An Introduction
Hello, as this is my first post here a small introduction is in order. I hope for this blog to be an outlet for writing about various curiosities and interests currently occupying my mind. A constructive exercise to occupy my recently acquired vast amount of free time. The scope will be broad, and there really isn’t a goal outside of special interest dumping, in a hopefully eloquent manner. I do hope anyone reading enjoys, please do feel free to reach out and start a conversation if you’d like, you can email me at sam@xymoxes.com or shout at the sky I suppose, whichever takes your fancy.
The Impossibility of Objectivity
“The eyes are windows to the soul” - a proverb often attributed to
Shakespeare. Paradoxical though, if the eyes are windows, the glass must travel
both ways. When I look into your soul, I am inevitably blinded by the
reflection of my own.
In the entirety of The Odyssey, Homer describes the ocean as
‘wine-dark’, ‘misty’, and ‘cloudy’, honey as green, sheep as violet. Not
once does he describe the ocean as blue.
Or off course the classic - there is no such thing as the color magenta.
Green, yellow, blue, all exist as measurable wavelengths, magenta is a
hallucination, produced when we see red and violet simultaneously, an
invention of your brain trying to make sense of the chaos around.
1. The human factor
This is a topic that has held my interest for quite some time, I
sometimes find difficulty coming to terms with how my own perception is
different to others, and no more real than their own. As humans we have
an understanding, a relative consistency between us. For example what is
up and down, hot and cold, though it seems like we rely on what is
basically a comfortable consensus. Opinions may differ on how hot is
hot, how cold is cold, but only fractionally. To apply true objectivity
to a comparison of our perception would likely result in a comparison
issue we see in computers known as floating-point errors:
a = 0.1 + 0.2
b = 0.3
print(f”a: {a}\nb: {b}\nEqual: {a == b}”)
a: 0.30000000000000004
b: 0.3
Equal: False
Close enough to fall in love, make friends, share experiences, far enough to have arguments, wage war, hate others. The tiny variance in our perception explains our love, our conflicts, our society. Spread across 8 billion people and entire lifetimes these small differences compound into vastly different lived experiences reaching every little nook and cranny of our life. Perhaps the difficulty I have understanding this does not lie in the comparison of one thing in isolation, but in the totality of how it all compounds.
2. Our perceptive limitations
Jakob von Uexküll concept of the Umwelt (translated as 'surroundings’, or ‘environment’). Uexküll was a
biologist, and fittingly the ‘Umwelt’ is a term he came up with to express the observation that different
species of animals pick up on different environmental signals. He argues that all organisms experience life
in a species-specific, subjective frame, a sensory bubble or prison that every organism is trapped inside.
The idea of human perception can be a quite a difficult and vast concept to grasp, Uexküll gives an example
of the tick as a simplified analogy. He writes how the tick is blind and deaf to almost everything in the
universe. It climbs upwards, toward light, then it waits, for years on end, for one specific thing: the
smell of butyric acid (mammal sweat), at which point it drops, seeking a host. That existence is its entire
reality. One of my biggest enjoyments in life is a concert, the noise, the atmosphere, wonderful - yet if I
were to bring a tick along with me, it wouldn’t just ignore the concert, the concert simply would not exist.
So what are we to make of that, well my wife expressed pity for the tick, a ‘poor little thing’ sort of
sentiment. An understandable reaction, it misses so much of the ‘real-world’, or at least our real-world.
This thought is an example of the Umwelt, this perceptive prison, in action, what if there is more beyond
what we can sense? Posit that we are just big ticks, confident that our eyes see ‘reality’. Science shows us
that is not true though, we are completely blind to the ultraviolet light that many other animals see, deaf
to the infrasound communication of elephants, oblivious to the magnetic fields that guide birds. We don’t
perceive Wi-Fi signals, radio waves, all constantly flying around us without using machines we’ve created to
detect them. Our brain gives us only the data we need to find food, a partner, not fall off a cliff.
As David Eagleman puts it - “It (the Umwelt) neatly captures the idea of limited knowledge, of unobtainable
information, and of unimagined possibilities. Consider the criticisms of policy, the assertions of dogma,
the declarations of fact that you hear every day — and just imagine if all of these could be infused with
the proper intellectual humility that comes from appreciating the amount unseen.”
3. The Tanganyika laughter epidemic
So far perception seems like a lonely thing indeed, the tick trapped in its bubble, the human trapped in
their varying idea of hot and cold, as if an error is an individual burden or limitation.
But our opinions and perceptions influence one-another, they not only sometimes align but they shape others.
As humans we don’t just endure our private little prison. We are constantly trying to align, to sync our
Umwelts. Psychologists call this intersubjectivity - for example the shared agreement that money is
valuable, borders are real, and laws are binding. This intersubjectivity is the glue that binds us and
allows us to function as a society.
Intersubjectivity is not always correct or even rational though. Sometimes its completely absurd, take the
events of Tanganyika Laughter Epidemic of 1962.
It began at a boarding school with three girls, they started laughing, not a little giggle, no, an
uncontrollable, hysterical fit of laughter. Within minutes, it spread to their classmates, and within days
95 of the 159 students were ‘infected’ with this uncontrollable laughter, lasting from a few hours to 16
days, and averaging around 7 days. Symptoms included crying, fainting, respiratory problems, and rashes, it
actually got so bad the school was forced to close on March 18th, and send students home. Upon re-opening on
May 21st, a second outbreak affected 57 additional students, and again the school forced to close at the end
of June.
But that was not the end, the illness spread to a neighboring village. In April and May, 217 villagers had
laughing attacks over the course of 34 days. In June it spread to another school, affecting 48 students. The
phenomenon lasted 18 months and an area of over 200 miles in diameter, 14 schools were shut down and over
1,000 people were affected.
To an ‘objective’ observer, there was nothing there, no virus, no bacteria, no toxin. Yet the symptoms was
undeniable, to the afflicted the laughter was as real as a broken bone. It was a case of what is known as
mass psychogenic illness. Multiple theories of why have been put forward, stress-induced, cultural
dissonance of both the traditional conservatism at home and new progressive ideas challenging that in
school, we will probably never truly know. Mass psychogenic illnesses are fascinating and I would very much
recommend a visit to the wiki page.
4. Beetle in the box - communicating without objectivity
If we accept that we are all trapped in our own Umwelt, then communication becomes a very odd dance. We like
to think we are transferring thoughts directly from one brain to another, but we’ve already established we
aren’t. We’re more so making noises and hoping the other person hears, understands and conceptualizes the
thoughts we are trying to convey.
The beetle in a box is a thought experiment by Ludwig Wittgenstein, an Austrian philosopher. Imagine
everyone has a box, and that no one can look into anyone else’s box, only their own. Everyone says they have
a ‘beetle’ in their box, they all talk about their beetles constantly, describing them, comparing them,
building their societies around the concept of the ‘beetle’.
The catch being because no one can look into anyone else’s box, its impossible to know if anyone’s ‘beetle’
looks like a beetle, it may be a spider, or a stone, or completely empty. The ‘beetle’ is in effect just a
label, it has no objective meaning, only a social use. The box representing the mind and contents of our
interior lives. We communicate in terms, which we describe and compare all the time. Mistaking the term for
the thing itself, we assume that because we share the same word, we share the same world. But in reality we
are just guessing, hoping that the ‘beetle’ in my box bears some resemblance to the ‘beetle’ in your box.
5. Living in the margin of error
If true objectivity is impossible, if we all carry different ‘beetles’, live in different prisons of our
Umwelt, how do we function?
We have to abandon the goal of ‘being right’ and instead focus on ‘being aligned’.
If I accept that my reality is a floating-point calculation (0.30004), and not the absolute truth (0.3), I’m forced
into a sort of humility. To not give way to an instinct to correct someone I think may be wrong, but instead
ask more questions. Since most of our disagreements as a species is not about facts, no, most of the time we
are disagreeing on perception.
Like people standing on the edge of a valley, gazing at the same mountain from opposite sides. I say the
mountain is jagged, you say it is smooth. Conflict only arises when one of us insists that it is in fact their
own view that is the only view.
Navigating the human experience requires acting as a translator, not a judge. It requires accepting that we
can truly escape our own view. But that what makes us great is that we can invite others in for a tour.
“Here is the world through my window, it is distorted, it is blurry, the colors are strange, and I still
have not figured it out, but its the only view I have. What does yours look like?”
That invitation, a willingness to compare, may be the closest we will ever get to truth.