gracefool

15 February 2012

Self-imposed limitations

I went to see Chronicle last night. The trailer left me very underwhelmed but like most reviewers I liked the movie. Deeper than most superhero movies, and practically all found-footage movies. The most important and encouraging part to me was the validation of the antagonist's pain - but I'll write about that some other time. As in any flying superhero movie, it had the obligatory "casually sitting on the edge of a very tall building" scene - so of course I went straight out and emulated it ^_^

Here are some quotes about superheroes I came across today:

The only difference between a hero and an ordinary person is that heroes have learnt that fear is just a feeling, not a reflection of reality.

Me

Never tell me the sky is the limit when there are footprints on the moon.

Anonymous

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of God.
Your playing small does not serve the world.
There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you.
We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.
It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone.
And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

Marianne Williamson, Return to Love

9 December 2011

Love exists

I've been enjoying popology, a great series of mini-sermons based on chart-topping pop music videos, from Christchurch's Steve Bell. I felt the need to spend half a day writing a reply to his most recent video (embedded below):

Your message seems confused - as you admit, even you don't know what you mean. It's tempting to forget the whole message as a wishy-washy muddle, but I'm a fan of your reviews and you state some wonderful truths in this one so I think it's worth trying to sort it out (even if it's taken me half the day).

Of course love doesn't exist in itself - it's a concept. "Love itself has no meaning, but rather it gives meaning to everything. It gives significance to those you love, they become important because you love them." This is great. But the following statement "Love does not exist as something that is itself significant" is confusing. Love is clearly a significant concept, since you're bothering to talk about it. I'd argue it is the most significant concept of all.

Together the two statements "Love doesn't exist" and "Love calls everything into existence" are a contradiction. Something that doesn't exist can't bring anything into existence. But this contradiction can be resolved, and I will do so below.

I think I understand something of what you're getting at. We find truth, meaning, and beauty, by loving each other. Truth is not to be found through academic belief in concepts, but in the active and messy genuine care of others. Any concept of "God" that gets in the way of that is wrong.

But love isn't just a feeling - how do we know we are loving, how do we measure the truth and goodness of love? Like you said in your last review ("We Found Love"): there is good love, and bad love (or alternatively, a spectrum of love from pure to flawed to fake). Pure love is purely giving. But by what basis can we assert this? And how can we believe that good love is possible, or that it really matters?

Because God has shown us good love. We cannot find truth, or love, without God. I'm not saying an athiest can't find truth and love, but I am saying that an athiest finds them because God does exist. God is love but love is not God: For some reason you don't make this distinction, and this probably more than anything is what muddles your message. God exists in himself, unlike love. God is other, a person not a concept, so he can love us, and he can "call everything into existence". And we can love him in return. In God we find not only an object of love, but a definition.

(Disclaimer: Nowadays there's a need to explain the use of the male pronoun "he" in reference to God. It doesn't mean I think God has a gender, it's that in English the gender neutral pronoun "it" is impersonal, and one of the most important things about God is that he is a person we can relate to. I could use "she", but in the Bible, God is much more often referred to as a father than a mother, I am following the Hebrew tradition of the male pronoun, and I'd needlessly offend more people by breaking that tradition.)

Without God, there is no definition of love - or indeed anything at all beyond our own subjective definitions. Without God, all our philosophy, all our talk of truth and love, is like a discussion about colour between the congenitally blind. God exists, so beauty is more than just a subjective feeling, it is a transcendent truth, with basis in the existing, objective world. God exists, so we can have confidence and persistence in believing that love matters, and that we matter, in a broken world which so often tells us to give up.

You do no one a service by falling for the split in our culture that puts objective truth (many would say "science") on one side and subjective love, beauty, and experience on the other. Each is essential for giving meaning to the other.

Love without truth has no definition and is meaningless. Truth without love is useless and meaningless. God is both, but much more than that, we can love him and therefore have a commitment to an ideal of love, and perfect loving actions, which do not exist in the world - apart from a sole example, Jesus.

Through the story of the Bible, God has shown us that he loves us - that we are meant to love and live in unity with the world - and that his love is so perfectly unselfish that he gave himself to die for us, so that we can ourselves aspire to, and ultimately attain, an attitude whereby we love like Jesus did.

The life, death, and resurrection of Jesus is the most beautiful story of love I've ever heard. All other stories pale in comparison with the purity of the love God showed on the cross, the epic scale, and accessible focus on the raw humanity, questioning, and suffering of Jesus. It is that love which gives my life meaning and which has kept me from ending it all when I've been in very dark times, doubting the validity of my own existence, and giving in to the messages of meaninglessness pervasive in our world.

Don't water down your message, despite its inherent offence in rebuking our human arrogance and apathy. Don't pretend even for a second that you have a better definition of love than God. Without God, you have no message at all.

Now more than ever people need to find a love with substance and truth - a love like Jesus: "love with skin on", God with us.

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P. S. To those reading this who don't share my faith - this isn't a complete message of the good news of Jesus, it doesn't make sense by itself. If you're interested in hearing the whole thing, and addressing any objections you may have, I'd love to talk with you more about it - get in touch with me via email (chris at gracefool.com) or Facebook.

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Update 13/12: Steve explains himself in our Facebook discussion, reproduced below:

Steve (12:34 12/12/2011):

Christopher, what an excellent response. There is so much I like in what you've written on your blog post.

I like your disclaimer. And I like that your worldview leads to meaning and life in dark times.

I have trouble with your assumption that, because I don't understand, I must be confused. I don't necessarily equate the two. Do you?

What makes you think I've watered down my message?

Here's a song by a favourite artist of mine. I've just become aware, thanks to your post, that my review/comment may be doing to some just what this song does to the listener:

Sadly, no nice video to accompany it, but I find the lyrics compelling enough. It took me a long time to get this song. I'm sure the point of it will be more apparent to you.

Me (14:20 12/12/2011):

Thanks Steve :)

Looking at my post now, I disagree with a lot of it, the way I said it. It touched a sensitive spot in me, and I'm sorry for taking a more oppositional stance, and especially for my arrogance.

I don't know if you are confused - I just said your message was confused. I should have said "unclear". Your message was unclear on purpose, which means it's more likely that people will take your message the wrong way - which is probably what I did.

So what do you mean by "God does not exist"? I agree that, like love, God is in a different category of existence, because he "calls everything into existence". We cannot know God without embracing mystery, the fact that we cannot understand him, we cannot fit him in our head, let alone the way he exists. Nevertheless we can know him - we can relate to him - and this is where I took exception. God may be in a different category of existence - but he also makes himself available in our category of existence - we can know him as a real person, and be certain of his being there for us. Do you mean to say this isn't true?

I don't think you do, which is why I wondered if you were compromising your message. Taken by itself, your video seems to be that way. I think you're right - like "It's Better To Be Dead" (great music BTW, and funny how the protagonist is Christopher :p) it tears down our assumptions, our vain attempts to categorise and understand everything, and find meaning in what we do. Like Ecclesiastes, "It's Better To Be Dead" reminds us that everyone dies, whether foolish or wise... we should stop trying to judge everything, happiness is not to be found that way... a worthy message, but stopping there, as the song does, is quite depressing. Like that, your video leaves us hanging, without answers or meaning... so I guess I jumped in to fill it. We can't be happy without meaning, we can't move without at least the illusion of it, and we can't live with a belief vacuum - something will jump in to fill it, the only question is whether it is truth or lies. To be sure, I have spoken messages like yours, to create questions, to highlight meaninglessness, but I regret every message of mine which stopped there. We have been given such an awesome message of hope, why not tell it?

Steve (14:39 13/12/2011):

No worries, I totally appreciated that I would be shot at dawn for this review.

The point of "It's Better To Be Dead" is less about reminding us of our ultimate fate, and more about what it does to the listener in hearing it: No-one goes, "Yes. Yes it is better to be dead, for the dead feel nothing".

Instead, it's like placing a strawberry on the table, and telling my three-year old son that he must not touch it. Of course he'll rally against what he's been told - it's his nature - that strawberry has one destination - his grinning chewer.

To tell the living that life is not for them is to call the living to life in perhaps the most powerful way.

Though I acknowledge it was not my witting intention in this review, what then happens when the listener is told that God - or love - does not exist? Christopher devotes half a day to making a case that God is. You weren't really trying to convince me, were you?

Me (15:20 13/12/2011):

Hehe well then, nicely played ;) I'll happily spend more than half a day (my whole life) making a case that God is.

I wasn't sure. I haven't seen you come out and say your purpose, your main message, in any of your videos (although I've only seen about half of them).

Steve (16:21 13/12/2011):

Don't watch the other half - I probably would take issue with myself about what I said by now... ;)

14 October 2011

The Human Condition of Knowledge

A rambling introduction to practical epistemology, or "How you're ignorant and almost totally clueless":

Cluelessness

Most people have some conception of their ignorance; but as the saying goes, "the more you know, the more you know you don't know" - as your circle of knowledge (the dot in diagram) grows, your circle of ignorance grows even faster. It's not that you're actually becoming more ignorant: things in your circle of cluelessness are now in your circle of ignorance - you're now aware that they exist, but you don't understand them. Cluelessness includes all those things we're completely unaware of; we don't even know to ask questions about them.

Cluelessness, the set of "unknown unknowns" only includes things you could know; it does not include unknowable unknowns, which would be a vastly larger (probably infinite) set. These are things our human brains - or even enhanced human brains (if you believe that may one day be possible) - cannot know, despite their being true. For instance, the knowledge of the state of every impulse in your own brain at the present time - a brain cannot fully know itself. Examples of things mainstream science believes to be unknowable include quantum uncertainty, knowledge of things beyond the cosmological horizon, and certainty in the future of anything beyond the simplest isolated systems (chaos theory demonstrates how complex systems quickly become totally unpredictable - even if you understand how every element operates).

Resolving details

To me, the modern computer, being the most complex tool ever created by man, is a great example of straightforward, knowable knowledge. Everyone who has heard of a computer is aware that they're ignorant of how they work (even world experts don't know the details of parts beyond their specialty). For most people, "how computers work" is almost entirely in their circle of ignorance. To most, a computer is a magic box which takes input (eg. via mouse & keyboard) at one end, and emits a picture at the other, and they have no conception of how the box works beyond it using electricity. They're aware of their ignorance; they're unaware of all the details, which are in their circle of cluelessness. For instance, they can't ask a single question about why their computer sometimes stops working for no apparent reason, beyond "Why?". Their circle of knowledge can be increased by believing a statement like "some of the electrical power in your computer is used to spin a 3.5 inch metal disc at 7200rpm". Knowledge creates knowledge, and they are now able to link this new fact with previous knowledge, perhaps realising that "drilling a hole in my laptop while it's on may be dangerous, even if I'm protected from electrical current". It also moves information from their cluelessness circle into their ignorance circle: if their laptop stops working, they might now ask a relevant question "Was the spinning of the disc disturbed (perhaps because I was dancing while holding my laptop)?" All this despite being ignorant about what the disc does (apart from spin and use power), and clueless about the details.

Interestingly, even in entirely man-made systems like computers, there are things humanity is clueless about - as circuits gets smaller they get closer to the limits of our knowledge about how particles interact on a nanoscopic scale, and surprising behaviours emerge. So yes there exist truly inexplicable computer bugs (they're mostly compensated for through redundancy).

Resolving details is the easiest kind of cluelessness reduction. More important kinds of cluelessness are less straightforward; for example, grasping the fact that other people have different ways of thinking and feeling. The evidence of how well a person knows that is their ability to communicate.

Self-deception

The above diagram represents the set of knowable truths: the best we can discover with our capabilities (mostly defined by being human, but capabilities also differ between people). This best is an absolute ideal, not relative - given who we are.

Our failure to reach that ideal isn't because we don't know enough stuff, it's more because we're unable to tell fact from fiction: most of what's in our circle of knowledge isn't actually true. We decide what knowledge to investigate, and what to accept, on the basis of our belief system, which is extremely biased. Here's a close-up of the previous diagram:

The self-deception circle may seem too big, but that's because it's unconscious (or semi-conscious). We're aware we have some self-deception, but we're clueless about the details. As Freud pointed out, the facts we grasp are often cherry-picked by our emotions (conscious and unconscious), which are often echoes from our early childhood - false impressions of ourselves and the world that we adopted, not having enough knowledge to correctly interpret what was going on. Another example of how knowledge enables more knowledge - the wise get wiser in the same way that the rich get richer (but more powerfully since wisdom is harder to lose than money).

The only way to shuffle these circles in such a way as to increase your set of true knowledge is to compare your sets with those of knowledgeable people and adjust accordingly. The trivial increase is to reduce your ignorance - Google is handy for that. You can also learn new ways of thinking (reducing your unknown unknowns), and become more self-aware (reducing your self-deception) - but these are much more difficult as they push against your habits and ego. These latter, along with your base assumptions and ultimate authorities of truth, determine your ability to recognize truth. Knowledge about knowledge, and the ways you compare your knowledge, is therefore of the utmost importance.

An example of some ways people mis-compare knowledge is the Dunning–Kruger effect, where highly competent people are likely to assume others are similarly competent, therefore underrating their own ability (illusory inferiority), while the incompetent are unable to recognize their own mistakes, thereby being much more confident than their abilities warrant (illusory superiority). Interestingly, this phenomenon is much less common in East Asia, often even reversed.

Going back to the example of computers, I've experienced first-hand (having provided IT support since my pre-teen years) how the people who are the most impatient with computer technicians, are the people who are the most ignorant about computers. People with a bit of a clue get less frustrated when something goes wrong because a) they don't expect computers to never fail, b) they realise they may have unknowingly contributed to the problem, and c) they don't assume the solution is simple. The most ignorant people don't realise any of that, because they don't even know they're ignorant, and the knowledge of the expert threatens their self-deception: that they understand their world. It doesn't help that young computer experts are notorious for underestimating the ignorance of non-experts (the other side of the Dunning-Kruger effect).

We can reduce and compensate somewhat for our biases by developing our awareness of them. Hence the ancient Greek maxim "Know yourself". When we're unaware of our inherent biases, we're vulnerable to making all sorts of unfair judgements, and to being manipulated, whether we're being sold a product, a religion, or any knowledge. Mostly we develop self-awareness by the feedback of wiser friends, but some theory is useful too. Some of my favourite teachers of psychological patterns include:

• Wikipedia's list of cognitive biases
• You Are Not So Smart (blog and book)
• Wired's Frontal Cortex blog
• The Power of Persuasion
• Fooled by Randomness (it also has an excellent bibliography I'd love to work through)

Epistemology

Knowledge about knowledge includes trust in the ability of a discipline (eg. science or another philosophy) to discover reality, trust in a reconstruction of history, trust in a person, or trust in a Creator. In other words, meta-knowledge is faith. Faith makes possible the acceptance of unknowns, or unknowable unknowns (mystery and wonder). Other kinds of knowledge include the physical (eg. distinguishing smells, bodily co-ordination), humour, sex, hope, aesthetics, and love.

Some epistemologies, especially love, embody an implicit understanding of the human condition of knowledge, being humble enough to recognize the limitations of knowledge, enabling the celebration of the other despite not understanding them, creating the desire to know others despite their differences.

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Inspired by a five-part series from the New York Times about anosognosia (the unawareness or denial of disability).

If you have practical knowledge about knowledge, please share your thoughts or titles of books you've found valuable on the subject.