Objective knowledge is ... subjective?

I recently finished Jonathan Rauch's The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth. I found most of the book pretty depressing: it relentlessly examines the ways in which trolls, propagandists, well meaning activists, and shameless bullshitters have been succeeding in attacking the foundation of collective certainty that is the legacy of the enlightenment and subsequent advances. It does make the effort to end on a optimistic note with a exhortation to action in the defense of objective truth.

I recommend it; but hang onto your sense of purpose in the world: it's a rough road.

But I want to point out an oddity in the author's conception of the world (one freely admitted in the text, by the way). One of several guide-stars it the text is what Mr. Rauch calls "the reality-based community" and the rules under which it operates (which he dubs "The Constitution of Knowledge").

We should stop to note that Mr. Rauch's conception of this community encompasses a pretty broad swath including not only scientists but also many other scholars, journalist, intelligence analysts, various members of evidence-based judicial systems, and some governmental and no-governmental policy wonks. Basically everyone who approached the creation of knowledge using The Constitution of Knowledge as a foundation.

One of the key rules of the "knowledge" produced by these systems is that anyone else honestly and diligently following the same rules and using the same base of existing facts should come to the same conclusions. A condition you know you've reached when a strong consensus emerges in the community itself.¹

But that leaves us in the epistemological interesting positions of having "objective" knowledge be the product of consensus (among a suitably trained set of investigators), which is at some level a subjective entity.²

The reason this doesn't bring the whole structure down in ruins is the allegation that the processes is what generates the reliability. Have trained in a physical laboratory science I have recourse to highly repeatable experiments for much of the grounding of my discipline,³ but the idea that persuasion through open, earnest, and largely no-personal argumentation is the legitimate route to authority works more broadly that the experimental sciences.

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¹The author presents a number of examples.

² Indeed, the author talks about the ways consensus forming can fail or be subverted.

³ Even in physics you get into places (like quantum foundations) where interpretational issues become important in the way we teach, relate, and apply the things we know.

Covid update (2)

Not about the renewed threat from the delta variant. Not even about how depressingly unnecessary the renewed threat from delta is. More about the how Covid has affected us.

Both of my regular readers probably recall that the whole family got the thing in late November or early December. Well, we never had the child tested, but she had symptoms similar to, but less severe than her mother.

General update:

• Grandma was in the hospital for over a month. She was sent home in dreadful shape and still on a feeding tube. She rallied and transitioned to liquid, then chopped, then normal diet; but she remains on hospice and is still bed-bound (before Covid she needed increasing levels of assistance in walking and transfers but was decidedly not bed-bound). Her specialists say that Covid accelerated the progress of her underlying condition.
• My wife and I both experienced bouts of unexpected fatigue throughout January and February. One advantage of working from home is that if you have a irresistible need to take a ninety minute nap at 2:30pm the only disruption is the need to make up the lost time that evening.
• My wife seemed to recover well at first, but in March started to grow weaker. In April she was diagnosed with long Covid. One of the main features of the extended version of the disease is a swelling on the heat and lungs which puts pressure on them and reduces their efficiency. The treatment of choice at the moment is supplemental oxygen, avoiding any kind of intense exercise, and waiting for the swelling to go down. So we're lugging O2 bottle around when we go out, and she's been scheduled for consultations with half a dozen assorted specialists. Best guess is that we're in this boat for another six months, give or take.
• My on-going symptoms faded around the end of February. But my better half remains worried on my behalf to this day. So I asked about attending the long Covid clinic and got the expected answer (I'm not sick enough to justify any of their overbooked time), and have restricted my exercise regime to low intensity (walk, don't run; go steady, not hard on the rower; very modest levels of moderate resistance training). I began to feel something like my old self again around late May. Mind you, the gray that appeared in my hair hasn't gone away like it did the first few times it showed up (always during a particularly stressful period in the last ten years or so). I tell my self that a little salt-n-pepper at the temples is "distinguished". Sometimes I even believe it.