A week ago last Wednesday scientists reported discovering the largest coral on Earth in the Solomon Islands. Is this the largest coral on Earth though? Isn’t it more likely that they had only just discovered the biggest example they had ever seen? In the week that the scientists’ media release went viral online I reviewed photos I took of the same species in Indonesia. I am here to tell you that I reckon I’ve seen bigger … but that’s not the point.
What we don’t know often matters more than what we do. This is what fascinates me about our planet and why I devote my life to understanding how animals like us connect with it. Since accepting that complex systems defy understanding is the key to learning how to protect nature and ourselves. The publicity surrounding the Solomon Island coral is interesting but the way it’s been portrayed reveals some problems with how modern science, nature and conservationWhy is animal conservation important? Animal conservation is important, because animals are the only mechanism to create biodiversity, which is the mechanism that creates a habitable planet for humans. Without animals, the energy from today’s plants (algae, trees, flowers etc) will eventually reach the atmosphere and ocean, much of it as carbon. The quantity of this plant-based waste is so More interact.
It’s what we don’t know that matters
A coral is an animal that makes its living in the sea and it has the intelligence to connect with its environment. Many other intelligent animal species live on, in and around it. This forms a network to create a working ecosystemHow ecosystems function An ecosystem is a community of lifeforms that interact in such an optimal way that how ecosystems function best, is when all components (including humans and other animals) can persist and live alongside each other for the longest time possible. Ecosystems are fuelled by the energy created by plants (primary producers) that convert the Sun's heat energy More and that’s what our lives depend on. Science will never know enough to understand how that works. This is what I marvel at every day and it has made me a better scientist.
So, when we report on animals, we should be careful not to devalue this innate mystery and significance. We should be careful not to make ourselves the centre of attention or infer that we know more than we do.
Viral marketing using superlatives like ‘largest coral on Earth’ only serves to make a few scientists famous. However, it also popularises a limited and idealised view of our world. Some might argue that it elicits a fascination among people. But what about the local people who never read about it? They are part of nature too. They are also the source of wisdom and knowledge needed to protect it.
AI has emerged as our saviour but it’s a false prophet. It’s based only on what we know. If it doesn’t know something it makes it up.
Solomon Islanders don’t get a mention in the reports. It’s like the rediscovery of the ‘Attenborough Echidna’ in New Guinea. Presumably, in order to find these animals, scientists also had to use local trackers who knew where to look first. Also, the animal presumably knew it existed in some way, before someone came along and photographed it.
The internet and AI have become false prophets
Charlie Gardner recently posted a piece on LinkedIn referring to a Science article by the president of the US National Academy of Sciences. It reads ‘science is the best—arguably the only—approach humankind has developed to peer into the future, to project the outcomes of various possible decisions using the known laws of the natural world.’
In what is a generally good article, this line stands out for me, a contentious statement which speaks to the egotistical nature of modern science today. Telling the future is impossible and anyone who says otherwise is a fraud. Sure, we can issue short-term forecasts but we can’t accurately tell you what tomorrow’s weather will be like. You can’t even tell me exactly what day you’re going to next run out of toilet paper. When science is presented as fact, it can become a reason for not taking precautions.
What we can say is fact, is that the entire history of world science and the internet simply doesn’t include most of humanity’s history, let alone the timeless store of intelligence sitting in the minds of trillions of animals. That includes the millions of coral polyps that make up the Solomon Islands coral, who have had their survival intelligence passed down for 25 million years. It doesn’t matter how big that coral is. The fact any coral exists is significant. The internet and, of late, Artificial Intelligence (AI), has created both the illusion of, and a demand for, content that is subversive and unwise.
Telling the future is not possible
When it comes to protecting nature it’s not what we know that matters most. It’s what we don’t and how we act on that. Knowledge is irrelevant if the principles of protection aren’t properly grounded in the idea that nature is unfathomable. For example, we think AI has emerged as our saviour but it’s a false prophet. It’s based only on what we know. If it doesn’t know something it makes it up.
I was recently handed a translation of a traditional Ambonese folk song from Indonesia. We did try to translate it using Google AI. But it substituted the lyrics for something x-rated that I can’t repeat here. Google doesn’t know the language of half a million Ambonese. Neither could it find anything about the song’s origin online, so instead, I asked some local people. Their interpretation was far more accurate.
When I run conservation programs, we have shown time and time again, that local knowledge is way more accurate than scientific opinion. And collective wisdom always trumps opinion.
So, while the ‘largest coral on Earth’ example may seem arbitrary, it reveals how the minds of some scientists have become skewed. The scientists didn’t have to report their opinion that the coral was the largest on Earth. They could have told the story of how it was found. They could have written about the Solomon Islanders, or the significance of coral reef to the lives of millions of people.
Where there is collective reason there is possibility
People and wildlife who are still connected to landscapes behave more wisely. This cannot be interpreted by machines, understood by occasionally visiting scientists, or justified through viral stories. If the scientists behind the recent coral discovery were wiser, they would know the coral they found wasn’t the largest coral on Earth, only the biggest they had ever seen.
This is why AI is dangerous. It’s based on the notion that western knowledge is comprehensive and science is omniscient. But that’s a self-perpetuating myth. We have only written a portion of the collective consciousness of animals (one animal) into machines and let them learn from this miniscule subset of information. What appears online is tiny compared to the reality of nature and knowledge of humans who live outside a few westernised countries. We have taken that heavily biased interpretation, called it science and allowed it to alter our culture, to the point that even scientists are less likely to take precautions before calling evidence ‘fact’.
This doesn’t mean science is irrelevant at all. It does mean some scientists may need a metaphorical kick up the backside. Carl Sagan once said, ‘science is part and parcel humility.’ In defense of Marcia McNutt in Science journal, does point this out. Scientists should never be leading with their own opinion.
We need scientists more than ever to help communities realise the true possibility of nature protection and recovery. That means being honest and inclusive. It’s about recognising we don’t know where the biggest coral in the world grows … and finding out if need be, by asking people who have more knowledge. Then it means acting wisely, by acting on what we don’t know, rather than what we think we know.
