Language and Categories

I mentioned in the previous post that we are pattern recognition machines rather than logic machines. Although we can teach ourselves to structure our thoughts logically, it is something of an imposition on our normal way of thinking. Human cognition works mostly like a neural network. We have particular meanings assigned to particular patterns that form something like nodes within our minds, and each node has a collection of other nodes with which it is strongly or weakly connected. The connections can be altered through training ourselves, consciously or not.

For instance, my son enjoys eating apples. He eats them a lot. When I see an apple (which is a node), I now think of my son (another node). Of course, when I think of him, I think of my other son (and another, etc.). And when I think of my other son, I think of the fact that I am taking him to a baseball game (weather permitting) on Sunday, which has nothing at all to do with an apple in any logical sense. However, within my neural network, the apple and the baseball game are only a few nodes apart.

Our minds are set up in an ideal way for keeping ourselves alive in a hostile world. If some ancient man saw tiger tracks or fire, he could relate that to danger. This is not as important for us as it used to be, since we have invented things that do the danger watching for us and we have organized our society in such a way that there are individuals (cops, the army) who theoretically keep us safe in various ways.

In our modern world, this neural network-based way of thinking can sometimes cause problems for us. See, in logic, if we discover that something is wrong, we can simply mark it as such and continue, knowing that. With a neural network, it takes time to unlearn connections that may not be correct. For instance, let's say that as a child I hated going to the doctor, and the doctor's office was painted blue. I have developed a strong association between blue rooms and the misery of the doctor's office. Now in college, I attend a class on a subject in which I am very interested, but it is in a room that is painted blue. Suddenly, for reasons I can't explain and of which I may not be aware, I find it hard to sit in class. When I'm in there, I just want to get out. I stop going to the lectures, and even though the subject is important to me, I do poorly in the class.

This is a rather simplistic example and probably not the best one, but it's the best I can do off the top of my head (the bottom of my head is currently unavailable as it is thinking about chocolate). The point, though, is that in our lives, we develop associations between nodes that are inefficient and potentially harmful to us. We all have a vast collection of such associations, and we're probably only aware of a small number of them.

One aspect of this way of thinking is that it forces us to categorize our experiences. We find patterns and make associations between patterns. We categorize things as good, bad, pleasant, harmful, and so on. Language itself is a means of categorizing the world around us. A particular pattern may be known to us as a tree, while another may be known to us as a chair or a computer or a platypus or a shoggoth. This is not limited to objects. We categorize actions as walking or running or jumping, etc. We understand the world in these terms.

Most people probably consider categorization to be something logical. After all, some of the most famous ones, such as the biological taxonomic ranking system or the Dewey decimal system, appear quite orderly and rational. However, they function more as an attempt to categorize and rationalize systems with no inherent classification or division by minds unable to process continuous data meaningfully. We've all come across books that don't fit the classifications well, and there have been new branches added to various levels of the taxonomic ranking system in order to cope with specimens that fall between the cracks since its invention.

Categorization is an abstraction and simplification of reality. It is an attempt to take something that is continuous and complex - which we have trouble with - and make it into something with clear divisions. That is, something with nodes. We have a tendency to think of the categories we have made to help us understand reality as part of the underlying reality itself, and much error and misunderstanding has resulted from this.

Don't get me wrong. Categorical thinking is important to us. We can't really go without it. We need abstraction and simplification in order to make sense of the world. However, we should not make the mistake of confusing the reality with the categories into which we have shoehorned it. There are no chairs. There are no tables. These are categories we have constructed for certain patterns we encounter. Taken to its logical extreme, one could say that there are no people, either. Indeed, if we try to understand reality continuously rather than categorically, it seems to go against some of our most strongly held ideas and beliefs.

But conclusions reached via categorical thinking are not inherently incorrect. Not at all. Like I said, we are able to detect patterns very well due to our thinking style. We can detect a tendency for the trees to sway when we hear wind. We can detect a tendency for tones to sound when we vibrate a string. These have fed our inventiveness and allowed us to accomplish all sorts of things. We simply have to understand that we created these categories - they do not actually exist.

The Politics of Left and Right

The current political climate in the United States could probably best be described as caustic. In my life, which accounts for only about 15% of the country's history (less than half that if you count only politically conscious years), I have never seen things so polarized.

It's more than polarization, though. There seems to be a "Go, team go!" attitude usually associated with athletic teams when it comes to political parties or persuasions. That is, people seem more concerned with winning the argument than with being correct. With athletic teams, obviously, there is no "correct". Athletic teams are artificial constructs, not based on any ideology. Our decision to support a particular team is rather arbitrary, based on such factors as geographical location and our parents. I'm not a Mets fan because I support the idea of the Mets or because they represent anything more than themselves. I suppose one could say that it's because I am a masochist. But really, it's because my father is one, and I'm from New York, and there's little else to it.

With a political party or group however, the basis of the group is usually a common ideology. Republicans aren't just a team. They are meant to be a group that has come together based on similar ideas about how the country should operate. Ditto for Democrats, Greens, and the vast number of other parties that make up our country. Ideally, a party attracts a person who has similar ideas - ideas he or she has come to independently. Ideally, we don't so much think of ourselves as belonging to a party but as affiliating with one. This doesn't just apply to political parties, either, but to all kinds of groups.

Needless to say, this idea world is not the one in which we live.

Right now, if I were to declare myself a "liberal" or a "conservative", I would immediately bias you, dear reader, to either agree or disagree with me. If you think otherwise, you should probably do some self-reflection. We are all guilty of this. When we agree with someone about one thing, we are more likely to agree with them in other areas, even unrelated ones. If I say, "I think trickle-down economics is a good idea," and then I tell you that I support the invasion of Libya, your support for the invasion of Libya will increase or decrease, at least momentarily, based upon your feelings about trickle-down economics. This is just how humans work. We form patterns, and those patterns can be highly irrational. Rationalization comes after the fact. We can support our positions with reason, but our conclusions tend to come first, before the reasoning.

We can work against this nature if we try, but it takes a lot of effort, even for seemingly rational people. We all have our biases, likes, and dislikes, that have irrational effects on our acceptance of ideas. By examining what we believe and trying to determine why we believe it, we can, in fact, convince ourselves to shed or accept some ideas based upon individual merits of the ideas rather than our associations of those ideas with particular groups or people.

However, what I've seen happening in the United States in recent years is the increased use of what I would call irrational methods to spread ideas based on agendas. Various groups have become quite adept at using memes to spread ideas of questionable rational merit in order to further their own interests. The biggest culprit in this regard - and my saying this will likely bias you one way or the other about everything else I say here - is Fox News. Let me explain...

There is a basic formula for getting people to join your cause, regardless of its merit and regardless of their own values and needs:

• You begin by presenting yourself as being part of the same group, sharing the same values and customs as your targets. You must especially sympathize with their common plight - all groups see themselves as having some common plight. You must feel the oppression that they feel, even if no real oppression exists.
• Next, you must cultivate the myth of the other. It helps to have a particular group or groups upon which you can pin all or some of the ills of society, as Hitler most famously did with the Jews. However, you can create phantom groups if no obvious ones exist. It only matters that the targets are able to see them as existing. Welfare moms would be an example of this, and there are probably numerous better ones.
• The next step is crucial and must be done carefully. You need to associate your own goals with the goals of the targets. Let's say, for instance, you want to create a government program that directly benefits you in some way, and you need the support of people who would have no vested interest in it - or maybe even a vested interest in not seeing it come to fruition - in order to make it work. You can appeal to your common struggle in some way, where appropriate. Put it in a bill called "American Pride" so that anyone voting against it is voting against American pride. Also, it helps if you can somehow convince people that it does benefit them in some way, perhaps by doing something about that "other" group you previously worked on, or perhaps through some indirect mechanism that sounds rational.

There are plenty of variations and complexities that can be layered on top of this, but that's the basic idea. You have to win people over from within their group, not by convincing them that your group is better than theirs. I mean, you can do that, but it's less effective in most cases.

Fox News has made an art form of this. A huge segment of the population believes in a left-wing media with a liberal agenda in which Fox News is the beacon of centrist truth, that Fox News is more patriotic, that they are "fair and balanced" and so forth. It doesn't matter whether any of this is true. It matters that they have managed to convince so many people that it is, not through some rational means, but in ingenious ways such as with the "War on Christmas" they use to keep their Christian targets in the fold and other irrational emotional appeals.

I say this about Fox not because I am a liberal, though, in fairness, I think most people would say I at least lean that way (I don't like to self-identify for reasons closely related to those being discussed in this post). I say it because it's what I've observed about them. Don't get me wrong - CNN and especially MSNBC try the same thing. They're just not nearly as good at it.

So, getting back to my main point a bit, we're now stuck with teams fighting for control of the ball. They care about winning the game. This has always been true of the players, but now the crowd has become just as partisan. Republican fans and Democratic fans care more about seeing their respective teams win than they do about making the country work right. But this is not an athletic competition.

Is there any way out of this situation?

Audient Void?

So I feel compelled to explain, briefly, the title of the blog. It is taken from an H.P. Lovecraft story snippet, "Nyarlathotep". I am a fan of his work, and for some reason, this term has always stood out to me. The idea of a vast yet listening nothingness intrigues me. I have long thought that some of the themes of Lovecraft's work were ahead of their time, and I can see how one might call the internet an audient void.