The curse of premature satisfaction

Friday, September 21, 2007

It's worrying to me how often people equate their internal rationalisations with evidence. It's even more worrying to me how often I do it. The brain always wants to return you to a place of satisfaction and a sense of well being. I think, that's one of it's jobs: to keep you straight and steady in the turbulent real world. Perhaps it's the best way we can function properly and fulfill our evolutionary purpose.

The problem is it often does too good job! Premature satisfaction anyone?

For the longest time I believed the phases of the moon were caused by the Earth's shadow. It made perfect sense to me and I never questioned it. In fact, the Earth's shadow causes lunar eclipses. At all other times exactly half of the moon is illuminated by the sun; we are merely viewing it from different angles. And after you discover the truth of something like that, you realise all the stupid assumptions you held but never questioned.

If you start looking for it, you realise this kind of thing happens all the time. It can be dangerous! It's taken advantage of in advertising, politics, propeganda, religion. But it can also effect your work and self-development.

Here is the warning sign: if you find yourself feeling so satisfied with your understading of a concept that you can't think of anymore questions: BEWARE! ALWAYS hunt down and question your own assumptions! Beware of people who always talk in absolutes.

Here's a fun exercise that I did many years ago at uni: have a conversation (with yourself or others) where you re not allowed to say anything unless you phrase it as a question. It's very illuminating and you find that the conversation just never ends; there's always more questions. It's also interesting to see that some people have real trouble with the exercise; sometimes the power of our brain to rationalise, explain and satisfy itself is overwhelming.

You'll come to realise that truth is a very shaky notion: for anything to be true at any point in time it must be heavily laden with context and constrained by available knowledge. But, there is always new knowledge to find and context is forever changing.

How's that for talking in absolutes!

Random outings from a chaotic mind