BIRTH OF BELIEF

June 5th, 2020

This episode is dedicated To Sam McRoberts who contributed to these thoughts in conversation.  Sam is a bestselling author of Screw The Zoo and expert in SEO.  You can connect with Sam on Twitter @Sams_Antics

Do facts require belief?  Do we believe in facts because they are true, or are facts beyond the need for belief by virtue of the fact that they are undeniable, confirmed aspects of reality?

Is it possible for someone to admit something is a fact but also claim that they don’t believe in it?  Or is this a contradiction?

The connection between fact and belief is not straight forward.  The space between these two words and the way these concepts interact is contradictory and problematic.

The untested assumption ossifies into belief. 

When the process of approximating towards a more accurate, more nuanced answer ceases, the assumption becomes stagnant in the mind.  But if we still operate on that faulty assumption, that is, if our actions are still taken in accordance to an untested assumption, then does it remain an assumption?  Or does that unproven premise harden in some way?

An assumption is defined, after all, as: a thing that is accepted as true without proof.

So what do we call an assumption that is taken very seriously?  A listed synonym for the word assumption is belief.

And this is a fair definition of what a belief is: a thing accepted as true without proof.  That thing of course, is a bit more cherished than any plain old assumptions.  No one ever talks about their cherished assumptions.  But cherished beliefs are the pride and joy of many pontificating people.

An untested assumption ossifies into belief when our emotional attachment to that assumption is strong enough to override any challenge of evidence to prove that assumption wrong.

This is a dangerous process, one that deliberately abandons verifiable truth due to feelings.  Why this can become so dangerous is because reality does not operate within the preferences of our beliefs.  The forces that be coldly play out, and if our feelings and by extension, our beliefs are at odds with the way things play out, we can be left in extremely disadvantageous positions.  To ignore reality is to make an enemy of it, one that will not return boon nor benefit without the sacrifice of the beliefs which fuel such disregard.

To understand better reality, we are best served by a process that we fear the most: a process that treats our cherished beliefs with impartial, and even brutal challenge.  It raises the question: why hold on to something at such a cost?  Is it for the actual assumption, or does it have more to do with the feeling we associate with the belief?  If the emotional resonance of the belief were suddenly removed, if one were suddenly able to examine the points of their beliefs without a single shred of positive feeling, nor negative feeling, would such beliefs still be convincing? 

No one feels anything particularly negative nor positive about gravity, and yet reality plays a very convincing hand to ensure we all believe in gravity, despite our inability to thoroughly explain it.

Many of us expect this to operate in reverse.  We expect beliefs that lack evidence to bend and shape reality.  The disadvantageous position often arises when reality has taken a shape so different from the one imagined by our beliefs that the consequences are physically impossible to ignore.  We do ourselves a great service by engaging in the painful process of examining our beliefs ruthlessly, fine-tuning them, or abandoning them for better assumptions, a process that slowly brings us closer to the way things really are.

SCOPE

June 4th, 2020

The context we take into consideration is like the form of the question we ask.  The context determines and limits what we can understand about a situation, just as the answer to a question is helpful in direct proportion to the question being asked.

Either it be the situation we are trying to assess, or the answer we are searching for, the question arises either consciously or implicitly:

What is the scope being considered?

Another way of phrasing this is: how zoomed in or zoomed out are we?

A telescope is useless when trying to investigate the shape of bacteria, and it’s likewise foolish to try and investigate the form of galaxies with a microscope, but it’s quite easy in both cases to think you’re using the right instrument.

With questions, we need only ask: is this the right question?

With situations, we often do the same, by asking: is there more to it than this?

If something about the situation seems fishy, it may be that the context is bigger than we realize – there are more variables at play than we can see or access and they are influencing the situation in ways that seem invisible or magical.  This sort of thing happens all the time deliberately in movies, especially mysteries and thrillers, when the ‘larger picture’ finally emerges.  The context of the story suddenly changes, and we experience a sense of surprise as we realize how a bunch of things are actually connected – made obvious by a different scope, a new context.

With only one available context, it’s easy to have a gut reaction – an emotional response, and charge ahead with just that.  But zooming in and zooming out creates a variety of responses.  What seems like an appropriate response on one level might have terrible repercussions in a context larger than what we are considering, a larger context that naturally subsumes our situation.  Then the variable of our actions has the potential to extend beyond our considerations, ricocheting through the entire scope of possibility.  This is both encouraging, in that we probably have more effect than we realize, and also discouraging: our efforts rarely land exactly as planned.

Being careful about the context requires a careful consideration of the larger context and the whole scope in which we exist.

INTELLIGENT INTERPRETATION

June 3rd, 2020

The syntax of a sentence can be scrambled, and a person can still make sense of it.  When we hear something like:

Sense made you that of.

Chances are we can suss out that the meaning is something like: You made sense of that.  Language doesn’t actually afford us this flexibility because language, when it’s defined as a system throws up it’s flags around improper syntax.  It’s the flexibility of the human mind that allows us such flexibility.  The intellectual soil of the brain is often good enough that it can take a messed up seed like “sense made you that of.” and grow a correct meaning from it.

This of course doesn’t work with all scrambling.  Move some words around in a sentence and a different and definitive new meaning takes place.

Pointing at a picture of a couple guys standing next to a moose that’s just been shot and saying “My brothers’ kill.” has a radically different meaning if the words are rearranged into “Kill my brothers” which occurs because the word ‘kill’ can be both a noun and a verb, and whether it’s one or the other depends on the context of the sentence.

A lack of flexibility is exactly why computers can be so frustrating.  Computers can only interpret instructions with immaculate grammar.  Something humans aren’t very good at, and have little need of when communicating with each other.  Creativity requires such flexibility, which, on the flip side, this is a reason why computers aren’t yet spinning out Pulitzer prize winning novels.  It’s clearly a very difficult challenge to encode a flexible ability within a system that has rigid modes of operation.  But our brain is a system that has rigid modes of operation based on the biology of neurons – they perform in predictable ways much like transistors and diodes.  Then again, programmers have only been taking legitimate swings at the task of computer intelligence for a few decades.  Evolution has had a head start of billions of years.

Flexibility of thought and creativity has more to do with how we interpret the things that come our way more than anything else.  Often we receive some new information and attempt to fit it into a preconceived category or framework.  Intelligent interpretation is a willingness to apply a variety of categories and frameworks in turn and in combination to new information to see which makes the most sense. 

This fluid application of categories, frameworks, and their different combinations in turn requires a certain emotional ease.  The process is one that functions, not just with uncertainty, but because uncertainty is sustained.

It’s the mere difference between saying:

It’s clearly an example of this.

versus

Maybe it’s bit like this, or maybe that, or perhaps neither.

Our brain is doing the later when we are confronted with that original sentence:  Sense made you that of. At first we try to hear it as though it’s a correct sentence.  But the oddness of the syntax forces the brain to consider other options because the sentence, as it stands, doesn’t make sense.  We begin shuffling until the words realign in categories of order that make sense.  It’s only after the process of flexibly trying to interpret when..

You made sense of that.

PRIVILEGE & RESPONSIBLITY

June 2nd, 2020

This episode is dedicated to someone who operates the Twitter handle @NotAPart1 who inspired some thinking on these topics.

Who is going to do something about it?  This is a silent question that pervades all aspects of life in a world where we coexist as a large group.  It is the question on everyone’s mind when the students all look at each other when faced with a group project, and it is likewise the same question when we are all faced with vastly greater challenges.  The question: who is going to do something about it? automatically carries with it a platoon of other questions as though it acts like a can-opener used to release a species of things we don’t know and have never considered.

One question that crawls out of the can is, ok, what can everyone actually do?  As in, does anyone have any special ability or desire, or experience that makes them a particularly good fit for tackling this or that part of the problem?  The artist of the student group pipes up, announcing their willingness and ability to take care of the design.  The student always carrying a new book around signs up to write some portions.  The math whiz agrees to tracking the finances of the project, and the social butterfly who asked the question decides they can handle the scheduling and communication.

This quaint picture of the group project from school contains within it a realistic definition of both Privilege & Responsibility.

First, privilege.  What exactly is it?

The dictionary lists it as: a special right, advantage, or immunity granted or available to a particular person or group of people.

Our current cultural of the use of the word seems as though it clusters upon that first part of the definition – the “special right” part.

Peeling another layer of the onion away, we can examine what the word right means.  In the sense indicated by the definition of privilege, the multifaceted meaning of the word right most likely refers to: a moral or legal entitlement to have or obtain something or to act in a certain way.

Mention of the word ‘entitlement’ in this definition certainly seems to resonate deeply with the common notion of ‘privilege’, considering the two words are often used in tandem or interchangeably.  But notice how else the two words link up.  Privilege also means advantage.  And what is an advantage?  Is it not some sort of opportunity to obtain something or take a particular sort of action that is somehow only available to one person or a small group due to some evolution of circumstance?

Does not the artistic student have an advantage over the other students when it comes to the design aspect of the project?  Does not math whiz have an advantage over the other students when it comes to a comfortable and fluid understanding and usage of numbers? 

Another way to phrase the categorization of these students, each in turn, is that they are privileged in some way that the others are not.  The reason why doesn’t really matter.  Sure each has spent more time and attention devoted to their particular area of expertise, but advantages come to all of us for a variety of reasons, whether they be earned or not.  The earned aspect is not nearly as important as the ability to respond as it stands due to the advantage. 

The artistic student has an advantage among the group and this ability enables the artistic student to respond when the opportunity comes up.

Is that not what responsibility is? 

The ability to respond.

We generally associate reasonability with the concept of obligation.  And while there’s a perfectly valid argument here, it’s perhaps an upside-down way of looking at how these words work.  Obligation, after all, derives from the word ‘promise’ and only a fool promises to do something they know they can’t do.  The majority of honest promises are undertaken because we know we can follow through.  Again we return to the group of students.  The artistic student pipes up because they understand their own ability and see how it can contribute.  Each student makes a promise to fulfill some part because their advantage gives them confidence in their ability to respond to the task at hand.  Witness how the concepts of both privilege and responsibility are weaving into one another.  Each student makes a promise, and obligates themselves, to fulfill some part because their advantage, their privileged position enables them to take on the responsibility because they have the ability to respond in the way that the whole group needs.

We are all equipped with a unique perspective.  Each of us sees a particular slice of the world.  Each of us has the privilege of this unique perspective, and it gives us the ability to see a certain slice that is unavailable to anyone else.  We have a responsibility to share it, because that advantage gives us the ability to see it by default.  This is the most basic function of what it means to be a person on the planet.

What can you see that no one else can?

From that question arises billion dollar business ideas.  From that question arises beautiful novels and paintings, and plays and songs.  From that question arises innovations that change the game we are playing.  From that question arises ideas to save lives and heal the sick.  From that question arises ways to make our species stronger, better.

Your ability to respond to the situation of your life is both your responsibility and your privilege.

That special perspective and the ability it affords urges each and every one of us to answer the question:

What are you going to do about what you see?

FRUSTRATION & PATIENCE

June 1st, 2020

Learning is often a difficult process.  Before we have understood what we are trying to wrap our mind around, the experience is confusing and uncomfortable.  Often, learning is just pure frustration.

I don’t understand.

How does this make sense?

This must be wrong.

It’s debilitating to experience something that has a hidden logic, a framework that deceives your ability to grasp it.  Emotionally, it is an assault to our sense of agency.  It functions like an impassable wall of reality that withholds our ability to move forward.  It seems pretty natural to grow frustrated, even angry that such a thing should happen.  It can even seem like it’s unfair.

Why is this happening to me?

Notice the focus of attention in this description. The whole point is the person with the experience.  The focus is inward, but that’s not where the problem lies.  The problem is out there, with the framework that is still invisible, the rules and principles we have yet to figure out.  But meanwhile our focus is elsewhere, turned inward. 

How can we figure something out without focusing on it?

The question frames the issue well enough to highlight the mistake in a painfully obvious way.  The more we focus on our inability to figure something out, and the emotional experience of that inability, the more distracted and detached our focus becomes from the actual problem: that thing in the real world that we are supposed to be figuring out.

It is possible to focus on a problem with such a balance of concentration and intensity that you forget yourself.  Like watching an engrossing movie, or playing a sport, our experience of what it is to be alive in those moments is entirely externalized.  We fail to notice how hungry we are, or that pain in the back, or anything.  It’s as though the mind transports itself on rays of attention to immerse itself in what is happening.  Many people refer to this as a flow state, when concentration and learning, and problem solving all seem to be in harmony, composing an engine running at full tilt in its highest gear.  It’s a fantastic experience, nearly otherworldly.  In fact it is otherworldly.  It’s the difference between the cramped internal world, and the expansive external world of our experience.

The juxtaposition leaves a tremendous and difficult gulf: how can the two be bridged?

How do we transform the frustration, exasperation and powerless feeling of inability and a lack of understanding – how does all that get transformed into a flow state?

The answer is best encapsulated by a simple formula:

Frustration combined with infinite patience turns into curiosity.

Patience is key.  A willingness to endure feelings of inadequacy, and the further ability to understand them, recognize them, note them and move on in faith that you can figure it out – this faith and memory of the fact that you’ve figured out things before, it allows these feelings to settle.  Accepting the reality of our inability and the perfectly natural feelings that arise allows us to let go of such feelings.  Only then do we gain the ability to focus on the task at hand, externally instead of internally.

With a bit more clarity, the mind can reroute the buzz of that anxiety into one of it’s most powerful tools.  Questions begin to form about the problem at hand.  Ideas about the underlying nature of situation arise, guesses to be tested.  We turn from the inner realm and let loose our most valuable asset to it’s natural habitat, the playground of external reality, where curiosity weaves out to explore and bring back the treasure of new understanding.