Egalitarianism and Democratizing Technological Know-How
This article is adapted from a research project relating to ethics and new technological knowledge
Given the present policy climate around technological democratization, open science, science communication, and public participation in policy-making, I believe the original ideas that had instigated my research into epistemic egalitarianism (unequivocal equality in knowledge production and access), originally to provide some philosophical scaffolding to some literary analysis I was doing on some science fictional works, have become more timely than when I first wrote it. The arguments could provide the starting point to developing more thoughtful policy recommendations and strategies when it comes to democratizing technical knowledge, and is therefore, useful for conceptualizing what it means to engage in responsible research and innovation, while contemplating exactly about who are the targets of such a responsibility.
EGALITARIANISM AND DEMOCRACY
How is epistemic egalitarianism achievable when it is seemingly at odds with the realities of practice where privilege, prestige, hierarchy, and authority (in many forms) are the drivers of the knowledge economy? Could the democratization of knowledge improve inequities, or would it merely lead to its own ethical issues through deontic constraints, whereby the democratic process must be preserved at all costs? In other words, should the democratization of knowledge be prioritized without a consideration of potential consequences, let alone presupposing what is beneficial or harmful? For example, if there are public fears over potential security hazards stemming from the application of certain emerging technologies, how far should we go when it comes to accounting for their fears in policy-making, and what level of engagement are we to expect from the public in making policy decisions over certain technologies, be it AI, nuclear or the quantum? How do technical experts, the public, and policymakers engage on an equal turf when each is already at a different starting point?
Firstly, epistemic egalitarianism is conceptually different from other forms of egalitarianism when it comes to the redistribution and allocation of resources in relation to welfarism, distributive justice, and utilitarianism. Epistemic allocation or distribution, from those who produce that knowledge to those at the receiving end, could not be as easily quantified. For one, whether that transferred knowledge is transmitted successfully, depends on what the receivers do with that knowledge; if they do nothing, there is no way to measure the quality of that transmission, let alone decide on the standard for quality assurance. Then, there is a need to consider the significance of that knowledge to evaluate the impact of that knowledge transmission in relation to outcome.
In addition, there is Robert Nozick’s notion of side constraints that is premised on how no personal rights are allowed to be violated. However, there is a slight naiveté to the claim when it comes to dealing with the complexity of even the best of intentions, such as in recognizing rights, even when that recognition could lead to unintended violence by causing the recognized party to be a target for persecution. Or, what if the party consents to a decision when they lack full comprehension of potential negative consequences? The complexity of consent in a connected world comes with new forms of insecurity brought about by how the flow of our personal information are increasingly black-boxed and non-linear. To further complicate the picture, there is also luck egalitarianism, where the knower, by virtue of being fortunately endowed with favored attributes, has ready-made advantages over their peers by being in possession of an informational privilege their colleagues do not have. Some may call it insider knowledge. Moreover, one need not be a technical expert to be endowed with this privilege.
Then, there are those who are in possession of knowledge not considered sufficiently valuable to be taken seriously, therefore making these knowers marginal members of their communities. Moreover, the objective value of that knowledge does not necessarily correlate with its acceptance. For instance, misinformed notions about that knowledge are just as likely to be accepted as it is for unpopular yet factually accurate knowledge to not be accepted. If we were to scale this across not just a cross-section of a community, but several communities, we may see certain patterns, yet not be able to arrive at any conclusive judgment over what is the most likely cause.
Given the issues raised, is epistemic egalitarianism an achievable goal? Maybe one could find a workaround by considering another aspect of ethics: epistemic justice. In epistemic justice, there is the concept of a knower (being a party with access to knowledge, and for the purpose of this article, I will refer to it as technological knowledge) who testifies to their relationship with that knowledge. In the process of testifying, they are able to accrue credibility through how their testimonies contribute to the development, transmission and final form of that knowledge while also becoming autonomous agents. However, to return to the earlier question around the different starting points of the different stakeholders, being the experts, public, and policy makers, how could we give equal weight to each community member’s testimonies, given that there is potential for heterogeneity (differing opinions and interpretations) in testimonies even within a single community?
EMERGENCE AND JUSTICE
Well, this is where I propose the concept of emergence, a philosophical term used in the philosophy of science to speak to how the starting point (therefore, starting knowledge base) need not dictate how a final understanding will emerge. Neither should there be a singular pathway for getting to that understanding — what is more important is how much of that knowledge could improve the agency of the knower, and if not knowing would create harm to their agency and rights. Of course, one would need to revisit the question of what exactly are these rights, and if any existing legal framework could sufficiently codify the right?
For example, one may desire to understand the intricacies of the different types of AI-like technologies, or the specifics of how different standards of quantum cryptography vis-à-vis non-quantum cryptography work. Perhaps the basal properties for understanding the conduct of these technologies are their underlying mathematics. Assuming this is the case, could there be more than one way to induce the necessary math literacy without expecting each person to undergo the same program of mathematics instruction? Some alternatives (rather simplistic for now, I would admit) could involve showing how and why the mathematics represents the building blocks or acts as a mediator of these technologies; then one could encourage direct engagement that leverages each party’s background knowledge.
Within the concept of emergence is weak emergence, which suggests that a reduction could happen when one merely presumes that a new possibility is the result of the interactions of basal parts, in the example given here, reduction does not mean that one reduces the importance, or waters down the mathematics. Rather, one could show how each different mathematical parts sums up to a bigger picture, and how these different small parts create the particular big picture outcome. The next question is, what are the operational and clear-cut steps to catalyze that emergence? Well this is probably where ethics (or even justice and democracy) are not merely about making an argument, but also about actively engaging with researching all established and emerging approaches to distributing knowledge, probably in active collaboration with experts who may not be experts in ethics or responsible innovation (whatever the latter may be), but who would still be interested in different ways of arriving at how we know.
There is still much to be said about what constitutes as necessary knowledge to have, that would be good to have, or that is merely optional. For now, we do not even have precedence with more established technologies, let alone emerging ones. If I choose to not want to know, because I do not want to deal with the complications of knowing, does that mean that the actors responsible for that knowledge, and the implementation of the technological effects of that knowledge, are no longer liable for any harm I could cause to myself in my act of embracing ignorance? But then, how could the responsible actors minimize the harm I may cause to others in the process of causing harm to myself, especially if my own irresponsibility creates a loophole that others (what some may call bad actors) could exploit to create harm?
AGNOTOLOGY
There are different ways of speaking about ignorance through what is known as agnotology (the culture of ignorance) but I will just state two of them. One is ignorance whereby the ignorant actor could merely be a cog in a wheel and therefore has no complete knowledge of what happens before and after them. For instance, the actor may be hired to be part of a crew to construct a very complicated structure, but has no understanding of what the structure could do, although they may have not problems understanding their part of of the job. Moreover, this actor may have no control or knowledge of how that structure would eventually be used (when they have no ownership), let alone the expertise that may be required to use that structure in a specific manner. The second kind of ignorance is when one chooses to misrepresent a knowledge one has no complete knowledge of because one is stubbornly insistent that one has a right to that opinion. Both could lead to varying degrees of harm, although how impactful that harm would be depends again on particular consequences.
Through the counter-perspectives from the two preceding paragraphs, I have shown that one could develop emerging ways of acquiring knowledge that do not fit conventional expectations in the same way that one could choose not to be party to that knowledge acquisition — both are still knowledge rights yet could create difficulties in reconciling epistemic egalitarianism with the right to agnotology. But let me return to the object that has inspired the discussion on knowledge rights — emerging technologies. In considering emerging technologies, we tend to think about the kind of technologies produced in legitimate and recognized prestigious laboratories, whether at research centers, universities, or the industry. But what if emerging technologies could be found in a shadow or underground economy?
SCIENCE FICTION
It might be more interesting to think through that argument with a fictional example such as this 1992 quantum-punk novel by Greg Egan called Quarantine. Borrowing the words of literary critic J Hillis Miller, Quarantine represents an emergent quality of fiction that is in possession of “a ghostly quality of presence within referentiality as reflection.” Yes, there are some ghost-like figures, but these ghosts are neither spirits of the dead nor comatose persons experiencing an astral projection. Instead, these ghosts represent the probabilistic spread of quantum measurement. These ghosts were living humans gifted with boundary breaking abilities to penetrate matter. It was a rather deliberate play at Schrödinger’s potential well barrier concept (quantum tunneling) and the many worlds interpretation that are less sexy or scary in reality (especially mathematically). Moreover, the ability of these living bodies to seemingly exist simultaneously (probably Egan’s own interpretation of that cat paradox problem) contradicts the no-cloning principle of quantum physics, although this event was important in moving the plot along in the novel, giving rise to a particular climax that is about a literal collapse of the world as we know it. However, the deployment of quantum mechanics in the novel was still ingenuous for a novel of that time, given that there were not many novels then that had developed quantum mechanics to such a level of world-building detail.
I will not spoil the plot for you, which is much more than the things I have mentioned here (so go read it). But for the purpose of argument, these ghostly beings represent a sort of ‘novel’ breakthrough of the unmentioned potential of quantum technologies, even if the realization was not entirely accurate. And these ‘ghosts’ also represent a disruption to the social order as the consequence of the main characters knowing the about the ‘secrets of physics.’ Then, there is another ethical dimension which concerns the deployment of a technology for altering one’s genes (something which is less of an impossibility now than it was back then due to developments in quantum biology). This seems to be a premonition about the democratization of gene editing that had also inspired a Netflix documentary, Unnatural Selection.
But what is ultimately the most interesting is the black/underground market (or what some would call a shadow economy) that was a big part of East Asia’s technological history during its period of intense industrialization and digital transformation. That you would go to one of these ‘markets’ to obtain a knockoff from the pirates was not something unfamiliar to a person who grew up in Asia. In Egan’s story, the knockoffs were not just some regular electronics and DVDs, but also brain implants that could modulate one’s emotions, among other things. As a trained computer scientist, the promises of quantum computing was certainly not alien to Egan, and he even put it in juxtaposition to biocomputing. You could see some of the inspiration for the varied (imagined) computational strategies that had appeared in the novel through his little explanation here. But as he said, better to read the novel before the explanation.
BELLY OF THE UNDERWORLD
As for the underground market that has since become more of a virtual affair with warez (earlier this century), torrent sites, nebulous pirate streaming sites, and also the darknet, one could speculate about the types of technologies emerging from the ‘underworld’ that counter the legitimate offerings. Obviously, the underground laboratory at this time may probably not have all the resources of the legitimate laboratory. However, one should never underestimate that the best hacks are not always the most expensive hacks. Moreover, why would one need to reinvent the wheel when one could instead, exploit the already-invented wheel? Nonetheless, in a world of the yin and yang, one could only understand the full impact of any emerging or already emerged technology by considering a version of their existence in the underground market, the shadow economy. If there is underground demand for stolen nuclear materials, why not for other technologies? What if one could go a step further beyond selling them merely the stolen goods, as is, such as in Egan’s story? Does not the co-existence the circulation of technology across these different spaces (and markets) represent a measure of epistemic egalitarianism?
I end by returning to the question of epistemic egalitarianism set in contention to agnotology: the right to know what one wants to know versus the right to not want to know. Or, the right to be allowed to know versus the exploitation of that knowledge in ways that become morally grey, if not downright illegal. And, the right to have equal knowledge regardless of one’s position in society. Even if we were to exclude the practices of secrecy from consideration, there are still the questions of who should be held responsible for knowledge distribution and who has the right to refuse the responsibility, both being party to the still unsolved emergent reckoning of what could really be called knowledge democracy.
