And, yeah, I’m brash, opinionated, controversial… all that. I’m a foul-mouthed, mid-aged white guy with nothing better to do. Fuck if I know anything.
I’m still open minded. You don’t
come to the point of looking into issues like flat
earth and religion
without having given it your best shot to try to understand where people are
coming from. And, I can still admit when my arguments don’t have legs to stand
on.
But this is my blog. And I will
do whatever the fuck I want with it.
Today’s topic? Objectivity. And
I’ll be a monkey’s uncle if it ain’t a loaded gun.
I’ve talked about the fact that
“facts aren’t facts” before, and I know that gets people’s underpants in an uncomfortable,
twisted bunch. Either way, consider this an elaboration on this idea. And give
me my fucking space to say my damn piece.
Objectivity is impossible. It always
comes with bias. And if you think for a moment that you’re going to find “objective”
truths in this time of chaos and mass hysteria, then your IQ must be that of a doorknob.
But even outside of all that
noise, objectivity doesn’t exist. History books, encyclopedias, internet
archives, Wikipedia entries, the news… whatever source we’re dealing with,
there’s no way to present the “truth” in a way that will be understood the same
way by everyone reading, listening or watching.
“But I was there, I saw it!” I’m
not arguing with you. There are plenty of other people that saw it too.
But this is what we call consensus.
I suppose you could think of it as objectivity’s bastard cousin, but in this
world, we only get one. You can’t have both.
No one on this planet was there
for every historical event. And, no one is recording all the boring,
mundane events, such as the fact that I woke up at about 11 AM this morning. I’m
sure I could get consensus from my family, but the rest is for shit. No one
gives a damn that I got up at 11 AM. It’s unimportant. Yet, how do you know
that’s not the butterfly that turns into a tornado?
Someone swears their grandparents
were multimillionaires, yet they can’t rub two nickels together. Sure, maybe
their grandparents were rich. Maybe they weren’t. I can’t verify it. And, “rich”
being a subjective term, we’re already having trouble establishing objectivity.
“Here, I’ll show you – here’s a
picture of my grandparents.” So? I’m sure most of us could dig up a picture of
our grandparents. And, if we didn’t fucking like them, we’d still be able to
Photoshop them into a suit and dress with Zurich in the background.
This ain’t some “guilty until
proven innocent” bullshit. People really think they know what the truth
is, and they really think they’re right, and they get really fucking
angry at you if you don’t agree with them. Ever notice that?
Try saying something to your
friends they wouldn’t expect you to say, and instantly they’ll try to draw you
back in line like you were a crab in a bucket. Is it so godawful that there’s a
diversity of beliefs out there?
Man, life is whatever you make
it mean. Give up intellectual laziness and go study Werner Erhard for once.
Understand what it means to drop your stories and your interpretations of life.
Get a sense of what it’s like to be “on the court” instead of in your head.
People fucking go around like
we know what’s going on in their head all the time, and it just ain’t so. If
you’ve got something to say, speak up already. Stop living in your head.
Unexpressed expectations are
premeditated resentment. Ever come across that gem?
Look, we can agree on some
things. I don’t think anyone is going to cry about me saying that Leonardo DiCaprio
is an actor. That’s easily verifiable, as the man is alive and well. In many
ways, it still comes down to consensus though. And, if you want to get more
specific, let the clusterfuck begin. I don’t know when he woke up this morning,
do you?
Now, this is where people like
to bring in another clusterfuck called cognitive bias.
Has it ever occurred to you,
though, that cognitive bias was created by some guy who was unhappy about the
way others thought, and just wanted to be justified and validated in his
rightness? His bias is that everyone should agree with him. Fucking Christ, has
that never crossed your mind until just now?
It’s an Inception of biases,
which is why I called it a clusterfuck. This shit gets confusing fast when you
look at it with a fresh pair of eyes.
My head starts swimming the
moment I even hear the term “cognitive bias”, because I’m trying to figure out
how someone thought they were so right about themselves, others and the world,
that they figured they could set
themselves up to be more right about their rightness by pointing out problems
with other people’s wrongness. Motherfucker.
People all have varying degrees
of knowledge, experience, understanding, IQ and so on. We synthesize
information differently, and our context for certain subjects is different. We
all react differently to what’s being said or done on an emotional level. Cognitive
bias? Fuck no. This is what it means to be human, dipshit.
So, give up objectivity. All you
do when you perpetuate the idea is succumb to intellectual laziness and hold
tightly to your rightness. You’re not fucking right. I’m not fucking right.
There’s only one tool we’ve got
to work with. It’s called consensus. It’s about agreement. Enough people agree
about something, it’s called “truth”, but you’ve got to recognize that truth is a moving target, for all the reasons I’ve already pointed out.
So, the maker didn’t intend
anyone to have a grasp of truth. It’s got nothing to do with the experience we’re
living. All we were given was a way to agree on a set of “facts.”
That is why I say facts
aren’t facts.
- Anderson
No comments:
Post a Comment