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Thursday, September 17, 2020

The World According to Bret

The world is really complicated. I can't figure it out anymore. That's one reason I haven't been blogging much. I find myself unable to put together any coherent arguments with sufficient context to make sense to anyone including myself.

Consider the following image:

You've probably seen this illusion before or at least one like it. The two circles are the same color (yellow). Yet they look completely different because of the context. And the context is kinda similar: a bunch of greenish and purplish stripes.

I subscribe to only one newspaper: The New York Times. It's somewhat left of center in the political spectrum of the United States. I read a number of blogs, most of them to the right of center.

What is striking to me is the difference in context between the left of center New York Times and the right of center media that I read. They can take the exact same yellow circle and make it look completely different.

A trivial example is "mostly peaceful protests." If you have 100 protestors and 95 of them are perfectly peaceful and 5 are not peaceful, it is, by definition, a mostly peaceful protest. Indeed, it's 20 times more peaceful than a protest in which all 100 people were not peaceful.

Now we can build a context around the "mostly peaceful protest." We can focus on the 95 peaceful protestors and their message and their treatment by their ideological opposition and by police and authorities. Perhaps they were tear gassed. Perhaps the were forced to stop protesting. Perhaps they have a very important message that's being stifled. And so forth.

Or our context can be what the 5 not peaceful protestors are doing. Perhaps they're attacking police. Perhaps they're burning dumpsters or even buildings. Perhaps there's other violence: arson, rape, even murder. Our context can be full of the lawlessness and chaos of the non peaceful protestors and can be quite frightening. And so forth.

Same story either way, but radically different contexts which causes radically different optics and impressions.

When I was 15 I was a communist. At 30 I was a libertarian. At 45 I was sort of a conservative. Now? I'm the devil's advocate. Whatever you tell me, I have a strong inclination to argue the opposite. Fortunately, I've also learned to mostly keep my mouth shut because, let me tell you, always taking the other side doesn't tend to make a lot of friends!!

When advocating for the other side, I often am told, "I can't fathom why you believe X, I've just provided evidence that contradicts it!!!!" But that evidence is like the circle above. I said the circle is yellow and they showed me a circle that looks orange within their context, within their perspective, the context on the left. To me the circle looks (or at least can look) yellow, because I can see the circle within the context on the right.

I often try to estimate how many (English) words it would take to fully describe an issue. For example, I estimate that to fully describe race relations in the United States with complete context would be more than a trillion words. I've perhaps read a million words on the subject and based on that extremely incomplete yet still significant knowledge I have developed a certain feel/intuition about the subject.

If you now show me a one-thousand word article that doesn't match that intuition, it's not gonna affect me all that much. Why? First, like every human I suffer from confirmation bias and I tend to discount things that don't fit within my worldview. Second, even if I get over my confirmation bias, you've shown me one-thousandth the information I've already processed, a lot of it already in conflict, so it wouldn't make sense for me to suddenly ignore everything I "know" and adopt a completely new perspective based on this small new bit of evidence you've shown me. Third, while your new information looks like an orange circle within the context you've provided, I probably don't share that context so the circle looks yellow to me.

To put it another way, I know a millionth of what there is to know about race relations, you then showed me a billionth of what there is to know, and either way we'll both continue to swim in a vast sea of ignorance regarding that particular subject with alarmingly incomplete and distorted contexts. Oh sure, I may be off by a couple of orders of magnitude with my estimates but the gist remains the same.

That's one subject. There are millions of subjects with similar complexity so that sea of ignorance becomes a universe (multiverse?) of ignorance.

Given that ignorance is bliss, I'm apparently so blissed out that I'm unaware of it!

Have a blissful day!

24 comments:

Clovis said...

It looks like you are wrestling with epistemological questions.

Which means you entered a black hole, sucking minds since at least ancient Greece. Good luck with that :-)

erp said...

True, much better to just drink the Koolaid.

erp said...

Sorry, I wasn't clear. my comment above is addressed to Clovis.

Clovis said...

I prefer beer, Erp.

Bret said...

I'm not contemplating epistemological questions because I suddenly think it an interesting branch of inquiry in and of itself. It's because I'm seeing not only a vast amount of hatred and conflict because people are looking at circles and seeing different colors, but rather that people I care about are panicked, stressed, depressed, etc. because of these fundamental difference in perspective and it's significantly hurting them both healthwise and well-being wise at level that's orders of magnitude higher than the effect changing presidents will possibly have.

I'd like people, especially those I care about, to understand that even though things look radically different because of perspectives, the differences are actually pretty small.

How do you propose I go about doing that?

erp said...

Bret,

My neighbor went to a therapist for the exact problem you describe and he told her to stop watching television.. Not joking. She stopped and is much better now. I haven’t watched any TV in many decades and it was bad then. I just read the new kiddie porn movie was the 4th most watched TV show ever.

🤨

Bret said...

erp,

I don't watch TV and stopped using social media (eg. Facebook) more than a year ago because yeah, I found it upsetting. I wasn't upset that people have different views or that they strongly dislike Trump or whoever or whatever, but rather I was finding friends hating friends because of those different views. And many of those views different simply because of preference and context amplified into extreme positions by relentless exposure to extreme misleading (if not false) claims.

Clovis said...

Bret,

I presume you now have a Never Trump daughter at home too, by the tone of your words.

I am many years behind you in that curve, so I will be the last one to give you suggestions on that. Yet, for the sake of logic, I don't think an argument on the impossibility of knowledge (which is your post in this thread) will square very well with your objective there, which is how to deal with the little knowledge we have (and also the vast ignorance most don't even recognize).

On the upside, I'd like to give you my opinion about this sheer amplification of differences and the anguish it generates on people. Oldsters like you and me may find it hard, and we need to take a step back to actually deal with it (I gave up on social nets before you). But for the youngers who grew up with it, it is going to be like a virus: it will kill people (suicide rates are up among them, reportedly in connection to social networks), but the survivors will be stronger.

erp said...

Exactly.

However the people who are bothered apparently are women like my neighbor who think the people on TV shows are their friends. I think the word ‘friends’ is in the title of some of the shows.

They say horrendous things about Trump and she’s actually afraid for her safety. You gotta give the media credit they know how to play up to their audience.

Men seem more disturbed by his lack of smoothness of discourse, etc. not realizing that the reason for it is the media actually prints what he says. With foreign leaders, he wants to make sure they get it that the day of bowing and deference from US leaders is over.

To paraphrase Golda Meir, Vote as if you love freedom more than you hate Trump.

Clovis said...

Erp,

I give you that: you were operating on social media mode way before computers were a thing!

A visionary woman.

Bret said...

Clovis,

My daughters certainly won't vote for Trump and I have absolutely no problem with that. Or with them for that matter. I guess they saw me as devil's advocate for so long that they have healthy skepticism and resilience and they aren't overly bothered. Passionate? Yes. Bothered, overly stressed, anxious, panicked, depressed, etc.? No. So they'll passionately vote against Trump but aren't suffering mental and physical health issues because of him. And so I'm very pleased about that.

Other family members and friends, on the other hand, have been adversely impacted and I'm afraid it will literally kill my mother if Trump is re-elected. At best she'll be really depressed and that's sad because she's been pretty vibrant and strong prior to his election. She absolutely doesn't use any social media but the TV seems to be enough.

So when you say "it will kill people" unfortunately I think that "it" is not just social media but all media. And I don't see us getting stronger as a society. I'm hearing things from young people (fortunately NOT my daughters) like, "if Trump is re-elected there's no use continuing on at college - it's all gonna collapse anyway," and from the other side (yes, some young people are pro-Trump), "if Biden/Harris are elected we're gonna be communist so why bother?" In other words, significant swaths of society are just gonna give up. Hopefully, they're just saying that, but I am somewhat worried.

erp said...

Bret, They don't know what it means.

erp said...

Clovis, I don't know what your comment means?

Clovis said...

Erp,

Let it go, it was a minor jest.

Clovis said...

Bret,

---
Hopefully, they're just saying that, but I am somewhat worried.
---

The vast majority are just blowing steam, though their psychological suffering right now is real.

The long term damage is less about any policy the campaigns may differ at, but the erosion of trust. So I guess that, if the population is going to get immune against the "virus", it will be on this: learning new ways to build societal trust, since the old ones don't look to work anymore.

Is there an app out there for that? :-)

Bret said...

erp,

What are you referring to?

erp said...

Bret, kids today aren't just uninformed, they are deliberately misinformed about things. They don't that we are all equal under the law -- in all other things we are delightfully individual. They think we are a democracy aka mob rule.

Thanks to the brilliance of our founding fathers, we are a representative republic and that was a hard fought battle among them. Just recently someone thought they "had" me when they said blacks are only counted as 3/5ths of a person in the Constitution. What they don't know is prior, blacks and women were considered chattel along with the horses and livestock.

Suggest the kids read Vonnegut's, "Harrison Bergeron." It's widely available on line. That will clarify things quite a bit. There's also a movie, but I haven't seen it, so don't know how closely it follows the book.

As for your role, forgive me if I give my take on being a parent of grown children.

Bug out. No advice and no criticism. Let them go their own way with your blessing. It's probably not what you'd do, but so what?

If they ask you for your take, say well I don't really know, what do you think best?

For your reward, you will (with any luck) find out in the not to distant future the answer to the age old question, "Why was I born"? Yes, some day a little creature more precious than life itself will run to you and say, I love you grandpa.

Then you'll have your answer.

erp said...

Clovis,

I love jests, jokes and welcome criticism. I reject nastiness and insults. I also don't want to sound like social media. I've never even seen any of it, except as excerpted in an article, so please tell me how to avoid sounding like it.

:-)

Clovis said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Clovis said...

Erp,

In social media the world is ending every day. It sounds like your predictions of eternal doom if your favorite candidate doesn't win.

erp said...

Clovis, again. Trump is not my favorite candidate. He's the one who can throw off the left's strangle hold on us right now. I wouldn't even know whom I'd pick from among those in public life or anywhere else.

Clovis said...

Erp, again, that sounds just like social media. You asked, I am just telling you.

erp said...

Clovis, oh dear. Have they been plagiarizing me???? Can I sue? This is me clarifying my position. I had no idea that's what social media does.

Clovis said...

Erp,

Yes you can!

Zuckerberg has certainly the funds to pay the bill, go for it.