ABSTRACT: Eyeballs.
Science. News. Revelation/Inspiration, in no particular order.
However, note
that we all must question and verify every source of knowledge. For instance,
if you hear someone emphasize the word “unbiased” regarding a public-domain
news source, you should become deeply suspicious: why would the purveyors feel
they even need to say that? If you hear someone making a distinction between
science vs. religion, it is usually prima facie evidence that the
speaker doesn’t understand either. Our modern social electronic world is as
full of nontruth as our world was a thousand years ago – Surprise! Well,
what can we do about this? The short answer is that we should start with
what we are reasonably certain of.
There are really
just four distinct sources of knowledge available to all human beings. By
knowledge, in this case I mean information that is true. Just like a thousand
years ago, all of them, including our own eyes, must be verified – all
of them must be “truthed.” That sometimes requires looking for an underlying
motivation behind something that seems… off. Seems wrong.
DIRECT OBSERVATION
The first
source of information for all of us starting with infancy is our own eyes and
our own ears: direct observation. This seems simple, but it is very important for
two reasons: First, because we compare or scale all other sources of
information against what we are certain we know. And second, because witness
rules and procedures in courts of law make it clear that we cannot always rely
on eyewitnesses. Or even our eyes. As Richard Pryor said, “Do you believe me
– or your stinkin’ eyes?!??” We should at least think about what we saw
with our eyes; quite a few innocent men have been executed because of faulty or
biased eye-witness reporting. There is a compelling reason why any good
scientist takes copious notes of her/his observations – our memories are the
weak link here, not our eyes.
Let’s begin
by considering in detail the first source of knowledge: our own personal
observation. It is very rare in science to be able to conduct direct
observation, believe it or not. If it were easy, the Greeks, Maya, Chinese, and
others without instrumentation would have already answered all our scientific
questions. Examples include the fact that the Earth is not flat; Greeks by the
5th century BC noticed a curved shadow on the Moon during Lunar
eclipses, and even reported an observation of sunlight penetrating to the
bottom of a well in Southern Egypt – and noting that it didn’t do this in
Greece. Eratosthenes is believed to be the first person to determine the size
of the Earth – through measurement – in the 2nd century BC. A
century later, Posidonius, a Greek astronomer and mathematician, calculated the
circumference of the Earth, the Sun, and the Moon. Greek observational
science was not perfect, however: even Aristotle, revered for millennia as a brilliant
scientist, thought hummingbirds did not have feet. Really.
SCIENCE
Now let’s
consider a second source: science. In order to “do” science, we must depend in
almost all cases on indirect observation through carefully controlled
experiments, and then the use of inductive and deductive reasoning. A
rare exception from my personal life: I was in Northern Saudi Arabia after one
of the terrible seasonal sandstorms called a Shamaal. There was so much
dust in the air that initially we could not even land at the town of ‘Ar-‘Ar –
the pilot could not see the ground! Many hours later, after waiting at a Saudi military
airbase to the west in Tobuk, we returned and started our borehole logging
experiments. I was leading this effort to determine if we could indirectly
map the huge phosphate deposits in the region using caliper and gamma-ray
logging. Late that first afternoon, I realized that with my unprotected eyes I
could see a huge sunspot cluster on the upper left quadrant of the setting Sun.
I diagrammed it in my field notebook. I did this again the second day, missed the
third day for some reason, but got it again the fourth day. I realized that
with direct personal observation – with my own eyes – I could determine the axis
of the Sun with respect to where I was standing, and its approximate rotation
rate at the equator (I roughly calculated at least 20 days – it’s
actually 27 at the Sun’s equator). In my internet research, I do not see any
evidence that the ancient Greeks, Chinese, or Maya were able to do this. I
saw this with my own eyes and recorded it. I know it absolutely to be
true.
For the
purposes of the following discussion, you do not need a science degree or even
use the word “science” if you are talking about sources of verifiable information
guiding you. You could say “knowledge” or “data” or “understanding” when it
comes to explaining what you are reasonably certain is correct based on the
reliability of the source. I carefully added that qualifier “reasonably” to
that sentence – because much “information” available in the public domain is not
fact-based. Someone just pulled it out of their ear and yelled loudly about it
to get advertising credits. It’s a sleazy business model: to monetize anger. It
has also led to the unnecessary deaths of many mentally susceptible
people during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Elsewhere I
have made a separate distinction between truth, and Truth – the
latter with a capital “T” – to distinguish between information that is ephemeral,
and information that will not be revised in the future but is always that same
information. The Sun will rise tomorrow, for instance, though you may not see
it. Also, the nature or existence of God is something that should be
unchanging, essentially by definition. It really should not be something
that changes with temporary human fashion or culture or group opinion-swings.
Fundamentally, if there is a Creator God, and He isn’t just a Transcendent
God but an Imminent God who cares about His creations, then He should, by
definition, be far beyond our comprehension. Similarly, the detailed evolution
of the universe around us is permanently beyond our comprehension, though as
scientists we get tiny, enthralling glimpses of it. We just do not have the
wherewithal in the way of synapses to encompass a full understanding of either.
To suppose otherwise is an incredibly arrogant assumption that implies that we
are equivalent to God or the Universe.
I will here
also make a distinction here between short-term correct information (for
instance, a weather report) and long-term correct information. The latter I
will call Important Information. By this I mean long-term things, things that
you would consider or think about if you or a loved one are/is approaching the
end of life, for instance. Weather reports are an important source of useful information
that we often consider as we go about our daily lives. My wife and I drove
through a Sky River on November 12, 2021 – we had not checked the weather
reports – and it was terrifying. The time scale is important here, however. On
November 9, 2021, there were gale warnings for Port Townsend, WA, which we were
visiting. The next day it was calm and sunny in Port Townsend. However, a
weather report is well below the threshold of Important Information in terms of
what is meaningful ten years from now – or 100 years from now. Is something
important to you – or even relevant – 100 years from now? If so, then it fits
in the category of Important Information.
Let’s continue
to consider science as a source of information to help guide our
decisions, and improve our lives. In science we acquire data, but we must also process
and interpret it – data generally don’t explain themselves to the
non-specialist – and then report our findings. As scientists, we think through
our research results carefully, and then decide what it means. I’ve published
over 300 books, maps, and scientific papers while working as a scientist with
the U.S. Geological Survey – and they all must go through technical review.
This means that at least two other people – whom I do not choose – must read
through my draft papers and vet them for consistency and correct logic. A
science manager then reads through all the reviews and the revised draft to
make sure that the final result is true. Do cigarettes
improve your digestion after a big meal? That was the public consensus until
1965. By then however, enough data had been gathered to make a reliable
interpretation that no, the cigarette company ads were incorrect at best. By
1965 science knew that any benefits beyond addiction-management were outweighed
by the irreparable damage that cigarettes did to your lungs, your heart, your
face, and your brain.
But for
scientific data to be reliable, you must first ascertain that you have
enough of it to even make a judgement or interpretation in the first place.
In science, this is called the sampling number, or “n” in an experimental
investigation. A single experiment with a binary outcome (for instance just a
yes or no) on a single parameter is not science. One of my uncles chain-smoked
for 85 years and lived to the age of 97. That’s just a single data-point in a
nicotine-benefits study. The second-hand smoke gave his mother-in-law, my
grandmother, terminal lung cancer by age 88, however. These are just TWO
data-points, and there are a lot of additional unseen variables.
You need a
large enough “n” to even carry out a reasonable statistical analysis of the
data you acquire. A state-level cancer dataset would qualify. Which state has
the lowest numbers of cancer deaths overall, for instance? Would you be
surprised to learn that it is Utah (https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/cancer_mortality/cancer.htm)?
Then can you suggest why? This raises an even more fundamental issue, however:
is something even testable or “experimentable” in the first place? The
philosopher Carl Popper (1902-1994) gave to the world the concept of
“falsifiability”: can something even be tested in the first place? The
existence of a God, the existence of a multiverse, what preceded the Big Bang,
why is the Anthropic Principle… these are not things that can be tested
in the ordinary meaning of a scientific investigation. These belong in another
domain sometimes called meta philosophy: sort of thinking about philosophy.
They are just big ideas that make us feel warmly smug that we can think about
them, but otherwise (unless there is an application) they are useless to humans
and their well-being. These things constitute Important Information, but
science cannot help us here.
The concepts
of a large enough sample (that “n” number), along with falsifiability, are
profoundly important. But there is another almost hidden issue: any large
number of data points will always include noise: systemic
noise, random noise, instrumental noise, as well as experimental design biases.
There is no such thing as a perfect experimental approach, no matter what some NSF
grant proposal might assert. In a simplest case example, let’s consider a
single variable set, for instance adult height vs. weight. In simplest form, this
can be represented as y = a + b*x. The variable “a” is how much one weighs when
X (one’s height) is zero – and is just included for general completeness here. One
would think that the result would be a straight (upward-tilting) line, but
we’ve all seen skinny and obese individuals, so it’s more complicated than
that. Data points collected can easily be scattered all over an X-Y graph. If
you have sufficient data, there will be data points that are “outliers” – well
off the beaten path of what we think might be reasonable results. This
could be a morbidly obese individual or someone suffering from anorexia. If
there are enough sample points, we can do a quick statistical analysis and
determine if a suspicious point is more than, say, two standard deviations away
from the average trend of the rest of the data. Some immature scientists might
even just discard a data point that they don’t “like” – but this becomes “cherry
picking” and is no longer science. That scientist has introduced a new variable
– personal sampling bias – into the data analysis.
We can
arbitrarily decide to throw out data points on a graph that lie more than two
standard deviations away from the rest of the data… but this is an arbitrary
decision also. Why not one standard deviation? Or three? Depending on how we carry
out one of these arbitrary data-discard exercises, a “regression” – drawing a
line (generally but not necessarily straight) through the data-points on that
simplest X-Y graph – could tilt the function curve upwards (increasing weight
with increasing height) or downwards (decreasing weight with increasing height).
In this example (see figure 1) I am only talking about a very simple,
two-variable system. You can represent it on a 2D graph, on a single piece of
paper.
Another simple
example from our recent trip to the Hoh Rainforest: How many seagulls show up
if I throw crackers out into a parking lot in Forks, WA? This seems like an
example of a simple scientific experiment. Or is it? Perhaps the final greatest
problem with any scientific experiment is to isolate variables. Dependent
variables are the nightmare of any scientific study. Toss out too many crackers
and all sorts of birds (and perhaps squirrels) will show up, for instance. Throwing
out just saltine crackers only, where a Western Gull only is likely to see it,
is a personal experimental design bias in the form of several assumptions that
may not be justified. Are there crows or scrub jays around? How would I even
know that since they generally don’t want to be seen? These are examples of
hidden, or missed, or dependent variables. When there is a lot of “scatter” in
experimental data it almost always means that there are additional variables or
biases affecting our data – complicating things that we may not even realize
are there. Gravity, or wind, perhaps in this case. Different bird types that we
do not see, perhaps. Some weirdness or blind spot in our data-collection
system, or our electronic recording devices, or the species of surrounding
trees, even. A more accurate solution could be a 4-D (or 19-D) graph (figure 1).
Related to this is the issue of accuracy vs. precision. If I keep shooting arrows at a target and they consistently land around a single point on the ground, well, I have precision here. If they end up consistently in the center of the target, then this is accuracy. Precision or repeatability in measurements or data-gathering does not lead to Important Information, because the results may not be correct. The trick, then, is to assess accuracy.
Figure 1. Regression analysis involves fitting a straight
line (or sometimes a simple curved function) to a scatterplot of data. One or
two noisy data-points can dramatically shift the result. Image from Gonick & Smith (1993), "The cartoon guide to Statistics" Collins Reference.
All of this
is a long way around saying that science is always imperfect, just like news
(see figure 2). Science is a growing, organic thing, very dependent on
human or data-gathering limitations, and biases. Science must be constantly
tested, self-checked, and compared against older data – and technically
reviewed. Those who worship science as the be-all, end-all of creation, do
so at great personal risk. This actually has a name: it’s called Scientism.
Another way of putting this: you think you’re smarter than the universe.
As an
example of how this imperfect scientific process might affect our very lives
and health, consider the science we all saw unfolding in how to deal with the
SARS-COV-19 virus in 2020-2021. The virus in its many manifestations, social contexts
and variables including different spike proteins, social isolation, age, health,
and the wealth of human victims is an experimental scientific nightmare.
Stopping the Pandemic so far still seems so… incomplete... after nearly two
years of evolving and expensive medical and governmental responses to it. Grotesquely
amateur political interference made things worse, of course, but the nature of
science is that there are always too many variables and internal biases to
realistically take them all into account.
In a way,
the progression of data-gathering, and the evolving analyses we’ve seen during
the Covid-19 Pandemic are characteristic of the very nature of good science: it
is a growing, evolving thing. It is being conducted by very fallible human beings
but keeps getting better. Science is approaching the Correct
Answer(s), and every month the recommendations are more reliable, more useful.
Masks? Different vaccines? Boosters? Lockdowns? Confronting self-serving,
deliberate misinformation? These changing issues are just science happening in
public view, self-correcting (ideally) and advancing in the right direction
(hopefully). To make the assumption that an early interpretation of that
data must never change is unrealistic – and profoundly uninformed. Science approaches
truth as a final product. Except in very limited and simple systems, it never
actually quite gets there. It’s far better than rabid, uninformed opinion,
however. It’s like the famous Winston Churchill quote:
“Many forms of Government have been tried and will be
tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect
or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of
Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to
time.…” – Winston S Churchill,
11 November 1947
NEWS/INTERNET
Let’s next
consider sources of publicly available knowledge – the hope here
is that all the research has already been done for us. Let’s start with,
ahem, “news.” Many consider the New York Times, the Associated Press, and the
Wall Street Journal to be reliable sources of information. There are some
people who prefer Fox or InfoWars or MSNBC or the Daily Kos as their source of
information because it complements something that they already believe to be
true or correct (usually of a political nature). In logic, this is called a
“confirmation bias.” In some cases, it is the akin to pouring gasoline on a
dangerous fire.
The Pew
Charitable Trust finances studies on polling and biases. It has had an unbiased
reputation itself for decades because it is in their mission statement
to avoid bias. Ad Fontes (“to the source”) is related and does the same. They
are both careful in their assessments, and deliberately apolitical. Pew ranks
the NYTimes and the Associated Press as sources of reliable facts and
information. It considers Fox News, and especially InfoWars and the Daily Kos,
to be well outside of a green box (below) surrounding what Pew considers
reliable sources of data, and far to the right or left politically. In other
words, Fox, InfoWars, and the Daily Kos are not sources of reliable information
according to Pew, but sources of wildly skewed opinion that is generally not
fact-based. Fox TV personalities, for instance, rail against vaccines on air. Yet
it is established fact that every one of them is vaccinated. There are
sources on both ends of the political spectrum that Pew and Ad Fontes consider
to be unreliable (figure 2).
Figure 2. Ranking of news sources according to political
bias and reliability. The green box is the place to trust. The orange, and
especially the red boxes, include sources to avoid if truth is important to
you. Image from Ad Fontes Media, Inc. (2018).
In general,
we should carefully avoid basing major life decisions (like vaccination) on
anything political and/or not fact-based – on sources outside the Green Box in
the figure above.
REVELATION
Now let’s
take a significant jump and consider a fourth source of information:
revelation. Another way to say this: otherwise-unexplainable information from a
completely outside source, a Source we may already realize is committed to
not violating our personal agency so usually doesn’t explain itself. We all
know examples of people who somehow “know” something important without an
obvious reason why. In one type of example, we even have a name for this: a
mother’s intuition. My own mother once put my baby sister in a highchair out in
the backyard of our house. She wanted Barb to get fresh air and sunlight
(before UVA/UVB was understood to contribute to skin cancers). Suddenly (I
remember this) she rushed out of the house. She said later that she had a “bad
feeling” about the baby being out there but didn’t understand why. As she
picked up the baby and started to dismantle the highchair to bring it back
inside, she saw something move on the underside of the table part: a huge black
widow spider. It had been within centimeters of my little sister’s legs.
Unexplainable,
outside source, un-asked-for information.
Two Different Depths
An analysis
of revelation as a source of Important Information must be done at two separate
depths or scales: personal revelation, and revelation at a much larger scale: from
someone we implicitly or explicitly trust. This could be a parent, a teacher, a
prophet (ancient or modern). If you are paying tithing, it strongly implies a
belief and acceptance in a prophet or leader of a church as a reliable source
of truthful information and guidance. I personally know people who fiercely
object to vaccines and masks, though they claim to be members of the Church of
Jesus Christ and say that they follow its prophet. If you don’t agree with that
leader on, say, vaccination or masks, and you still pay tithing and attend that
Church, then you are suffering a serious rational disconnect in your life. This
is the equivalent of gross hypocrisy in conversation – or even schizophrenia. What
else don’t you agree with him on?
Reading Scriptures &
Prayer
Perhaps the most consistent way to receive
personal revelation is by reading the scriptures, and in personal prayer. It’s unsurprising
that prophets for millennia have encourage the human family to study the
scriptures available to it. There is a downside to this approach, however: the
revelation you want may not be the revelation you get. If you do
as modern prophets have suggested – “search the scriptures” – instead of
just reading them from start to finish, you may be able to improve the
efficiency of the want/get convergence here. Of course, if you have not read
the Standard Works through a few times already, you won’t really have any idea
what to even search for, Topical Guide notwithstanding.
Worthiness
There
is another issue here that is perhaps the most important of all: being in tune.
In short, worthiness is critical. Years ago, I worked with Venezuelan
geology teams in the deep jungle of the Amazonas Territory (now Amazonas State).
It was incredibly dangerous, where things like Bushmaster snakes were the least
of our worries. One Venezuelan friend fell on his machete and sliced open his
right radial artery. The USGS geologist that I had assigned to work with Henry
said he saw a 2-meter spurt of arterial blood shooting out. He managed to stop
the bleeding and together they called for an emergency medevac on their HF camp
radio. There was someone listening on the frequency we used, and that someone
called for a rescue helicopter. Henry Sanchez lost perhaps a third of his blood
(he went into shock if he wasn’t upside down in the aircraft) but he lives in
Tucson today. Another American scientist working in a different jungle camp
came back to our base a week later and told me that they could listen to
the rescue, but that their radio could not transmit. Gary had no idea
that Henry had even survived. This is a long way of saying that you need a means
to communicate that works in both directions, you need to have
someone listening, both ways, and you need to be using the right
frequency.
In the
radio world there is a lot of information floating out there. You must
tune into the transmission you seek. If you are not in tune with the Holy
Ghost, because you are living a lifestyle dissonant with Him, then you can’t
really expect that He will be terribly encouraged to even deal with you. You
are not working on the same frequency. You cannot just yell “SAVE ME!” Or
perhaps say, “I really like that flashy car – I need it. What? Well, no,
I don’t have money – I don’t even have a job! You, God (somehow) owe it
to me.” This sort of discordant thinking almost never works, the Prodigal Son
being a notable (and for many of us, encouraging) exception.
Testing
You must also
consider the data reliability issue for personal revelation, just like in
science, news, and even personal observation. Revelation must be testable, and
this part can be frustrating because the process takes a long time to verify.
Here there is yet another advantage to arriving at an advanced age. If you have
received “understandings” (or whatever you wish to call them), and they are self-consistent
and pan out over time, then you will have steadily increasing confidence in
those understandings – revelations – if they arrive the same way. You have a
growing database, so to speak. This often means in my personal experience that you
are not thinking about the subject when the understanding arrives. With age,
you will begin to note that the understanding or revelation does not even come
into your mind in English or whatever language you tend to think in… but
arrives as an instantaneous understanding. More commonly, the understanding
is just a peaceful feeling in the midst of a personal disaster or general
chaos. This even has a specific name: “The peace that surpasseth understanding.”
I first experienced this after I had passed the written physics qualification
exam at the University of Illinois, an exam to decide if you could go on to
work on a PhD. That year, however (1970) there were over 1,500 graduating
physics PhDs – and available jobs for just 236 of them in the United States.
It’s amazing how I can still remember those specific numbers, many years later.
The University of Illinois had decided to drastically cut back on their physics
graduate student population: the post-atomic-bomb era was officially over: the
country no longer needed hundreds of thousands of physics PhD’s. So, the
Physics department that year added an oral component to the Quals, as we
called them. This I failed miserably, meaning that I could not stay at the
university beyond that semester. I faced a real personal disaster that also
affected my wife, who had a year to go to finish her BA degree. As we stared into
the sunset through the window of our little apartment, however, I had an
incredible feeling of peace, of not-to-worry. This, I now realize, comes
from the Atonement. Peace that mitigates suffering. That sense of peace is always
remarkably devoid of details – it “…surpasseth understanding.” In other
words, it usually makes no logical sense. Only four years later did I finally
understood that sense of peace.
It works.
It’s very real. I’ve experienced it many times.
Less
commonly, a revelatory understanding arrives with very specific information.
In another personal example, which happened on June 7, 1995, the message to me arrived
at the most comically illogical time. It came in the middle of a contentious
meeting between the Saudi Deputy Ministry for Mineral Resources, the US
Geological Survey, and the French counterpart of the USGS in Jeddah called the Bureau
de Recherches Géologiques et Minières. Angry words were being exchanged and I
was just keeping my head low to avoid being drawn into what I had earlier
realized was just another example of Saudi paranoia… but which my French
colleagues had yet to realize was not even a rational discussion. Suddenly, a
diamond-hard, instantaneous understanding hit me. The message: “The time to
leave Saudi Arabia is in October – Do not worry about this. This is in answer
to your prayers for the past 18 months concerning your wife’s declining health.”
When this bright and very sharp understanding arrived, I nearly fell out of my tilted-back
chair.
I walked
home and unpacked that understanding, converting it to English to share with my
wife. To us it made no sense initially… because our children would normally
start school in August. This particular revelation arrived four months before
our departure from the Magic Kingdom, as we called it. Months later we realized
that the specific timing saved me from a Reduction in Force in the US
Geological Survey… that took place with almost no warning in August 1995. It
also meant that one son could finish his senior year in his Swiss boarding
school, and not in a Virginia high school where he knew no one. He ended up
totally fluent in French as a result. Five hours after that revelation arrived,
I learned that the Saudi Deputy Minister had sent an order down through the
chain of command: “Order Jeff Wynn to stop practicing his religion.” From the
context, I realized that the Mutawa, the Saudi religious police, had been
following us to our at-that-time-illegal Church house-meetings on Fridays.
This was actually
part of a larger Kabuki Theater exercise where an Assistant Deputy Minister
was trying to mess with the mind of the Deputy Minister – whose job he
wanted. However, that Deputy Minister was not stupid, and had already
anticipated that his deputy would trigger a mass arrest of the LDS people in
Jeddah at that time. This would have meant that half our Jeddah Ward population
– Filipino brothers and sisters – would have been beaten and then deported with
a massive loss of an annual income. However, with five hours of warning, I was
prepared. When I got the Stop Practicing Your Religion message, I immediately
offered my resignation from the USGS mission to Saudi Arabia… and requested reassignment
to my former job in the United States. About 40% of the USGS Geologic Division
was RIF’d in August 1995, and I returned in October.
To recap
the revelatory patterns: revelation usually but not always arrives unbidden,
though you may have been thinking and praying about the subject off and on for
months or even years beforehand. It arrives sometimes as a profoundly peaceful
feeling that makes absolutely no sense considering the circumstances. Sometimes
it arrives as a sharp, clear, instantaneous Understanding that must be unpacked
and converted to English in order to share it with others.
When you
find yourself suffering through one of the many Bad Times in your life, be
prepared: sometimes it takes 2 – 4 years to even see the Light at the End of
the Tunnel. Pain and sadness don’t turn off like a faucet with a magical
prayer. I got my PhD in Geosciences with an Electrical Engineer as a thesis
advisor four years after failing the physics oral qualifying exam in
Illinois. It was in a different field (I became a geologist, geophysicist, hydrologist
and oceanographer, with publications in astrophysics and archaeology). It
opened up huge opportunities for my family – they have all lived in multiple
countries on diplomatic passports and are all multi-lingual.
Sometimes revelation
arrives in response to prayers about how to fulfill an aspect of a Church
calling – it usually arrives as a quiet, clear idea about what to do. When this
fourth and most common revelation happens, it almost always arrives for me, at
least, as a clear understanding before I can even kneel down to pray for help…
and I generally smile, get down on my knees anyway, and just say thanks.
Thus,
knowledge comes to us, imperfect human beings, in at least four different ways,
with many variants and complexities in each of the ways or sources. I think it’s
reasonable to say that there are probably as many variants as we are each
different people. Note, however, that if we don’t make a sincere effort to
verify – truth out – our sources of knowledge, we run the risk of making
life-changing decisions based on incorrect information, decisions that we may regret.
If not done
carefully, we could regret those decisions forever.
