True Understanding In Lower Levels Of Knowledge

The Search For Knowledge

As a kid I thought I wanted to be an archaeologist, based solely on watching Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark.  The coolest thing about Indiana Jones had to be the whip.  But the idea of digging in the dirt and uncovering a priceless artifact sounded really exciting too.  They were priceless, even though pieces of bone or pottery, building ruins, and ancient tools don't have value in and of themselves, There is nothing you can do with them.  They are falling apart or are completely outdated.  Yet, they provide valuable knowledge about long forgotten cultures.  Universities, collectors, or museums will pay large amounts of money for them not for their utility but for what they can teach us.

The search for knowledge at an archaeological excavation is the same as the search for any other kind of knowledge.  You must dig beneath the surface.  You must search high and low.  The wisest man in history, Solomon, said this about what it takes to find it.

Proverbs 2:4-5 

If you seek her as silver
And search for her as for hidden treasures;
5 Then you will discern the fear of the Lord
And discover the knowledge of God.

Proverbs 2 is one of my favorite chapters in the Bible in that it teaches you about the value of studying the Bible.  I find it fascinating that the Bible is self-referential in many places.  It is like an ancient version of Ferris Bueller breaking the 4th wall by talking directly to the audience about the movie plot.

Another Biblical idea that is relevant to the subject of truth seeking is represented in the word, sophron.  It is one of my favorite Greek words from the New Testament.  I wrote about it in a previous blog article, https://thecrosssectionrmb.blogspot.com/2020/06/follow-your-passion.html.  The word means to have a healthy mind which thinks critically, carefully, and under self control.  To gain understanding, to find treasures of knowledge you must have a Sophron.  In order to exercise it properly I contend that you must develop the habit of identifying and thinking through multiple levels of knowledge.

5 Why Framework

A good framework to explain what this means is the 5 Why technique.  It is used to find the cause of a problem so that you will not only understand the problem but will be able to resolve it.  The technique consists simply of asking, why, over and over again until you figure out what happened.  Here is a classic example from Taiichi Ohno, the inventor of the 5 Why technique:

1. Why did the robot stop?  --> The circuit has over loaded, causing a fuse to blow.
2. Why is the circuit overloaded? --> There was insufficient lubrication on the bearings, so they locked up.
3. Why was there insufficient lubrication on the bearings? --> The oil pump on the robot is not circulating sufficient oil.
4. Why is the pump not circulating sufficient oil? --> The pump intake is clogged with metal shavings.
5. Why is the pump intake clogged with metal shavings? --> Because there is no filter on the pump.

At the end of the exercise, you find that the root cause is the lack of a filter on the pump.  Before you arrive at that fact, the problem looks like it comes from a different area after each question, from an electrical problem, to a heating problem, to a mechanical problem to a routine maintenance issue or a design flaw.  The solution uncovered at the end is easy, to add a filter, but the process can be monotonous and even painful.  If any of you have worked in the automotive industry you know exactly what I am talking about.  The most important thing is to notice that the exercise takes you through different levels of knowledge.  At the surface the robot stops working.  The first question uncovers the 1st level, meaning 1st level below the surface issue.  Then each subsequent question takes you a level further down.  In the case of the robot you go from one component of the system to another in a deductive chain.  Applied to other subjects the levels could also follow an inductive chain from high levels of abstraction or generalities to specific details and cases.

Regardless, digging down into different levels of knowledge takes time.  Using the 5 Why technique is not the only way to do it.  But any attempt to understand truth takes this kind of effort.  What I have found is that you usually have to get to 2 or 3 levels below the surface of a subject to understand it properly.  In cases where this is not true, the solution is often reading the original source document or the first hand account of an event.  There isn't more to it than that.  The task is simple but difficult.  Keep asking questions.  Keep searching.  Keep digging until you find the hidden treasure.  The rest of the way, read through some examples of applying this framework to a current event, a scientific subject, and Bible interpretation.

COVID-19 Pandemic Tracking

First, let's think through the news about the 2020 corona virus pandemic.  In the media we hear surface level types of data.  They report cases are increasing or decreasing.  They state that hospitals are being overrun with new sick COVID patients and will run out of capacity very quickly.  They tell stories of people who are young and healthy who have died of the virus or have had long and scary hospitalizations.  The news is always urgent.  The stories are alarming and many times produce fear and anxiety.

To really understand how serious the virus is at any period of time or how widespread, there are several levels of knowledge you must know.  Anecdotal stories about a single person no matter how well the description, don't really help.  That story would have to represent everyone or highlight how most experience a COVID infection, which they don't.

Instead, you must look at estimates of actual cases based on test-confirmed cases.  Not everyone can be tested daily or weekly, so there is always some type of estimate that has to be made.  The type of test used must also be stated.  Diagnostic tests called PCR tests identify current infections.  Serology tests analyze antibody presence and can uncover previous cases.  Adding results together from both kinds of tests will cause more confusion that clarity.  They can both complement one another, but that analysis will have to be more thought out.  Maybe most important of all, all the data needs to interpreted with everything else that is known about viral outbreaks and other corona virus strains.  Epidemiologists have built up a large amount of knowledge that can be applied to the current pandemic and many studies have been done even in the last 2 decades regarding corona virus outbreak lifecycles.

To have the most reliable all population case estimate, a health organization would need to perform a randomized study using one type of test and apply the results to demographic data.  To be most helpful, the study would include data taken at different moments in time so that infection growth or decay could be tracked.  The raw number of positive test counts can be used but only if testing is random and the same number of tests are made at each time interval.  If more tests are performed over time, then you can no longer compare new data to older data to get an understanding of how many real cases are occurring.

With COVID-19, less tests were performed early on in the pandemic.  In order to get tested in March 2020, a patient had to have severe symptoms or even be admitted into a hospital.  Many people who had probable cases were not tested because not that many test kits were available.  Over time that has changed.  An increasing number of people have been getting tested through July 2020 as a greater number of test kits have become available, which means confirmed cases can increase even when actual cases in the population are decreasing.  The implications should be clear, if not, look up the COVID pandemic dashboard from your state's health organizations and observe the kind of data that they are reporting.

When the number of tests administered changes, you can then use the percentage of tests that return positive, or % positive, to make actual case estimates over time, and use other statistical methods to improve the accuracy of an estimate.  Using % positive tests allows for health care organizations to test more over time and still be able to compare data from earlier dates.  However, for the comparison to be meaningful, the same test policies or protocols must be followed.  You can change the overall number and get a good comparison.  Still, you must hold constant the criteria used to justify a test.  You must also hold constant all the decision points that lead to a clinic or hospital performing a test on a person.  If any of that changes over time or from place to place in the world, comparisons will not reveal knowledge about viral infection trends or about the situation in one location versus another.  The best method in any case is to test people randomly, even if you are changing the number of people tested.  That has not happened over the life of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Starting in early June 2020, the kind of people who were getting tested has changed.  At that point in time, hospitals started to test everyone who is admitted into a hospital regardless of the reason for being admitted.  You could be going into surgery for an appendectomy and presenting no symptoms and still be tested.  That person will be considered a COVID hospitalization and added to the confirmed test case sum even though 2 weeks earlier that person wouldn't have been tested at all.  The other issue with using this data to estimate all actual infections is that people being admitted into the hospital is a specific subset of the population that will be more or less likely than the general population to have an infection.  Even more problematic is that multiple studies have shown that one of the most common types of viral transmission is nosocomial.  That means an infection that occurred while in the hospital.  Therefore, even if you don't have COVID-19 when entering you are more likely to then be infected than if you would have stayed home.  Nosocomial COVID cases are then confirmed through testing once you show symptoms.

Another change in protocol that hinders one's ability to compare new % positive data to data from before June is temperature checks.  As businesses have opened they have required a body temperature check before entry.  This is a good measure to use for protecting employees and customers from being exposed to the virus.  I would suggest it as a universal check for entering a business or school.  However, it is a new factor that changes the % positive calculation.  Each temperature check is a test itself.  Everyone who enters without a fever is a negative test.  But those aren't counted in the official data sets because they aren't reported to health organizations or sent for PCR tests.  However those who do have a fever are tested.  It is reasonable to push back by saying that people with temperatures are more likely to go get PCR tests anyway.  That is true.  However, many still will not without being encouraged to when shown they have a fever.  Also, think about that situation, despite how they felt they were trying to go into work or to another business without getting checked for infection.  The temperature checks are increasing the number of people with fevers being tested.  Again, not a bad thing for public health.  But the data can't be compared to past data when that protocol wasn't in operation.

We also have to remember that there are a finite number of PCR tests available.  Preferentially testing those who have tested positive for a fever means the odds of that person having COVID are way above a random person.  That will create a high % positive result even if in reality there aren't as many infected people in the population.  It means that the health system is better at pre-screening people for infection.  It means you can use health resources more efficiently and treat infected people more completely and more quickly.  That will have positive health outcomes.  But that isn't the issue.  The issue is what is needed to accurately understand how many real infections are in the population today compared to last week, last month, next week, and next month.  The testing protocol described above is not useful for that purpose because it wasn't in place until early June.  If everything is left the same for a long enough time, estimates showing infection growth or decay from the starting point of June can be made, if calculations are made to take into consideration that implementing the protocols took time to ramp up.  Without knowing the ramp up time at various locations it would still be hard to make reliable estimates, but in theory it is possible.

We also need to be very careful comparing COVID pandemic data to that of other viral outbreaks.  Various recent articles and studies have claimed that asymptomatic cases and minor symptomatic cases represent a large percentage of total cases confirmed by a diagnostic test.  That is something very unique to COVID-19, as tests were rarely performed on people who had no symptoms in the past.  As an example, annual flu season case counts are made of or are estimated completely from people who have symptoms bad enough to warrant a doctor visit.  If you doubt that, how many times have you asked for a flu test in the last 5 years when you did't feel sick?  Even when you have gone to the doctor for flu symptoms, how many times have you been tested?  Getting tested is becoming more common but it isn't as likely as getting tested for COVID-19 today, as there are drive through test centers in some large cities for anyone who wants one.  I have read that test centers ask if you have observable symptoms, but I have also read that it is common for people to lie on the questionnaire because of their curiosity or anxiety from all the news.

Even the death counts which are being reported are problematic.  The surface level of knowledge, number of deaths reported by State A on Day B, is misleading.  To know the truth you have to understand that the State health organization reporting systems have significant lag in them and that they don't declare the actual dates when the deaths occurred.  The table below I found on Twitter illustrates this principle well.

https://twitter.com/kylamb8/status/1281778023935737858/photo/1

The top orange row shows how the States reported their deaths each week.  This is the data that media outlets use to write articles about their local situation.  The gray row is how the CDC reported the deaths each week.  However, the CDC shows further data about when the people actually died.  To see that look at a column and then see how each is broken up into rows.  There is a column labeled Week Of Death that you need to compare to the columns with dates to the right.  The 2nd column from the left is the count of death from COVID-19 containing data from the actual week of death.  Look at the trend of the Week Of Death column compared to the trends of the top orange row.  With that bottom level knowledge, what conclusions do you make about the COVID pandemic versus how it is being portrayed on the news?  That table is super awesome.  I couldn't have made a better visual representation of how to find true understanding in lower levels of knowledge if I tried.

I am not going to count how many levels of knowledge we covered discussing that subject.  We dug down into at least 5 levels below the surface.  I didn't dig all the way to bottom either, but it should be clear that reading surface level articles off of Yahoo or Google isn't helpful for tracking the pandemic, even when they quote epidemiologists.

Global Climate Change

I will not get as deep into global climate change but I did want to comment on it since global warming alarmism is gaining so much popularity.  If the fossil fuel industry is eliminated as they desire, it would be an unmitigated disaster.  Living conditions around the world would not only plummet, but millions if not billions could die from starvation and exposure to the elements.  Even human impact on the earth would become far more harmful too, believe it or not.  A great book is out that explains why this is so (Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All).  However, global warming alarmists claim the harm will come if society doesn't end use of fossil fuels and switch to renewable energy sources.  So how can I make my claims and be serious?  Dig through the levels of knowledge and see what you uncover.

The surface level is that CO2 is a gas that plays a role in raising the temperature on Earth by trapping infrared radiation in the atmosphere.  Water vapor plays the major role, CO2's affect is minor.  So the thought is that more CO2 in the atmosphere means a warmer atmosphere.  However, that isn't totally true.  I have read articles from physicists that explain CO2's affect on temperature is logarithmic.  At low concentrations there is a larger effect, but as the amount increases the effect from the additional CO2 is smaller.  Then at some point all the IR radiation is absorbed that CO2 can absorb.  After that additional CO2 doesn't raise temperature at all.  Even doubling the atmospheric CO2 level of today can't increase temperature more than about 0.4 deg C (The Effect of a Doubling of the Concentration of CO2 in the Atmosphere as Depicted by Quantum Physics).

Another issue with the mainstream discussion of global warming is that the models used to predict warming are faulty.  First, they don't use a logarithmic relationship for CO2 concentration.  Another problem is that the models use a CO2 concentration response based on a lab experiment done in the late 1800s where mixtures of gases were added to glass containers and internal temperature was measured.  The experiment showed a certain response which is used to calculate heat capacity, but comparing man-made gas mixtures in glass containers to the global weather system is not valid.  The models also haven't been statistically evaluated for variance and error to see if their outputs are reliable.  Several climate scientists have offered to perform the evaluation but those who own the model program and data have not been willing to share their information.  Still, the models are used as tools to predict future warming and justify political action to change fuel sources.

There are also issues with the amount of land needed to produce the power needed by the world from renewables.  Long story short, solar and wind would require way more land to produce the same amount of energy that we produce today.  That alone creates environmental problems that need to be considered.  There are many more problems with replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy, to the point where even Michael Moore, who is a global warming alarmist himself, made a documentary detailing the ways renewables fall short of being able to meet our global energy needs.

The point of it all is that using surface level thinking on the subject does not give you an understanding of the role CO2 plays in global temperature.  You have to dig into many different levels of knowledge regarding physics, statistical modeling, and the cost/benefit analysis of what happens if you use one kind of energy source instead of another.

Apparent Bible Contradiction

Thinking through multiple levels of knowledge is also important in matters of religion.  Religious skeptics have presented claims about contradictions in the Bible.  The claims are usually based on a surface level understanding of the text.  After that to them no more thought is needed.  One example of an alleged contradiction is the list of women who visited Jesus' tomb in the gospels.  The four gospels make the following comments.

• Matthew 28:  "Mary Magdalene and the other Mary came to look at the grave"
• Mark 16: "When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome, bought spices, so that they might come and anoint Him."
• Luke 24:  "Now they were Mary Magdalene and Joanna and Mary the mother of James; also the other women with them were telling these things to the apostles"
• John 21: "Now on the first day of the week Mary Magdalene came early to the tomb, while it was still dark, and saw the stone already taken away from the tomb."

The surface level interpretation is obvious.  Each gospel account uses a different list of women who visited the tomb on the first Easter Sunday.  As a result, any intelligent person must see how unreliable the Bible is, right?  Is the surface level of knowledge sufficient for religious or Biblical subjects?  If not, how far do we need to dig? The first step is to observe any commonalities in the lists.  Each gospel author writes that Mary Magdalene was there.  The gospel of John only states that Mary Magdalene was there.  However, it doesn't state that Mary Magdalene only was there.  In each gospel, Mary Magdalene is included and mentioned first.  That is something to build on.

Next, use logic to analyze the lists of women in the four accounts.  Comparing those statements is similar to comparing two types of conditional statements, "if" and "if and only if".  There can be unstated conditions that also apply when an "if" statement is used.  That isn't true when an "if and only if" statement is used.  Every condition in the logical chain is stated.

Mapping that understanding onto the accounts indicates that John doesn't contradict the other gospels because he doesn't write that there was one and only one woman at the tomb.  Like the "if" statement, John's account presents one of the women (like the condition with "if") who were present but does not require that there is only one (like an "if and only if" statement would require).  Instead, we can start to see how the four gospels support one another, not contradict.  The other differences follow the same pattern.  They represent information that can be added together to create a complete list.  When thinking through "if" statements, you could have a set of conditions that are true.  For example, the first statement could be, "If the fruit is an apple, Daniel will eat it."  But that doesn't mean Daniel won't eat other fruit.  These statements could also be true without contradicting the original statement, "If the fruit is a strawberry, Daniel will eat it" and "If the fruit is a pear, Daniel will eat it."   By adding the statements together you can see what types of fruit Daniel likes to eat.

Next, look at the lists again to see if the picture of the first Easter Sunday becomes clearer.  Matthew includes the "other Mary".  He doesn't say the "only other Mary".  Mark and Luke both mention "Mary the mother of James", which identify which Mary Matthew was including.  As you dig more, you find more agreement between these accounts.  Mark mentions a woman named Salome and Luke mentions "other women".  Looking at the four accounts together you can state without any contradiction that a group including Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, Salome, and some other women, maybe even a third Mary, visited Jesus' tomb for the purpose of anointing His body with spices.

An additional level of knowledge to think about is to ask yourself what details have been left out and why.  The gospel writers don't claim to give every detail of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection, just a true one.  The authors don't explain how long each of the women were with the group.  Some may have come and gone at different times during that morning.  The statement of each author about different events could reveal when exactly which women were together during the time the specific events occurred.  Or they could be emphasizing different things for different reasons leaving out things that were outside the scope of their purpose for writing.  There is no way to know what was left out and why, but we must realize this as part of our interpretation of the different accounts, because it shows us that there are deeper levels of knowledge which we can't reach.  We can look down a deep well and see nothing but darkness, yet still know it ends below.  That itself is an important lesson in humility.

Levels Of Knowledge Framework

Thinking through levels of knowledge is a broad framework.  It is not a formal process or a mechanical series of steps.  Its purpose is to remind us that many questions must be asked.  Keep asking questions until all is uncovered.  Its purpose is to remind us that different areas of knowledge should be consulted despite the initial subject to see how each helps build a better understanding.  Its purpose is to show that multiple steps must be taken either along a deductive chain or from generalities at the top to evermore minute details at the bottom.  Its purpose is to teach us that knowledge is hard to come by.  True understanding is rare and must be uncovered through time and effort.  If we don't have the perseverance for that, it is better to withhold judgment than to communicate what is on the surface.  There is no substitute for digging, for sweating, even for bleeding when trying to uncover hidden treasure.