Thread

Two quotes from Grothendieck for today:

“Discovery is a child’s privilege. I mean the small child, the child who is not afraid to be wrong, to look silly, to not be serious, and to act differently from everyone else. He is also not afraid that the things he is interested in are in bad taste or turn out to be different from his expectations, from what they should be, or rather he is not afraid of what they actually are. He ignores the silent and flawless consensus that is part of the air we breathe – the consensus of all the people who are, or are reputed to be, reasonable.”

— Alexander Grothendieck

“In fact, most of these comrades who I gauged to be more brilliant than I have gone on to become distinguished mathematicians. Still, from the perspective of thirty or thirty-five years, I can state that their imprint upon the mathematics of our time has not been very profound. They've all done things, often beautiful things, in a context that was already set out before them, which they had no inclination to disturb. Without being aware of it, they've remained prisoners of those invisible and despotic circles which delimit the universe of a certain milieu in a given era. To have broken these bounds they would have had to rediscover in themselves that capability which was their birthright, as it was mine: the capacity to be alone.”

— Alexander Grothendieck

I love these quotes. Now, criticism isn't really ever useful, but (primarily just for myself) I want to try and apply these quotes to our world today. They set an intuition ablaze within me, which I want to sharpen. Here goes:

Roughly, I think these quotes capture something about how, in my view, the current climate of research limits thinking about the human mind. That is, I can think of many "invisible and despotic circles which delimit the universe of a certain milieu in a given era."

What ideas are off-limits? Well firstly, anything not strictly materialist. This one is not surprising: I think people would rather believe science is “almost done” over the alternative: the universe is “not only stranger than we imagine, but stranger than we can imagine”. That said, this has always been true of human society, and it always will be. We will always overestimate our understanding, while the very conditions of that understanding go unnoticed.

So the vastness and strangeness of our world is one part of the problem. When it comes to the human mind specifically, though, there is more to it than that. Namely: ideas about human intelligence are socially controversial. A few examples: the idea of a metric for intelligence, the practice of measuring intelligence, the notion of different people having different kinds of intelligence, the question of how to grant agency to people with, broadly speaking, "mental illness", etc.; these pursuits each have their own sociopolitical implications. In other words, description motivates prescription.

Put simply, any one of these pursuits (though perhaps none of them) could be a piece of the puzzle. But they are each evaluated along a social or political dimension. And while this doesn't necessarily prohibit people from exploring them, it can disincentivize it.

Of course, there are reasons why these efforts to make the study of intelligence """scientific""" face pushback. And they're not unreasonable; in fact, this very well may be the right approach for polite society to adopt. But I do have my gripe, which is simply this: when something is "off-limits", it teaches people to shut down their thinking. And while that might increase the efficiency of society, it does not serve our intellectual culture well.

Imagine if we treated sports (physical pursuits) like we did intellectual pursuits. Instead of people arguing about the "genius myth", as they do today, people would argue about the "goat myth" (i.e. people would argue the distribution of athletic achievement is linear, not non-linear). People would steadfastly deny the role of genetics in determining athleticism. It wouldn’t be accepted to "measure" someone as being out of shape physically, either. Any differences in athletic ability would be ipso facto proof of, say, an athleticism-enhancing upbringing (whatever that means). And this in turn would mean athletic accomplishments are credited to society, not the individual. [What higher order effects could this have?]

Ultimately, I think the study of the mind still has a long way to go. And then: putting it side by side with other social problems, or subjugating it within some institution that has multiplicity of purpose, can restrict the freedom of the individual. Here I am talking about the freedom to be intellectually honest. The freedom to pursue the truth, independent of other considerations. Now, the restriction (of freedom) may be only indirect - effected only through social pressure. But still, it can be erosive. Freedom is not just "in principle".

Freedom is a feeling. It is a kind of internal confidence to strive, to question, and to transcend. A willingness to let one's mind wander. Without fear. This freedom must be protected.

One historical analogy I can think of is this: in ancient Greece, there was a strong taboo against human dissection - for various reasons. Now this taboo was not unreasonable, I think. But it may have led to the Greeks not penetrating as deeply into the nature of the human body as they perhaps could have, with their intellectual culture being so vibrant (in e.g. mathematics or philosophy).

The process of truth-seeking within a culture is integrated; the parts are not independent of the whole.

Ultimately, the life of the mind is worth celebrating. I love learning about all the wonderful tricks humans have figured out for their intellectual pursuits. And I enjoy synthesis -- putting together the pieces. I think more steps should be taken to actively support the endeavor, even if it is hard.

I believe it is not just giving individuals "in principle" rights, but supporting the culture of free inquiry. This is a different thing. People follow incentives. That will never change. What can change is: the specific incentives resultant from a society's organization.

All of this is to say: culture matters. And culture can change. I hope it does.

P.S. I don’t consider the above thoughts as being especially “useful”; generally criticisms aren’t. I am using this thread to organize my thoughts so I can then create my own solution, which I think is generally the best way to do things.