It’s Complicated
Like Einstein, we get cranky at the idea that reality is determined by a roll of the dice, and all the more so when we realize the dice in question must be complicated enough to put any gamer’s collection to shame. We wish Schrodinger had gotten a dog.
I was recently surprised to discover that, despite only having published 2 stories (and not my best writings, at that!) I have gained a few hundred followers here on Medium. I can only assume people follow me because of comments I made on other people’s writings.
I’ve gotten into some good discussions here and there. But it’s hard.
People come from an extraordinarily wide range of cultures, backgrounds, educations, belief systems, and neurotypes. It sometimes amazes me that we can communicate at all beyond simple accounts of objects and actions. Linguists and philosophers and neuroscientists argue themselves blue in the face over whether or not any two people mean the same exact thing when we use words like “love” or “faith” — and how can we, when each person’s brain pattern is utterly unique?
Even a concept like “blue” presents difficulties — science can tell us the range of electromagnetic wavelengths that defines the color, but nobody knows whether my brain actually experiences the same thing your brain does when we look up at a cloudless sky. Yet somehow, we have enough mutual understanding of abstract concepts to converse about them. Unfortunately, it’s hard to reach a consensus about the meaning of some words — words like “soul,” “life,” “justice,” and “patriotism.” And few people like to acknowledge that fact. They’d rather believe that the definition is simple and everyone else just doesn’t understand it.
They were so focused on proving themselves correct and the other person wrong that they both ended up sounding incredibly foolish and narrowminded.
Recently, I watched a vitriolic argument about the root cause of a common health issue. Two people were certain they could explain the exact mechanism behind the problem. Both presented impressive credentials and talked about both their personal experiences and the amount of time they’d spent studying the topic. The comments were lengthy, detailed, and surprisingly hostile. They got into some nitty-gritty scientific details and after the first few, I only skimmed them. But as far as I could tell, the two theories didn’t entirely contradict one another. It was more a matter of looking at the problem from different angles and focusing on different parts of it.
These were clearly two well-educated people with expertise on the subject. But both seemed convinced that the other person was an absolute idiot. It never seemed to occur to either that maybe both of the mechanisms they described might contribute to the problem. Or even the far simpler possibility that this condition might have different causes in different people. It was remarkable. They were so focused on proving themselves correct and the other person wrong that they both ended up sounding incredibly foolish and narrowminded. I felt, more than anything, like I was watching the proverbial argument between several blind men trying to describe an elephant based on the single part of it that they could feel.
Step outside of your comfort zone and seek common ground instead of digging into a trench where you stand
I’ve noticed that people have a strong tendency to oversimplify things. Our big brains may have set us on top of the evolutionary heap, but just because we can build tools and do calculus doesn’t mean we’ve evolved far enough to contemplate the immensity of the universe without tripping over a few mental stumbling blocks. People don’t like uncertainty. We don’t like the unknowable and the unanswerable. We, especially here in the Western world, want easy answers and unassailable truths. We cover our ears to the sound of one hand clapping. Like Einstein, we get cranky at the idea that reality is determined by a roll of the dice, and all the more so when we realize the dice in question must be complicated enough to put any gamer’s collection to shame. We wish Schrodinger had gotten a dog.
Which brings me, at long last, to my point, which is that most arguments, even amongst intelligent and well-educated people, seem to occur largely because we insist on easy answers. And easy answers to complex issues simply don’t exist. Over and over, I see people propose solutions and ideologies without any level of nuance or discussion of practicality or consideration of possible unwanted consequences. Just… Ban guns. Use birth control as an alternative to abortion. Abolish the police. Outlaw homelessness. Abolish income taxes. Redistribute wealth. Stop using money altogether.
I’m not saying, by any means, that all of those are bad ideas. But their proponents never seem to think about the logistics.
I was raised in the “ban guns” camp myself. It was decades before I wondered: not, “is this a good idea?” but simply “how could it possibly work?” Imagine, for a moment, that the US Congress passes a law tomorrow making it illegal for any private citizen to own a firearm after the year 2030. What happens to all the millions of guns people already own? Sure, the government could offer a buy-back program (funded how?), but the majority of gun owners probably wouldn’t go for it. What then? Ask everyone to report on their neighbors? Send the US army door-to-door searching every household in America? That’s approximately 130 million households, give or take 5 million. Searching them all wouldn’t be feasible even if people would stand for it, which most Americans would not.
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. It would be like Prohibition all over again. America didn’t stop banning alcohol because we decided it wasn’t a problem; we gave up on the ban because it proved impossible to enforce. The same would be true of a ban on guns. And if we did pass that law, it wouldn’t be long before people found legal loopholes and sneaky exceptions. We’re fond of circumventing the rules. The very existence of SUVs should prove that. Americans (and probably humans generally) are always enthusiastic about laws that limit someone else’s behavior, but have very little respect or even tolerance for laws that ask us to make personal sacrifices or even minor changes in our own lives.
We tend to consider ourselves the exception to the rule. It’s easy to judge someone else who drives too fast, while rationalizing our own right to break the speed limit when we’re running late for something important (because, of course, I know that I’m being careful even if I’m exceeding the limit, and it’s ok because I’m a good driver. Other drivers, I’m sure, are simply being reckless. This is a common pattern of thinking that most of us fall prey to on a regular basis. It’s related to a psychological phenomenon called the “fundamental attribution error.”)
But I digress. I don’t actually want to start an argument here about gun control, or traffic laws, or taxes, or abortion, or drugs, or welfare, or assisted suicide, or any of the other myriad hot button topics out there (really, please, don’t get into it here. I’ll write other posts about those topics and you can argue then). I just want to point out that if any of these issues were as easy to solve as some people seem to believe, they would have been solved long ago.
So the next time you find yourself in an argument, I beg you to stop and think. Check your gut reactions, rethink the things you feel certain about, and don’t assume you know the entirety of someone else’s mind based on the tiny little bit of it you just heard. Consider that there might be more than one valid side to the story. Remember that life is messy and complex and holds multiple truths, some of which contradict one another. Step outside of your comfort zone and seek common ground instead of digging into a trench where you stand.
The state of public discourse in America (as well as many other nations) is deplorable at this moment in history, and we all suffer the fallout from narrowminded and inflexible thinking at every level of government and in our educational system. If we’re going to make progress on difficult topics, we need to learn to listen to one another instead of shouting each other down. We need to challenge ourselves instead of challenging each other. We need to treat disagreements as opportunities to learn something new rather than chances to prove our own expertise.
There’s a lot more I’d like to say on this topic. I’d like to talk about the psychological and cultural factors that make it so hard for us to acknowledge our own mistakes and accept the possibility of our own ignorance. But perhaps that’s another essay for another day. I think I’ve made some good points here. But, of course, I might be wrong.
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