The wonder mindset and the dark sector
The other day someone suggested to me that I had a rigid mindset when it came to experiences. This was not meant as an insult but rather a description of why I often end up down rabbit holes trying to analyze situations that require none.
My rigid mindset goes something like this: I experience something that I see as problematic, I seek to understand why, I formulate hypotheses and try experiments to try to resolve it.
This is the scientific method more or less.
I identify three alternative mindsets from this one:
Traditional mindset: Try to fit it in with past experiences or lore and take action according to how authorities such as ancestors would have us take.
Sensate mindset: Experience it and do nothing at all but go on to the next experience.
Wonder mindset: Experience something and wonder about it, trying to integrate it into one’s sense of self and the universe but not try to fit to data or do experiments.
All of these mindsets are useful in their own way.
For example, in the case of natural disasters, indigenous people often survive because of their ancient lore which is passed down in the form of stories about battles between gods or evil spirits.
This happened with the 2004 Tsunami that killed 200,000 people where an ancient island tribe, seeing the water go out, a precursor to tsunamis, made for higher ground immediately because their ancient lore related this to battles between gods. It also happened in Nigeria at Lake Nyos when a lake belched out massive quantities of carbon dioxide, killing 1000s living around it. The ancient indigenous people there, however, always built their houses on stilts and away from the lower ground, while more recent immigrants lived on the lake shore.
You can’t knock ancient lore for its usefulness to cultures where oral tradition was the only way to preserve such information.
There are cases where simply doing nothing about an experience is also the right approach. For example, suppose I ate the most delicious cake I have ever had. I enjoy every bite and when it is gone I feel intensely satisfied. Is there anything I should do about that feeling? Should I eat 100 similar cakes in response? Clearly not! Do I need to know precisely why I enjoyed it? I could but there is no need unless I’m a food scientist. Experiences should be enjoyed or regarded appropriately but not necessarily multiplied nor avoided nor analyzed just because they are pleasant or unpleasant.
Wonder is a useful approach as well. Instead of doing nothing and going on the next thing, it can help to take some time to wonder about an experience, not to form hypotheses but to integrate them into our selves and our sense of identity and our relationship with the universe as a whole. This is especially true of emotions which are the surest expression of personal identity. Your feelings are an experience of who you are.
All of these approaches also have their downsides of course.
Ancient lore can be wrong or flat out dangerous. It doesn’t apply to new situations and new technologies either.
Moving on from an experience without addressing it can also be dangerous. For example, if at a work site, accidents happen frequently that is a case for action not fatalism.
Wonder also is useful except when it comes to questioning whether something works or not. Pseudoscience and the occult such as healing crystals, tarot, astrology, and so on depend heavily on the wonder that one gets from the mysterious. Coincidences can amplify that feeling when not addressed in a critical manner.
The scientific mindset is fundamentally useful in these situations, but my point isn’t that such a mindset triumphs over all but that each mindset has its place.
When we encounter phenomena in the world, we are driven to hypothesize about it and try to explain it. Yet, in the case of theoretical particle physics, I wonder if another mindset has taken over: the Wonder Mindset.
In the absence of data, hypotheses have been allowed to flourish unchecked. New particles are proposed all the time and thousands of papers written about them. This is especially true in quantum gravity but also dark matter and dark energy.
Consider that no one, 150 years ago, would have remotely considered the Standard Model of particle physics a sensible theory. In fact, it seems absolutely ridiculous in its complexity. Yet, data shaped it and made it the dominate theory of matter and energy. By comparison, General Relativity is elegant and simple.
Much of the noise being produced in the particle physics realm is precisely because of what is called the “dark” or “hidden” sector of physics, which, bluntly, are just the areas of physics (particle energies and masses) that we haven’t been able to probe.
Yet, how does it make sense to even propose a theory to explain something that isn’t even a detected phenomena? Our scientific mindsets exist to explain phenomena not to generate hypotheses where none are required.
Dark matter and energy are, of course, truly unexplained phenomena. Yet, there is very little that theorists can say about them other than to rule out obvious explanations without more data. Dark matter proposes there is a lot of transparent matter (or something that behaves an awful lot like matter). Dark energy more or less says that empty space has a fixed positive curvature.
The Wonder Mindset isn’t concerned about such things, however, because it is interested only in harmonizing the universe with one’s own feelings. For example, believing a solution is true because it seems beautiful or elegant to you is a wonder mindset approach.
I hypothesize that the wonder mindset, versus the other three, tends to be strongest when there isn’t enough data. You might call this the intuition or feeling mindset as well. When we don’t have enough information, we just do what satisfies our aesthetic or intuitive sense, what plays well with our imagination.
People who strongly adhere to the Wonder mindset tend to ignore data because they like to operate without it. They can believe anything they want.
But we are all susceptible to it, and it makes sense to enter that mindset in cases where feelings are primary or data is lacking. What else can we do?
In science, however, it makes more sense to hold back, to speculate perhaps, but to recognize that our speculations are precisely that. They hold no water.
Yet, the wonder mindset is deeply attracted to the dark sector because there is nothing there to delineate one idea from another. So there is nothing to stop one from harmonizing one’s feelings and intuitions about the universe with that sector.
Ultimately, data will come and all these ideas will vanish to dust. Whether anything is left over depends on who had the best feeling, who had the best intuition. Perhaps no one. After all, who would have intuited the Standard Model?