Public debates driven by incomplete scientific data: the cases of evolution theory, global warming and H1N1 pandemic influenza

Public debates driven by incomplete scientific data where nobody can claim absolute certainty, due to current state of scientific knowledge, are studied. The cases of evolution theory, global warming and H1N1 pandemic influenza are investigated. The first two are of controversial impact while the third is more neutral and resolved. To adopt a cautious balanced attitude based on clear but inconclusive data appears to be a lose-out strategy. In contrast overstating arguments with wrong claims which cannot be scientifically refuted appear to be necessary but not sufficient to eventually win a public debate. The underlying key mechanism of these puzzling and unfortunate conclusions are identified using the Galam sequential probabilistic model of opinion dynamics. It reveals that the existence of inflexible agents and their respective proportions are the instrumental parameters to determine the faith of incomplete scientific data public debates. Acting on one's own inflexible proportion modifies the topology of the flow diagram, which in turn can make irrelevant initial supports. On the contrary focusing on open-minded agents may be useless given some topologies. When the evidence is not as strong as claimed, the inflexibles rather than the data are found to drive the opinion of the population. The results shed a new but disturbing light on designing adequate strategies to win a public debate.Comment: 31 pages, 7 figure

Computing Information for Intelligent Society: Info-Computational Approach to Decision Making

With the powerful development of pervasive information-based technology, especially intelligent computing, the question arises: How do we imagine a future highly developed and humane (human-centered) intelligent information society? The answer will of course vary depending on time perspective. In a shorter-time perspective, we can try to anticipate based on the existing trends in the development. The first step is to understand the current state of the art of intelligent technology uses towards intelligent society. A longer-term perspective is more uncertain, as new intelligent technologies, especially in combination with biotechnologies and human augmentation and enhancement will be changing both the ways of being human as wellas the structures and behaviors of human societies, as argued by (Wu & Da, 2020) under the heading “The Impact of Intelligent Society on Human Essence and the New Evolution of Humans”. Wu and Da anticipate that the development of widely used AI technologies will lead to the evolution of the “human essence” that will lead to the convergence between social and biological evolution. That is a radically optimistic view that declares equality between the increase in human freedom with the disappearance of the necessity of regular human labor as a means to assure physical existence. In the future intelligent automated society, machines will secure the material basis of existence for everybody. It will remain to humans how to meaningfullyuse this newly conquered space of freedom