainties that dog us. Many people have tried to ameliorate the human condition by making assumptions that remove some issues from consideration or by making assertions that are not thoroughly grounded on sound logic or strong evidence. These efforts, too, have added to the great variety in the human record.

We probably cannot easily imagine what our lives would be like without complexity and uncertainty. But we can be sure that they would be a lot less interesting.