the_siobhan | E is for E.S.P.

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the personal is political

E is for E.S.P.

I used to date somebody who was really big on the concept of taking a stand. He believed very strongly that most people are apathetic or cowardly when it came to confronting anything wrong or unjust, that the world would be a better place if more people were willing to call out bad behaviour when they saw it.

I had the experience of growing up in the era when cops wouldn't press charges in cases of "domestics" and when teachers and doctors refused to get involved even when I flat-out told them what was going on in my house. So this kind of commitment to getting involved pushes a great big button for me. But after a while I started to come to the conclusion that in his eagerness to take some kind of decisive action, he didn't appear to be all that interested in making sure he knew what the best action was to take. He just wanted to be doing something, and once he had made his mind up any new information was deemed to be making excuses. I was frequently confused by his conviction that he could pick out the guilty parties in a dispute where (in my mind) he really didn't seem to be in a position to know what had really happened. When he started making pronouncements about events that I had witnessed and he hadn't I finally decided he was full of shit, and that was the end of my emotional investment in his desire to take a stand on the side of righteousness.

I bring him up because he was an extreme example, and because, well, extreme or not he's an example of something that I see all the time. People seem to want a conclusion, any conclusion. When the OJ trial was going on people would occasionally ask me whether or not I thought he was guilty. I would respond that I didn't know, I hadn't been following the case. "But what do you think?" they would persist. They seemed baffled at the idea that I could honestly have no opinion. I, for my part, was baffled that seemed to want me to have an opinion based on... air or something.

I am probably especially conscious of this kind of thing. One of the ways in which I carry around my damage is that I am extremely over-sensitive to feeling like I have been convicted without benefit of trial. I can't count the number of relationships (friendships and otherwise) that have ended because somebody decided they already knew What I Did - and for bonus points Why I Did It - without deigning to ask me about it first. As soon as I feel like I'm being called upon to justify somebody else's versions of my actions, I pretty much immediately lose all interest in having the discussion at all and that's not really conducive to working things out.

So when I see people taking sides on a issue - any issue - the first thing I want to know is what they are basing their conclusions on. And a lot of the times the answer is information sources that I honestly don't know how to evaluate. What it looks like from my perspective is that people are putting a lot of faith in third- or forth-hand reports - whereas I tend to assume that even people who were there don't necessarily have the whole story. Or that people are making the emotional decision to believe person X over person Y because they simply like person X better - whereas I tend to assume that even the best of people screw up and make mistakes and misunderstand things and make errors in judgment.

It's possible that I am hyper-critical of information. I do happen to believe that most people usually try to tell the truth. I just don't believe that people unfailingly know what the truth is. If you've ever read Stranger in a Strange Land there's a passage where somebody asks a character in the story what colour a house is. She responds, "It's painted white on this side." That's me.

And this disconnect happens often enough that I've actually started to wonder if there is some additional information going around that I just don't have the skills to access. I mean, the whole time I was growing up I kept running afoul of all the unwritten rules that nobody ever explained but that everybody else seemed to understand through some kind of osmosis. It took me many years of watching people to figure out just how much information is transmitted non-verbally. Maybe this is another one of those cases where I'm missing something that is so obvious to other people that they can't even articulate where they got it - it just becomes yet another thing that "everybody knows".

Or maybe people just have ESP.

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I think this is perfect! I think this best describes how I feel most days!

You have no idea how much this post means to me.

- well now you do - 'cause I just told you!

That wasn't meant to be the loaded comment it could be misconstrued as - :) stopping now before I mix myself up any further...

Thank you for saying something I haven't be able to wrap words around recently.

word up.

thanks, siob.

I absolutely agree on this; many people I know, when there's any sort of interpersonal dispute, often seem to prioritize making the situation better for all concerned below saying something along the lines of: "Okay- whose fault is this? Someone here has to be wrong, wrong, WRONG!" It's discouraging.

And then everybody but the guilty party is off the hook when it comes to fixing it.

I was forced to read Stranger in a Strange land in high school by a teacher who was obsessed with science fiction, and made us do all our book reports on stuff in that genre. It instilled a deep hatred of all sci-fi and fantasy in me. However - the one line I remember, out of all the crap about aliens I was forced to read, was that line about the colour of the house.

Which is apropos of nothing, especially what you're talking about here, but it let me marginally join a discussion that is only very marginally about a science fiction book, but it does get my sci-fi quota for this decade filled. Woo.

My sympathies. I love SF, but Heinlein was a hack.

Mhm.

Also, mhm:

they already knew What I Did - and for bonus points Why I Did It

Nah, people just make stuff up about the way the world works that makes them happy, then brickhammer every happening into that internal model of 'the way things are'.

Probably. I dunno. I'm as bad as the rest of them.

As soon as I feel like I'm being called upon to justify somebody else's versions of my actions, I pretty much immediately lose all interest in having the discussion at all and that's not really conducive to working things out.
At this point, I don't have the energy to "work things out" with someone who wants to believe the alternate version. You wanna believe the lies? Great. You'll either come to know me well enough to know what the real deal is, or you won't care enough, and I don't need ya anyway.

I do happen to believe that most people usually try to tell the truth
I'm not so sure on that anymore, given my track record with fetid psychopaths. Of course, I attract such people because I am too trusting, too willing to believe. Or maybe that's past tense. At this point, I trust very few people. Fewer all the time.

These posts are getting a bit meta (not just yours, posts on the topic, I mean). I'm seeing a lot of them lately. I'm bothered, in a way I can't quite articulate yet.

Edited 2008-05-13 19:08 (UTC)

> I do happen to believe that most people usually try to
> tell the truth
I'm not so sure on that anymore, given my track record with fetid psychopaths.

That's why I say "most". There are pathological liars out there of course, and sociopaths. And of course there are people who lie only to partners.

Mostly I think people lie to themselves.

These posts are getting a bit meta (not just yours, posts on the topic, I mean). I'm seeing a lot of them lately. I'm bothered, in a way I can't quite articulate yet.

I'd be lying if I said my posts weren't triggered by what I see going on around me at the time. But I try to keep them general because for me they really are mostly about the cheese shop (http://www.virulent.org/siobhan/stuff/cheese.html).

That line of Heinlein's really struck me, too. It showed me a whole other, better, way of looking at things. And since then, it's irritated the shit out of me when people do what you're talking about. Thank you for this post; it says something that needs saying in a lot of situations.

I think it's hilarious that the three people who have read the book remember this one line so clearly.

I remember a lot of that book, but I think that is one that stands out because people are just so used to making assumptions and taking things at face value.

I try to read that particular book once every few years. I'm up to three times, i think, since i first picked it up.

And that line (among many others), gets me every time. Whenever someone asks me for a fact about something (which is rarer than one might think), that line is on the edge of my thought-processes.

Heinlein may be a hack, but that book has some excellent ideas in it. (imho, ymmv, and so on and so forth.)

Otherwise, thank you for this post. I'm in the same area as you, I think, in the "not willing to make an uninformed decision" party, where "uninformed" means "I wasn't in everyone's heads at the time". Also, the complete missing of social cues.
I explain my lack of social understanding with the phrases "I'm sorry, I was raised by wolves and fairies," and "I live in a cave." Not entirely accurate, but not entirely wrong.

In a totally unrelated thought, the Discordians should be able to appoint Templars.

It may be less E.S.P. (or nonverbal communication/information, such as interpreting things from tone of voice, posture, or how someone smells) than that you have a greater tolerance for uncertainty than average. That discomfort with uncertainty leads people to adopt (not necessarily consciously) algorithms that will get them an answer quickly. Algorithms that can be as bad as "believe the first person you talk to" (or, equally fallible, "believe the most recent thing you've heard or seen") or "always trust doctors, even on matters completely unrelated to their medical training."

I don't know whether I'm as skeptical as you are, but I'm certainly capable of saying "I don't know" on some topics, the Simpson trial being a good example.

That makes perfect sense to me.

I recall reading about a study (why do I never manage to save these links?) that proposed that conservatives typically have lower tolerance for ambiguity than the average. That they were happier with simple, straightforward solutions that had been repeatedly proven not to work (Build more jails!) than they were with complex solutions with a higher success rate.

Maybe I'm just not very conservative. :-)

I feel enlightened. It's all been a Great Fuckoff Mystery to me, same as you, and i had to learn how people were getting their information just as carefully.

When you get your "cautious about jumping to conclusions" planet set up, I'd like to live on it.

You may be too rational for your own good? Hope you don't mind the terminology spam, but I've found psychology really useful in my overanalysis of things. All these labels aren't really precise, but they point to underlying dynamics.

From my perspective, there's a few cognitive biases errors in play there. First, premature closure:
http://www.isabelhealthcare.com/home/misdiagnosis_faq/media?ida=isabelstory

A 2005 study published in Archives of Internal Medicine found that cognitive error, often referred to as premature closure, is the single most common cause of diagnosis errors. Premature closure occurs when a clinician arrives at an initial diagnosis that seems to fit the facts then does not consider other reasonable possibilities.

Once a conclusion is made, no more effort is spent re-examining the alleged evidence that led to the conclusion. Intolerance of ambiguity can lead to a tendency toward premature closure. Further tendencies toward dogmatism don't help either, since some types dislike backtracking, deriding it as "flip-flopping" and so forth. Sometimes it's rational to reserve final judgment instead of running with a snap judgment. However, rationality isn't always optimal in a historical evolutionary context when one might be in a fight-or-flight situation, and reserving judgment could mean being a predator's meal.

Two, people can sometimes trust what they hear from their social network despite contradictory evidence:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21311730/wid/11915773

The new study, published this week online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, reveals individuals sometimes place so much stock in gossip that they accept it as true even if their own observations and experiences suggest otherwise.

It could be in-group bias in play there. It's interesting that it's been found to be sometimes sufficiently strong that a disconnect from reality occurs. Cue Philip K. Dick.

Finally, intentions only go so far in my book. People may even genuinely think they're telling the truth, but sometimes they're undone by motivated reasoning:
http://www.ciadvertising.org/SA/fall_05/adv392/kasey/site1/motivated_reasoning2.htm

Research on motivation has consistently shown that people are motivated to come to a desired conclusion (see Kunda 1990 for review). Building support through a broad sample of research, Kunda's (1990) theory of motivated reasoning posits that "people rely on cognitive processes and representations to arrive at their desired conclusions, but motivation plays a role in determining which of these will be used on a given occasion"...

Kunda devotes much of the theory of motivated reasoning to motives arrived at through directional bias to reach a desired conclusion. Motivation affects reasoning "through reliance on a biased set of cognitive processes: strategies for accessing, constructing and evaluating beliefs"... This occurs when people are motivated to reach a certain, desired conclusion, and they conduct a biased memory search to find justification for their decision.

That's also reflected in confirmation bias, where people tend to look for things which they already agree with, and avoid looking for things that might contradict their position.

More likely people think they have ESP, when they don't. Heh.

You are always the best source of links.

I saw an article in Scientific American last month that suggested that decision making is easy and fast for us, but re-evaluating conclusions is a lot more work. Based on measuring brain activity. I should dig that sucker up.

Cool. Neuroimaging studies are fascinating.

On my way home, I was reminded of another angle on things: cognitive dissonance.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/06/science/06tier.html
I was listening to a podcast featuring one of the authors of the book mentioned here:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=12125926

Ah, the great herd mentality. If you have an opinion, you are part of the herd. If you don't, you are "other".

I see the news the way I see Soap Operas. It's all stories, based loosely on reality, for entertainment. I am considered ignorant because I avoid it all. I consider most people ignorant because they do not understand the mechanics and social dynamics of storytelling.

The only difference between me and most people is that I know when I have chosen to be entertained. Most people suffer the delusion that their entertainment is reality because it reflects elements of reality.

Most of the time those conversations are impersonal ways of looking for connections with other human beings. They want to know if you think like them and share their reality. Even if you disagree, you are part of the shared reality because you understand the cultural reference. Refusing to have an opinion and not even getting the reference put you outside the shared reality and makes you harder to connect with in an impersonal fashion.

Whatever you do, don't remind them that the characters in their stories are human beings. It embarrasses them when they realize that the people they are so quick to condemn aren't so very different from them. Reminds them of all of the stupid shit they do. That just makes you a know it all and a killjoy.

I used to love the news at the university I went to. They would do 20 minutes of headlines-of-the-day and then they would do an hour of in-depth analysis of ONE of those headlines. All the background information you needed to actually know what was really going on, and why the various sides were in conflict.

I haven't been that well-informed since.

The news (the real news) is still out there, but you have to dig for it. And there are just too many venues available by which to stay ignorant.

The Christian Science Monitor is great for that. We used to get it at the office for exactly that reason.

"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." - Somebody Irish

Sometimes you decide just standing there isn't enough. When you decide, or why you decide, is no one's business but your own.

M.

But if you decide to act, does that not affect other people?

Do you not have an obligation to the people you impact through your actions?

Conversely, if you decide not to act, does that not affect other people? Do you not have an obligation to the people you impact through your lack of action, and make no mistake, lack of action can have a very strong impact.

The bottom line, as you stated so well, is that there are no absolutes. I would rather be damned for doing than for not.

Conversely, if you decide not to act, does that not affect other people? Do you not have an obligation to the people you impact through your lack of action, and make no mistake, lack of action can have a very strong impact.

Yes.

And I happen to believe that the crux of that obligation is to make sure that you know what you are doing to the best of your ability.

The bottom line, as you stated so well, is that there are no absolutes. I would rather be damned for doing than for not.

Actually, the theme of my post was that most people don't spend the time to gather all the info possible before running off half-cocked. The ex I mentioned was really good at doing things like talking to one person in a conflict and then going to the other person in the conflict and laying down the law about How Things Are. I thought that was incredibly arrogant of him.

There are no absolutes I agree, and sometimes you just have to hold your breath and leap into the fray. My confusion is mostly directed at people who would rather do that with little or no information rather than take the time to gather what little is available to guide their actions.

And sometimes we have to face the fact that our contribution is not wanted and that the best "action" we can take is just to shut up and mind our damn business. If the person isn't actually on fire at that particular moment, you have the time to sit back and see where things are going first and to find out when and where your support is needed or is welcome.

All those pro-lifers who wave mutilated baby posters at women visiting clinics are genuinely trying to help. What they are not getting is that their help is not needed. (I'm aware this is another extreme example, but I'm trying to illustrate a point that anybody on my f-list is likely to get.)

And sometimes we have to face the fact that our contribution is not wanted and that the best "action" we can take is just to shut up and mind our damn business. If the person isn't actually on fire at that particular moment, you have the time to sit back and see where things are going first and to find out when and where your support is needed or is welcome.
Myup, that's pretty much where I'm at, with most things at the moment. Someone did say to me "Help, I'm on fire" and I helped put out that particular fire. I did not, however, take part in the arson investigation. That's not what I was asked to do, and is not what I should be doing. Not to mention I have my own fires to put out. I'm also a bit wary on ruminating on the nature of fire in general.

Pardon my rather extended metaphor.

One of my hardest learned lessons when people come to me with problems is to ask, "Do you want suggestions or are you just venting?"

I suffer from Male Answer Syndrome in the worst possible way.

Male Answer Syndrome
That's just about enough to drive me to murder sometimes. ;)

hahahah.

I sometimes rant at my supervisor who ends up looking at me with the deer-in-headlights face until I tell her "i'm just complaining so my head won't explode." This eases things considerably, when ppl realise you're not looking to them for a solution.

also, Male Answer Syndrome is often quite refreshing.

I can respect an individual's right to cognitive integrity, but I also agree that resulting actions and even the quality of one's judgment are consequently open to critique.

Excluded middle: deciding to investigate further (to minimize unintended consequences) before engaging is also an action.

I'm also wary of hidden biases in moral intuitions. This researcher captures my concerns in a nutshell:
http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~jgreene/

A runaway trolley is hurtling down the tracks toward five people who will be killed if it proceeds on its present course. You can save these five people by diverting the trolley onto a different set of tracks, one that has only one person on it, but if you do this that person will be killed. Is it morally permissible to turn the trolley and thus prevent five deaths at the cost of one? Most people say yes. Now consider a slightly different dilemma. Once again, the trolley is headed for five people. You are on a footbridge over the tracks next to a large man. The only way to save the five people is to push this man off the bridge and into the path of the trolley. Is that morally permissible? Most people say no.
These two cases create a puzzle for moral philosophers: What makes it okay to sacrifice one person for the sake of five others in the first case but not in the second case? But there is also a psychological puzzle here: How does everyone know (or "know") that it's okay to turn the trolley but not okay to push the man off the bridge? My collaborators and I have collected brain imaging data suggesting that emotional responses are an important part of the answer...

As everyone knows, we humans are beset by a number of serious social problems: war, terrorism, the destruction of the environment, etc. Most people think that the cure for these ills is a heaping helping of common sense morality: "If only people everywhere would do what they know, deep down, is right, we'd all get along."
I believe that the opposite is true, that the aforementioned problems are a product of well-intentioned people abiding by their respective common senses, and that the only long-run solution to these problems is for people to develop a healthy distrust of moral common sense. This is largely because our social instincts were not designed for the modern world. Nor, for that matter, were they designed to promote peace and happiness in the world for which they were designed, the world of our hunter-gatherer ancestors.

Ergh, sorry for the spammage. I wonder if lj-cuts work in comments...

Alas, no.

This is really interesting, and linking in with some thinking I'm doing at the moment. Because I am/was a scientist, and I'm very much in with the "this side of that house is white" mentality, but one of the things that's putting me off about science is the lack of people skills and nuance around me. So I'm wondering if people who are less able to read bodylanguage etc are more likely to not make other assumptions. Because it does occur to me that when I jump to unwarranted conclusions, they are often snap judgements based on something about their behaviour or tone of voice or something (and sometimes those snap judgements are right on the mone.)

Anyway, before I encountered SiaSL, I learnt a joke about an astronomer, a physicist, and a mathematician, who are on a train heading up to a conference in the highlands of Scotland. They've never been to Scotland before. They look out the window and see a sheep. The astronomer says "Ah, Scottish sheep are black". The physicist says "That's an overgeneralisation, typical of your field. All we know is that this Scottish sheep is black". The mathematician says "I'm amazed at the assumptions you can get away with your fields. All we know is that this side of this sheep is black."

Do you still consider them snap judgements if they are based on things like tone of voice or something? 'Cause I'd still count that as information, even if it's harder to track where the info is coming from.

One of the things I use to make judgements is past patterns of behaviour. In fact, I probably rely on that more than anything.

The stuff I'm talking about feels like snap judgements. I assume it's based on body language and such like, because the most dramatic effects have been people I've known online, where I suddenly have a different sense of them within a few hours of meeting them in person. But I can't point to evidence, I just have this feeling.

In the most dramatic example, I warned a close friend about her friendship with a person I'd just met in the flesh a few hours earlier (telling my friend I couldn't prove it, it was gut feeling). Over the next three months, the person proceeded to do exactly the kind of thing to my friend I was afraid they were capable of.

Because it doesn't match my usual way of knowing things all that closely, I tend to be careful with this stuff. But in fact it usually is quite valuable information even if I can't explain it, so I do tend to rely on it, even before I have evidence it's true.

So anyway, given my experience, it's not hard to imagine people who mostly gain knowledge through "just knowing but they can't explain", and particularly if it is the major way, or works well for them in some contexts, relying on it in other situations where it might not be a good idea.

(Pardon the dim sum-sized comment via crackberry...)

I can't count the number of relationships (friendships and otherwise) that have ended because somebody decided they already knew What I Did - and for bonus points Why I Did It - without deigning to ask me about it first.

... and even more bonus points if any of these things are based on anonymous and/or unrevealed sources (people, studies, etc.), which might not truly exist (+) -or- sources (people) that are ones friends/aquaintences' words being said against ones' back, which once again may or may not be true (++).

Btw, "The lurkers support me in email." ;)

Note: this comment was written sans coffee, worded strangely, and might not make sense. If you agree, respond and I'll reword post coffee. ;)

I got it completely. :-)

"It's painted white on this side."

This reminded me of a chapter in Italo Calvino's Mr. Palomar that I like to think of now and then. I just went and read it, and I was pleasantly surprised at just how close a line of it comes to that line. But the chapter is a debate between both sides. I wish I could reproduce all of it, it makes me so happy to read it. I'll see if I can get about half of it in. Mr. Palomar is at a Toltec pyramid in Mexico, and his Mexican friend is telling him stories about the layers of allegorical meaning in the bas-relief sculptures. Meanwhile a group of schoolchildren is going around, and every now and then Mr. Palomar hears their teacher listing off some features of and facts about the carvings, and concluding each time, "We don't know what it means." And now let's see how much I can fit in here:

Though Mr. Palomar continues to follow the explanation of his friend acting as guide, he always ends up crossing the path of the schoolboys and overhearing the teacher's words. He is fascinated by his friend's wealth of mythological references: the play of interpretation and allegorical reading has always seemed to him a supreme exercise of mind. But he feels attracted also by the opposite attitude of the schoolteacher: what had at first seemed only a brisk lack of interest is being revealed to him as a scholarly and pedagogical position, a methodological choice by this serious and conscientious young man, a rule from which he will not swerve. A stone, a figure, a sign, a word reaching us isolated from its context is only that stone, figure, sign, or word: we can try to define them, to describe them as they are, and no more than that; whether, beside the face they show us, they also have a hidden face, is not for us to know. The refusal to comprehend more than what the stones show us is perhaps the only way to evince respect for their secret; trying to guess is a presumption, a betrayal of that true, lost meaning

Behind the pyramid is a passage or communication trench between two walls, one of packed earth, the other of carved stone: the Wall of the Serpents. It is perhaps the most beautiful piece in Tula; in the relief-frieze there is a sequence of serpents, each holding a human skull in its open jaws, as if it were about to devour it.

The boys go by. The teacher says: "This is the Wall of the Serpents. Each serpent has a skull in its mouth. We don't know what they mean."

Mr. Palomar's friend cannot contain himself: "Yes, we do! It's the continuity of life and death; the serpents are life, the skulls are death. Life is life because it bears death with it, and death is death because there is no life without death...."

The boys listen, mouths agape, black eyes dazed. Mr. Palomar thinks that every translation requires another translation, and so on. He asks himself: "What did death, life, continuity, passage mean for the ancient Toltecs? And what can they mean today for these boys? And for me?" Yet he knows he could never suppress in himself the need to translate, to move from one language to another, from concrete figures to abstract words, to weave and reweave a network of analogies. Not to interpret is impossible, as refraining from thinking is impossible.

Once the school group has disappeared around a corner, the stubborn voice of the little teacher resumes: "No es veridad, it is not true, what that senor said. We don't know what they mean."

... and btw, I don't think I've ever read the cheese story before--that's a great story. :) And it reminds me of when I was charged with buying Fancy Cheese for a Christmas present last year. The thing about being charged with buying cheese as a Christmas present is that it can be the case (as was at least somewhat the case in my case) that one is not charged with buying any particular cheese so much as buying a particular dollar-value of cheese. In such a case, the more expensive cheese may be preferable, just because it's more expensive. And one may well feel there is something obviously stupid about this situation when one is comparing the prices of cheeses, and yet also that there's a certain "Gift of the Magi" logic to it, because, after all, it's the sacrifice that counts. ;)

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E is for E.S.P.

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