Wisdom: The jewel in the dirt-pile of intelligence

“Everything is permissible, but not everything is helpful.” 1 Corinthians 10:23, International Standard Version

In my last thought piece on misinformation (Data ‘slop’ and disinformation emerge as systemic risks for investors), I noted the likely ballooning in quantity of ‘AI slop’ (AI generated information) that we will have to deal with in our search for meaningful information as time passes.

This reminded me of the TS Eliot quote, “Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?”.

This implies a hierarchy, where volume and value are inversely correlated. Think of a shallow-sided pyramid where there is masses of data at the bottom, which must be filtered into rarer information, which must be heavily filtered into knowledge, which in turn yields only a few nuggets of wisdom.

My argument in this piece will be that intelligence is not our goal – whether artificial or not. Our goal should be the much more valuable wisdom. Now, if we were to start hearing about ‘artificial wisdom’ then maybe we would be on the brink of something interesting…

In the Institute we have, occasionally, promoted the idea that ‘wisdom’ equals ‘what I should do on Monday’. If the implication is that we have spent the weekend in thought and reflection, and the emphasis is placed on the ‘should’, then maybe all is OK.

But in the absence of reflection, and if the emphasis is on the ‘do’, then we have likely introduced a bias to action which could run directly contra to wisdom. This piece will argue that a large part of wisdom lies in ‘not doing’, even though we could – or are tempted to.

The next idea I want to introduce is the Jevons paradox (see The efficiency trap). The paradox observes that increasing efficiency should lead to us using less materials, but we actually end up using more (because the price drop makes other uses newly viable).

Jevons was commenting on the efficiency of steam engines, which should trigger a fall in the use of coal. But cheaper coal led to more steam engines for more uses, and more coal was burned in total. Economic history from that time to the present is littered with similar examples.

Contrast this ‘reality’ with a story, possibly apocryphal, that I heard recently about an indigenous people group. They innovated a new fishing hook which made their fishing more efficient. Through the lens of our reality we would expect more fish to be caught, and to be put to more uses (feeding livestock, or selling).

Instead, they spent less time fishing. They enjoyed the same amount of fish, exerted no new pressure on fish stocks (sustainability!), and had more time to invest in social capital.

The fundamental difference between these two possible paths is best captured by the word ‘constraint’.

I will label the first path, of catching more fish and selling the excess, the ‘increasing financial capital’ path. It is relatively unconstrained. The same amount of time is spent fishing, the same amount of time can be invested in social capital, and the group will have more financial capital.

There is a big implicit assumption, however, that the new, higher rate of extraction is sustainable. If it isn’t… well that is a problem for the future. If the financial capital is stewarded wisely, it can possibly be converted back into fish later.

The second path I will label as ‘increasing social capital’.

There are a couple of possible implicit assumptions here (when viewed through a Western lens).

First, that the current rate of extraction is sustainable while a higher one might not be. And, second, that social capital is more valuable than financial capital. There is also a fairly heavy constraint – either self-restraint, or community-imposed – to catch fewer fish than they could.

So, which course of action is wiser – increasing financial capital or increasing social capital?

I am not claiming there is an easy or obvious answer to this question, as the Western and indigenous lenses may conflict. It will depend on the objective function, the time horizon and the beliefs.

However, one of them looks unarguably riskier (the financial capital path carries the risk of over-fishing). And, if we extend our time horizon to include multiple future generations, then the wiser course of action increasingly looks like the social capital path (there is less chance of existential risk).

To me, therefore, intelligence is a device for expanding the opportunity set, while wisdom is a device for shrinking it – “everything is permissible, but not everything is helpful”.

Now comes the hard part: how do we sift the dirt pile into those things we could, but shouldn’t, do – and those things that will be helpful over the long term (the jewels)?

Again, I cannot provide an easy or obvious answer. If I may, I refer back to a previous piece I wrote, titled What’s love got to do with it?.

In it I talked about head knowledge and heart knowledge, and argued that heart knowledge had access to all the same inputs as head knowledge but, rather than run them through a cost-benefit analysis, it ran them through a ‘love algorithm’.

I think this is the closest I can currently get to wisdom. If the proposed course of action expands the boundary of love – for others, for non-humans, for life not-yet-born – then it is likely to be wise.

If it shrinks the boundary of love, for example by inflicting cost on others, on non-humans or on lives not-yet-born, then it is probably intelligence rather than wisdom.

Tim Hodgson is co-founder and head of research of the Thinking Ahead Institute at WTW, an innovation network of asset owners and asset managers committed to mobilising capital for a sustainable future.