The Politics of Uncertainty

摘要

What is uncertainty? There are of course several possible definitions, offered by different fields, from epistemology to statistics, but, in the background, one usually finds some kind of relation with the lack of information, in the following sense. Suppose we define semantic or factual information as the combination of a question plus the relevant, correct answer. If one has both the question and the correct answer, one is informed: "was Berlin the capital of Germany in 2010? Yes". If one has the question but the incorrect answer, one is insipient. If one has neither, one is ignorant. And if one has only the question but not the answer, then one is uncertain. Uncertainty is what a correct answer to a relevant question erases. This is why, in information theory, the value of information is often discussed in terms of the amount of uncertainty that it decreases. And this is also why there are many things in life that we value, but uncertainty is not usually one of them. At first sight, this may seem to be unproblem-atic, indeed obvious. What we actually value is information, understandable now as the appropriate combination of relevant questions and correct answers, the Qs and the As. We value information because it is power: power to understand what happened, forecast what will happen and, hence, choose now among the things that could happen between the past and the future. Marx and the past two centuries thought that power, understood as the sociopolitical ability to control or influence people's behaviour, was exercised through the creation or control of (the means of production of) things, i.e. goods and services. But it is equally clear that power is also exercised through the creation or control of (the means of production of) information about things, e.g. laws, statistics, news or technoscience. To use a trivial example, if you wish to buy a secondhand car, you value information about its past (was it involved in any accident? yes), its future (is it expensive to run? yes) and its present (should I haggle over the price? yes). The more information you have, the better you may shape your environment and control its development and the more advantage you may enjoy against competitors who lack such a resource.