Book excerpt – ‘Filters Against Folly’ by Garrett Hardin

Many of our mistakes can be both understood and avoided if we are acutely aware of three intellectual filters available to us in our dealings with reality. The three filter analysis here grew out of an earlier two culture analysis.

Snows Two Cultures – In 1956 an English novelist and physicist turned administrator, C. P. Snow, sharpened this question by distinguishing two cultures in Academia. To those outside universities, Academia may seem a unity. It appears far otherwise to those inside. Not only are scholars separated from each other by high departmental walls but the disciplines are also aggregated into two regrettable antagonistic groups. Snows groups consists of mathematicians and the natural sciences, and the other of the humanities, i.e. history, literature, philosophy, and the like. Students of the humanities ruled the universities long before the study of things became respectable for anyone but lowly artisans. The attitude that regards work with things – work carried out with the hands – as dirty is one, that is reborn time after time in societies prosperous enough to support a class that uses skill with words to belittle those who make things work.

Filters – Most of the major controversies can be well understood if we view them as the result of too much reliance on any single one of the following three reality filters –

1. The literate filter
2. The numerate filter
3. The ecolate filter

By focusing on these three filters, rather than on Snows two cultures, we have a better chance of keeping our attention directed towards substantive issues rather than towards personalities.

For centuries literacy has been regarded as the prime distinguishing mark of the educated person. The ability to read and write enabled the individual to draw on the wisdom (and the foolishness) of human beings distant from him in space and time. With the coming of radio and TV the relative advantage of truly illiterate people diminished considerably. Literate analysis begins with this question: “what are the words?” i.e. “what are the most appropriate words?”

Scientists, focusing primarily on things and processes, often pay little attention to words. They are apt to pay more attention to quantities and rates than they are to rhetorical niceties. Most scientists are numerate. They seek to understand the world by passing reality through a numerate filter. The implicit question of a strongly numerate person is this: “what are the numbers?” i.e. “what are the exact quantities, the proportions, and the rates?”

The relative emphasis on numeracy and literacy roughly matches the distinction between Snow’s two cultures. Looking deeper into the way that people analyse the world, the ecologists in particular use another filter, the filter of “ecolacy”, to give it a name consonant with the other two.

Example: The theory behind the evolution of resistance to antibacterial drugs by bacteria. At the literate level there is no reason to expect this evolution: by definition an “antibacterial” kills bacteria, so that should be that. At the numerate level, the initial studies may show that all but 0.0001 percent of the bacteria are killed by the 1st application, also it looks like the 2nd applications should kill all but 0.00000001 percent, and surely that should be enough? But if two are not enough, how about three?. The simple numerate analysis doesn’t suggest the whole truth, which is that continued application of the antibacterial substance often results in the appearance of a new form of bacteria that is immune to the drug. The one bacterium in ten thousand that survives is not a random sample of the total bacterial population: it is the rare variety that has a natural resistance to the drug. It survives and breeds more of its kind. The pessimistic generalization that comes out of such experiences is this: “every pesticide selects for its own failure.” This is essentially the ecolate doctrine: neither literacy nor numeracy would lead one to predict it. The ecolate result may involve more than the target species. Insecticides often have a delayed effect of causing an unwanted increase of the targeted species because the existence and importance of other species have been overlooked. For instance, spraying for aphids may result in a delayed outburst of these pests, because the insecticide also kills ladybird beetles, insects that feed on aphids.

The natural world is organized into a web of life more complex that we know. We have only a limited ability to predict what will happen in time as the result of any intervention, however well meant, in the natural order of things. Caution and humility are the hallmarks of the ecolate attitude towards the world. Time and consequences are essential concerns of the ecolate filter.

The tunnel vision of enthusiasts seldom encompasses either time or the reticulated web of organisms and causes. The commercial promoter wants to make a fortune selling something. The reformer wants to diminish human suffering through single minded attention to only one of the factors involved. Prudence, an essential ecolate virtue, is not popular with enthusiasts. In summary, the three filters operate through these particular questions:

1. Literacy: what are the words?
2. Numeracy: what are the numbers?
3. Ecolacy: and then what?

No filter by itself is adequate for understanding the world and predicting the consequences of our actions. We must learn to use all three. This means we had first understand the strengths and weakness of each.