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There have been two articles in the NY Times this week pointed out by facebook friends. One was quite long and started by reporting on a twenty some year longitudinal study on anxious babies. The other story was shorter, less formal, and about how "nonsense" makes us humans uncomfortable, and forces us to look for patterns.
Christine asserted some reason we (she and i) like watching mysteries, which involved something like initial chaos and the resolution. There are a couple of patterns though: US TV crime mysteries seem comfortable because the pattern, the rhythm is predictable. It's a familiar tune with creative embellishments. The BBC mysteries we're watching now, "Waking the Dead" and "Wire in the Blood," are not yet familiar tunes. I do know someone is going to get killed at the end of the first episode of "Waking the Dead" -- i'm not quite bored by that yet. The novelty of just what British police can do legally is also interesting, as Christine and i raise our eyebrows at another door being crashed down.
When i read the NY Time story about nonsense, i was slightly annoyed by a glib tone. The author begins with the assertion that "nonsense," unexpected conjunctions "like a armchair in the middle of the forest," trigger our need to explain (find patterns). There's a recognition of how some people retreat to pat explanations in the face of the unexpected. I suppose i'm reminded of a Youtube video also posted recently: one that critiques the use of "ghosts" to explain such an unexpected observation. The article celebrates the creativity and delight of such encounters, but doesn't go back to how that strong urge to explain can be used to reinforce our beliefs, whatever they are. In my science training, we were taught to calculate uncertainties and errors in measurements and reminded of the very human instinct to look harder, examine more factors if the measured value was unexpected, but not so much if the value was close to the expected value.
There's a wonderful example of this (apparently not in Bevington (1969)). Some physical constant was being measured over the decades as methods got better and better. Huge uncertainties are depicted for early measurements and then, it's as if techniques get more precise: the uncertainties dramatically shrink. The value measured was pretty consistent throughout time. But, ah-ha, the point where the uncertainties shrink is not some technological breakthrough, but a change in the theoretical expectation of the value. The huge error bars of the early measurements were estimated so that the measurement included the prior predicted value. When the randomness of the measured values are examined closely, it's clear those estimated uncertainties were far larger than the physical reality.
The second NY Times story starts by describing the early part of the longitudinal study. Babies were exposed to unfamiliar stimuli and those that found the unfamiliar upsetting have been tracked as being "anxious." I read the description of the reaction and recognize the same terms my mother used to describe me. The story told me, however, is that it wasn't simply unfamiliar things that triggered the arched back and inconsolable crying -- i reacted constantly. This fussy baby behavior was yet another type of unexpected phenomena, and it clearly made a huge impact on my mother. I grew up hearing the description of this fussy, crying, "unloving" early self and my mother's evolving explanation of it.
My mother is anxious, and probably fits into the descriptions of the anxiety ridden person in the article. I think she continues to worry, decades later, about the unexpected fussy baby, and tries to explain it over and over. I've learned that who i am cannot be accepted at face value but must be analyzed and examined and explained.
It's a bit like the state of affairs in nuclear physics when i left. The physical observations had been made. The behavior of stable nuclei were well observed (and "stable" includes nuclei with sub-second half lives). Multiple theories could explain the body of observed data. Coming up with nuclear environments in which to test those theories was a challenge.
For my mother, the observations were a set body, explanations could be made to fit, over and over and over and there really was no way to test the explanations: one could always selectively choose evidence from the present that supported the current theory. (That last part was *not* part of my experience of the nuclear physics: instead we created "exotic" nuclei.)
I doubt that we can say that the need to explain is an exclusively human trait, but i think we can assert that it is a universal of "normal" human brains. I like to think that i am comfortable with uncertainty, that while i love spinning a speculation to explain observations, i can simultaneously live in the explanation while also recognizing the nature of the explanation as a mutable incomplete frame.
I recognize that the need for certainty is so very strong. Some people are comforted by the certainty of small things, ephemeral joys, others need certainty in systems, others in certainty that there is one explanation from which everything else can be derived. I could say my certainty that by physical limitation, the way our understanding of logic and time is wired into the structure of our brains, ... Ha! i can't even write this without a qualifying "may" -- what if we manage to design computers with different wiring, what if we meet an alien intelligence, many different alien intelligences? What if, what if, what if? No, i can't even be certain that we will always be limited in our understanding -- but i think it's a very safe bet.
Is there a point to my mental meanderings here? I'm just scratching the itchy bits these articles bring up: how can we take the moments of "nonsense" when we observe the unexpected, and use those moments to truly open our ability to observe and challenge our current understandings instead of using them to confirm our current understandings? How can we take the expected, the explained and challenge our understanding in ways that don't make us nutcases and ineffective but more compassionate and more creative? The "culture wars" are all about this, social justice and finding sustainable prosperity are all about this, management and product development and religion (yes, really) are all about this.
Even my silly diet experiment is all about this (and i think i've figured out how i can do a double blind experiment on wheat).
Christine asserted some reason we (she and i) like watching mysteries, which involved something like initial chaos and the resolution. There are a couple of patterns though: US TV crime mysteries seem comfortable because the pattern, the rhythm is predictable. It's a familiar tune with creative embellishments. The BBC mysteries we're watching now, "Waking the Dead" and "Wire in the Blood," are not yet familiar tunes. I do know someone is going to get killed at the end of the first episode of "Waking the Dead" -- i'm not quite bored by that yet. The novelty of just what British police can do legally is also interesting, as Christine and i raise our eyebrows at another door being crashed down.
When i read the NY Time story about nonsense, i was slightly annoyed by a glib tone. The author begins with the assertion that "nonsense," unexpected conjunctions "like a armchair in the middle of the forest," trigger our need to explain (find patterns). There's a recognition of how some people retreat to pat explanations in the face of the unexpected. I suppose i'm reminded of a Youtube video also posted recently: one that critiques the use of "ghosts" to explain such an unexpected observation. The article celebrates the creativity and delight of such encounters, but doesn't go back to how that strong urge to explain can be used to reinforce our beliefs, whatever they are. In my science training, we were taught to calculate uncertainties and errors in measurements and reminded of the very human instinct to look harder, examine more factors if the measured value was unexpected, but not so much if the value was close to the expected value.
There's a wonderful example of this (apparently not in Bevington (1969)). Some physical constant was being measured over the decades as methods got better and better. Huge uncertainties are depicted for early measurements and then, it's as if techniques get more precise: the uncertainties dramatically shrink. The value measured was pretty consistent throughout time. But, ah-ha, the point where the uncertainties shrink is not some technological breakthrough, but a change in the theoretical expectation of the value. The huge error bars of the early measurements were estimated so that the measurement included the prior predicted value. When the randomness of the measured values are examined closely, it's clear those estimated uncertainties were far larger than the physical reality.
The second NY Times story starts by describing the early part of the longitudinal study. Babies were exposed to unfamiliar stimuli and those that found the unfamiliar upsetting have been tracked as being "anxious." I read the description of the reaction and recognize the same terms my mother used to describe me. The story told me, however, is that it wasn't simply unfamiliar things that triggered the arched back and inconsolable crying -- i reacted constantly. This fussy baby behavior was yet another type of unexpected phenomena, and it clearly made a huge impact on my mother. I grew up hearing the description of this fussy, crying, "unloving" early self and my mother's evolving explanation of it.
My mother is anxious, and probably fits into the descriptions of the anxiety ridden person in the article. I think she continues to worry, decades later, about the unexpected fussy baby, and tries to explain it over and over. I've learned that who i am cannot be accepted at face value but must be analyzed and examined and explained.
It's a bit like the state of affairs in nuclear physics when i left. The physical observations had been made. The behavior of stable nuclei were well observed (and "stable" includes nuclei with sub-second half lives). Multiple theories could explain the body of observed data. Coming up with nuclear environments in which to test those theories was a challenge.
For my mother, the observations were a set body, explanations could be made to fit, over and over and over and there really was no way to test the explanations: one could always selectively choose evidence from the present that supported the current theory. (That last part was *not* part of my experience of the nuclear physics: instead we created "exotic" nuclei.)
I doubt that we can say that the need to explain is an exclusively human trait, but i think we can assert that it is a universal of "normal" human brains. I like to think that i am comfortable with uncertainty, that while i love spinning a speculation to explain observations, i can simultaneously live in the explanation while also recognizing the nature of the explanation as a mutable incomplete frame.
I recognize that the need for certainty is so very strong. Some people are comforted by the certainty of small things, ephemeral joys, others need certainty in systems, others in certainty that there is one explanation from which everything else can be derived. I could say my certainty that by physical limitation, the way our understanding of logic and time is wired into the structure of our brains, ... Ha! i can't even write this without a qualifying "may" -- what if we manage to design computers with different wiring, what if we meet an alien intelligence, many different alien intelligences? What if, what if, what if? No, i can't even be certain that we will always be limited in our understanding -- but i think it's a very safe bet.
Is there a point to my mental meanderings here? I'm just scratching the itchy bits these articles bring up: how can we take the moments of "nonsense" when we observe the unexpected, and use those moments to truly open our ability to observe and challenge our current understandings instead of using them to confirm our current understandings? How can we take the expected, the explained and challenge our understanding in ways that don't make us nutcases and ineffective but more compassionate and more creative? The "culture wars" are all about this, social justice and finding sustainable prosperity are all about this, management and product development and religion (yes, really) are all about this.
Even my silly diet experiment is all about this (and i think i've figured out how i can do a double blind experiment on wheat).
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All of which is just noodling on the edge of your point, but I share in case it sparks further thought.
M