Thursday, November 12, 2020

The Liar Within

 This post is a continuation of a thought exercise started in two prior posts.

I encourage you to read them in order.

1. Language, Truth, Perspective, Paradigm...

2. The Invictus Illusion


Now to address that bit about lying. Even the most honest of people is a liar.

Ignore for the moment that almost everyone justifies making dishonest statements on occasion, to spare someone's feelings ("Oh what a cute baby!", "That was delicious!", "Oh, I wish I could go with you, but I have something else going on then, maybe some other time though."...).

Ignore also the lies of omission - keeping our mouth shut about something we have information about, to avoid inconvenience or injury.

We lie to ourselves.

A lot.


And it isn't just the stream of negative lies we tell ourselves about ourselves (Usually some variation of "I'm not good enough...").

Nor is it just the positive lies we often unknowingly believe. (For example; most people think they are good at multitasking, but actual studies suggest less than 3% of the population actually is. Perhaps this helps explain why roughly 80% of people are in favor of laws prohibiting texting while driving, yet over 70% of people admit to texting and driving. Interestingly, it has been found that those people who are more confident in their multi-tasking abilities are often less capable at multitasking.)

No, our deceitfulness goes much deeper.


First, take a look at this picture (drew it myself, can you tell?), which tree is closer to you, 1 or 2?



The correct answer is: They are both the exact same distance away from you. I drew the first tree. then I copied it, pasted it, and enlarged it to create tree number 2. I then drew a triangle, cut the top off, drew a horizontal line near the top of the page and added some color to it.

But none of that changes the fact that it was drawn on a flat screen. Your brain adds a third dimension to the image, but this is a two-dimensional drawing. Your brain lies to you.

Your eyeballs see two dimensionally. Light reflects off stuff, enters your eye, and hits a series of sensors in the back of your eyeball, nerves transmit information about the intensity and color of that light from each sensor to your brain. since you have two eyeballs, the brain gets information from two slightly different angles. Your brain then interprets that information and "creates an image" Since my two dimensional image above has colors, lines and size differences which your brain customarily "sees" as a horizon, and a road going off into the distance, it interprets the image as having depth, even though there is no depth in reality.

Furthermore, your brain interprets the sensory inputs it receives differently than other people's brains do. There are people who are color blind, for instance, and there are a number of disorders which inhibit depth perception.

Your eyes aren't the only sense with this problem. When I was young, there was a prank which involved touching someone's bare skin with a small, dry, circular piece of  ice in a room full of smokers. The person would be utterly convinced someone had just poked them with a lit cigarette. Given the environmental cues, they couldn't correctly distinguish hot from cold.

So right off, the sensory information you receive may be distorted, often in ways that would be difficult or impossible to detect (what if everyone saw the color green as a different color? How would we know? If I saw green as what you knew to be purple, we would still look at the grass and agree that it was green...).

And then there is the brain's desire to find patterns. From the Rubin Vase optical illusion (is it a vase, or two faces?), to religious figures appearing on toast or pizza or buildings, to satanic messages played backwards in popular music (I found one once that I would let people listen to- a brief clip where the singer says something about "eating a Tuna". Except I didn't actually play the clip backwards, it was forward, and the song is in Norwegian. Look up "Ankomst" by the band Leaves Eyes - right around 2:10 into the song you will hear it- if you are a native English speaker. If you speak Norwegian, you most probably won't catch it), our brains are determined to give meaning to everything, even if it means concocting an alligator in Logan, Utah.

Ever heard the phrase "garbage in, garbage out"?

Then it shouldn't surprise you that your memory is just as untrustworthy. As an example- in the 1990's when DNA testing became a thing, an evaluation was made of 239 convictions which were overturned based on DNA evidence. It was found that nearly 80% of those convictions came about due to eye witness testimony.

It has also been determined that in some cases, false memories can be created by suggestion. In a study performed in 1995, a group of people we given a list of  four memories from their childhood. Three were actual events from their childhood and the fourth was fictional. They were then asked to write down details they remembered from those experiences, or to note if they had no recollection of the event. One-fourth of the people in the study related memories they had of the fictional event.

The input is unreliable. The output is untrustworthy. imagine how much worse it gets when it is us making a poor interpretation of someone else's poor interpretation? In an entirely different context (i.e. historical analysis).

Not matter how much effort you put toward being honest, You still lie like crazy.




 




 




Saturday, October 10, 2020

The Invictus Illusion


Out of the night that covers me,   

  Black as the Pit from pole to pole,   

I thank whatever gods may be   

  For my unconquerable soul.   


In the fell clutch of circumstance 

  I have not winced nor cried aloud.   

Under the bludgeonings of chance   

  My head is bloody, but unbowed.   


Beyond this place of wrath and tears   

  Looms but the Horror of the shade, 

And yet the menace of the years   

  Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.   


It matters not how strait the gate,   

  How charged with punishments the scroll,   

I am the master of my fate:

  I am the captain of my soul. 



The poem is Invictus, by William Earnst Henry.


It  is also, to some extent an illusion.


Before reading further, I suggest to review my prior post on Truth etc... This post is meant to continue that thought exercise. I have a few more that go with it as well. I have been struggling to put them into words, and I have been struggling to work out the correct order. I think it matters....


We generally like to think we are in control of our choices, that we (generally) make them based on sound reasoning, careful thought, and through the lens of our moral principles.


There are a number of holes in that theory however.


The first is genetics. We come into being as a result of a mix of combined genetic material from our mother and father. That genetic material determines, or at least shapes many of our physical characteristics. Including how the operation of various hormone producing factories - which influence our mood, among other things.

It isn't quite that simple though. More recent research indicates sections of this genetic material can be effectively turned on or off.  Some of  our DNA is wrapped around histones, which effectively turns off those genes. These histones can be activated or deactivated chemically. There are also chemical groups which can be inserted into the DNA at specific points, which will turn sections of Genes on or off.

This suggests that environment - The foods we eat, the air we breathe, the chemicals we come in contact with -  can, to some degree alter our genes. There have been some studies which indicate that these alterations can be passed on  to our offspring. There are also several studies including this one, showing a potential link between lead exposure in violence.

But it isn't just environment, it is also experiences. There is at least one study which observed an increased mortality rate in the male offspring of Civil War POW's, born after their POW experience. In another study, rats were exposed to cherry blossom scent at the same time a mild electric shock was administered. This led to an automatic fear response to the scent. Their first and second generation offspring both exhibited the same automatic fear response. Genetic memory appears to be a thing.

So, many of your decisions and reactions in life may very well have been shaped, not just by your experiences, but also by your diet, the compounds and minerals in your drinking water, and the quality of the air you breathe. Further more it may have been shaped by the environment, diet, and experiences of your parents, and your grandparents and... Perhaps the biblical references to "The sins of the fathers." (Exodus 34:7, for instance) were  meant as literal warnings.

But even setting aside these genetic-based influences, you are likely far less in control of you than you think.

In the previous post I mentioned the adage "You are the  product of your five closest friends," Citing the specific anecdote I have witnessed, of people completely reversing their political position (liberal to conservative and vice versa), after a major move change their circle of friends. It is actually a bit more complicated than "The five closest" of course. The circle of influence is larger than that. It really is more about what you are surrounded by, and frequently, consistently exposed to. 

"For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he:"

-Proverbs 23:7 


Which is why companies spend so much money putting advertisements for their products in front you you. everywhere you go. And why normally rational people can become so irrationally attached to absurd ideas.


"If you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes accepted as truth"

-Joseph Goebbels 


And you lie to yourself all the time. (More on that later).

Of course some try to argue that deep down inside, their soul remains - at least mostly - in control.

Many instances of significant personality change after severe, traumatic brain injury would suggest otherwise. I have also seen and personally experienced the personality altering effects some medications can have. And of course there is also Dissociative Identity Disorder, and scripturally, the experience of possession. 

Even passage of time and number of decisions you have made in that time affects you according to this article on parole hearings. If your soul is in control, it is arbitrary and cruel...

Some have gone so far as to say you aren't really in control at all. You are just running your piece of the program that was set in motion eons ago.

I'm not quite that fatalistic, I think that I do have at least some ability to influence who I become and what I do. maybe not so much as moving the rudder on the back of a boat, perhaps more like holding a stick in the water on one side...

So the question then is, how much of what we say and do is truly our intentional exercise of self-will, and how much is us just executing the universe's program?

I think we can be more in control, perhaps, when we are more present, and when we are less dishonest (again, more on that later). 



Wednesday, September 9, 2020

Language, Truth, Perspective, Paradigm...

This post is a prequel to another post (or three) I have rattling around in my brain. Before I can get to that, It is necessary to precisely (as possible) define a few words. Level-set, if you will.

Language really is an amazing thing, is it not? We humans emit a wide range of sounds. We arrange, combine and modulate all those hums, whistles, clicks, hisses, 'oooh's, 'aaah's, etc... And we assign meaning to them.

It isn't natural or  inherent, if you will. Babies don't come into the world able to speak. They have to learn to make the various sounds sound by imitation, trial and error. They have to learn from others the meaning of each particular set of sounds. And it is entirely arbitrary. A "Dog" is a Dog, only because somewhere in the past a group of people agreed to it, and we continue to accept and use that convention. But only certain of us do.

Somewhere in the distant past of the people we designate as "Germans", they agreed on "Hund". For the Croatians it was "Pas".

Oh, and yeah, not only did we agree on combinations of sounds and assign them meaning, we also agreed on combinations of drawings - lines and curves, and assigned them meaning as well. "狗" for instance is Chinese for Dog. Some people say entire words with a single symbol. Others, assign sounds to the symbols so we can combine them to make the words.

But there are two glaring problems:

1. We sometime re-use symbols - entire symbol sets and sound arrangement.

"Done.", "Dun."

Clearly different when written, not so when spoken.

"Wind."

Did I just wind a clock, or is the wind blowing?


2.  We can arbitrarily reassign meaning. At any time.

"You sly dog!"

Clearly I'm not a "Dog". When and how did this alternate meaning come to be?

And that is a word which is assigned to a physical, tangible object. Imagine the difficulty in assigning and retaining precise meaning for words which describe intangibles, such as emotions, feelings, ideas...

It thus becomes necessary to use more words in an attempt to clarify the meaning of the words we just said.

Words are hard!

 That being said, I now intend to attempt to define a few words (using words- it all seems somewhat futile when you think about it...).


Truth - I need this word to have a very precise meaning for my future post(/s). Rather humorously, most dictionary definitions of truth say something to the effect of "that which is true". And then one definition of True is "Truth".

For my purposes I will start my definition with the phrase "Things as they really are."

Now a few thoughts to try and visually add some tangible boundaries to that.

First, imagine you can only see two dimensions.

What would you say this object is?




A circle?

But this is just a two-dimensional projection of a three dimensional object.
It could in fact be a sphere




or a Cone



a cylinder



Or perhaps something even more complex.

But if you only experienced the world in two dimensions, you likely wouldn't even be able to comprehend those shapes, it would likely be utterly beyond your grasp. 

A few more observations to help flesh this out:

--
Imagine for a moment the shape in question was a cylinder, and a friend of yours saw it from one of the sides. He would be completely confused as to why you were calling it a circle when it was obviously a rectangle! You would be equally alarmed by your friends seeming blindness to the obvious.

--
Science does not discover truth. Science creates models, which attempt to approximate truth, based on our observations from within the system.

--
A person can speak truthfully, and yet not speak truth. (In the above example, you called the cylinder a circle. while your friend called it a rectangle. You and your friend both spoke truthfully. You did not intend, nor wish to be dishonest. And yet, what you said was untrue.

--
There is no "My truth" and "Your truth". There is only "The truth." Which due to our limited vision, our limited perspective, may be beyond our ability to grasp.


And that is the second word...

Perspective - Perspective is the position from which you look at something. This is why you saw a circle, while your friend saw a rectangle in the example above. Each of you saw the object from a different perspective. Perspectives are not fixed. They can be changed by our current mood,

Tying that back to truth, let's add a contextual definition to the word...

Observation - This is the fragment of The truth which we see from our particular perspective. We habitually think of this as The truth, it isn't.

Finally, one more word..

Paradigm - Paradigm is a particular world-view. A system of beliefs, ideas, and experiences which define our perspective. If perspective determines what you saw, paradigm determines why.

Our paradigm is created by our genes, by our environment, by the people we interact with, and the things we do. They can change over time, as we expand our knowledge, or increase our experience. They can even change as our friendships change. As an example, I have had friends who were very liberal in their political views, who moved to areas which were predominately conservative. As time passed and they integrated into their new environment, making new friends, I observed their views shift quite dramatically from liberal to conservative. Similarly, I have had friends who were very conservative, who shifted to liberal upon moving to a predominately liberal city. "You are the sum of your five closest friends," as the saying goes.


People can have different paradigms. They can have different perspectives. They can't have different truths.





-- Claim:

For a given system, truth can only be observed from outside of the system. In other words, we can't observe truth.  We can make educated guesses about what is true. But they are only guesses.


-- Religious Corollary I:

Assuming the existence of a Deity, and assuming the above claim is valid. If said deity is omniscient - the source of all truth, then it holds that said deity must exist outside of the system, thus sees the system in its entirety, as it really is.


-- Religious Corollary II:

Communication with Deity does not bestow upon the communicating individual, any claim to truth. Said individual remains within the system, is still bounded by the constraints of their (albeit expanded) paradigm and thus said individual must still interpret the communicated truth via their limited perspective. Furthermore, their attempts to communicate said truth to another individual incur the added difficulty of being filtered through the other individuals paradigm.

Wednesday, April 15, 2020

Thoughts on Love

Aaahh Love....

What a terrible word.

Love is problematic, because we use it to define so many different things.

I remember in my youth someone  passing around a poem at a church activity with morality as the theme. I only remember the line "You and me and Eros and Agape" A poor attempt to use Greek in an effort to distinguish "Love" from Infatuation. I'm not convinced they actually use the Greek correctly - perhaps that was as deep as they felt they could go on the subject without losing teenagers. Perhaps I break out the fire hose too often.

Tradition has it that the Greek philosophers used quite a number of words to categorize "Love":


Agape - Although the word predates Christ's birth, the term has been largely taken over by the Christian world to mean Christlike love. The original meaning seems to be in line with this, though. Charity is perhaps the most strictly secular word we use today, though are secular use of it fails to capture the heights to which it reaches. Agape is the perfect love, the love that sees the good and the bad and loves regardless. Some would argue Agape is unattainable by mere mortals, something that we should strive for. The kind of love that reaches beyond mortal comprehension.

Philia - This one gets used as a suffix in a number of... uncomfortable words, It has a sort of double meaning, I suppose. More generally it is used to mean "affection" (even then, our use as a suffix seems inaccurate). More specifically it refers to brotherly love (Hence, Philidelphia, The city of brotherly love). This form of "Love" is comradeship. It is the bond shared between members of an atheletic team, a military unit, or similar, close-knit group.

Philautia - Self-esteem is the current name for this one. It is a healthy self-love, the recognition of personal worth. It is distinctly different from narcissism or hubris - self absorption.

Xenia - A close kin to Philia, this is hospitality, or "guest-friendship" it is different from Philia in that Philia is a strong bond built on a relationship of shared experiences and common objectives. This is a weak affection towards strangers, the desire to lend a helping hand. It generally carries an implied reciprocity, the expectation that kindness will be returned for kindness (making it distinctly different from Agape some might argue this is our attempt to achieve agape).

Storge - Called natural love, this is the relationship between parent and child. (Some also place love between brother and sister here, others include it in Philia).

Ludus - Playful love, this one often get's confused with Eros, but it is in fact very different. This is the fun, flirty kinds of relationship. The playful banter, teasing, it is a fun, uncommitted, kind of relationship. The "Falling in love" feeling that often gets called "Love" is more indicative of Ludus.

Pragma - Enduring love. When you talk about a  couple who have been married for fifty+ years in terms of Love. Pragma is what you are talking about. Pragma is a... pragmatic love. One which recognizes the faults in a companion, and accepts them, or at least places them as subordinate to the shared ideals and goals within the relationship. Pragma keeps a couple together through hard times and disagreements.It is often considered the opposite of Ludus, though the two can coexist in a relationship, and in doing so,make the relationship much stronger and more fulfilling.

Mania - Obsession this is the one unhealthy "Love" on the list (okay yes, there were two others mentioned above as unhealthy forms of Philautia, but this is the one that get's it's own section). Mania is usually a symptom of a lack of Philautia, the absence of self-esteem causes one to seek that validation externally. They NEED to have a friend, not just a friend, but someone who adores them. They can't stop thinking about them, can't be without them. It is insecure, codependent and manipulative, it is often harmful, causing one to and up in abusive relationships (either as the abuser or the victim).

Eros- I saved this one for last for a few reasons. Many argue this one doesn't belong on this list, as it is so uniquely different. It is said the Greek philosophers treated Eros with a certain fear. Eros was like lightening, sudden, intense, unpredictable... fickle. It could strike with a flash out of nowhere, when you least expected it, and could vanish just as quickly. While the others deal with a relationship made by choice. Eros is a... natural instinct, driven by physiology. In Nature, there are three, prime directives if you will which drive all animal behavior.
1. Seek Pleasure
2. Avoid Pain
3. Conserve Energy

Our body uses chemistry to help drive our behavior with respect to these directives. Most notably, dopamine. The body is set up to give a hit of dopamine when we do things that support these directives.
Eat when your are hungry, get a shot of dopamine.
Wrap up in a warm blanket when it's too cold, get a shot of dopamine.
Exercise, get a shot of dopamine.
Propagate the species (That means 'have sex', just to be clear), get a big shot of dopamine. 


And this is Eros the drive to procreate. Eros is problematic, it can easily turn into Mania if not tempered. On the other hand, it, like Ludus, can be paired with Pragma to create a much stronger, much more fulfilling bond.






If you consider all of these carefully, you may notice that the Most common use of the word "Love" today is missing.


Romantic Love- Romantic Love didn't show up in literature until sometime in the 1800's it is a new creation. And I would argue it is a deception.

Romantic Love tries to disguise Eros as Pragma. It suggests that the feeling of Eros is the indicator of the existence of Pragma, but without all the work. It's everywhere today, especially in children's literature. Two unassuming people see each other from across the room and... "Zing", fireworks, love at first site. They fight together against some evil being who want to keep them apart, they vanquish their foe and then ... "They live happily ever after".

But there is no strict relationship between Eros and Pragma. The two can exist entirely independent of one another. So this connection portrayed by the idea of Romantic love is a false connection. And the biggest problem with this is that people are unable to distinguish between the two. So, they think they have found their "soulmate", they rush in without ever committing and they "fall out of love" when hard times come.


This is further complicated due to the nature of Eros.

You see, the bodies directive mechanism can be "hacked". One of the classic experiments on this topic is Pavlov's dog. Pavlov repeated a process of ringing a bell, then giving a dog food. In time, the dog salivated when the bell was rang whether food was provided or not.

Another notable experiment was  done with rats. A button was wired up to inject dopamine directly into the pleasure center of a rat's brain. So, now the rat could get the pleasure reward which normally came from eating or mating, but with less work (directive 3: conserve energy). The rat would ignore an available mate, ignore food, and just repeatedly press the button. It would do this until it collapsed from exhaustion. It would do this until it dies.

(Note: An interesting correlative experiment was done in which they blocked the dopamine receptors entirely. Without the pleasure reward, the rat would just lie there. It wouldn't try to mate, it wouldn't go looking for food. It would just lie there and starve to death..)

So, the Eros feeling can actually get mis-wired to any number of things, some of which might even be detrimental to our survival.

Sometimes this occur intentionally- as an example many military organizations would purposefully utilize this to "improve" their soldiers. A new recruit would be required to kill an enemy prisoner. As soon as he had fulfilled this requirement his comrades would give him high-fives (or the appropriate equivalent of the time and region) and take him to the brother for his "reward", thereby linking the pleasure response to the act of killing.

This can also occur unintentionally, under any number of circumstances, often culminating in destructive behaviors, such as drug abuse, pornography addiction, or much less nefarious seeming addictions, like overeating, unhealthy eating (high fat, high sugar foods goes right to directive 3. In fact another rat study found that while rats would go for heroin over most foods or mating, they would pass up heroin for the filing in an Oreo cookie), social media addiction (the quick, often artificial interactions give a dopamine boost, that pesky directive 3 again...), video game addiction.

So we take a highly questionable, easily redirect-able, chemical sensation and link it to the end result of a hard, committed endeavor. (Repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth...).

No wonder we have such a hard time with "Love".

Yeah, I know, somehow  "I pragma you" doesn't feel as.... romantic....