The Marginalian – Maria Popova – finds me through email – a couple each week. Each explores what writers have opined through their lives on a particular topic. I should say that I am somewhat in awe of anyone who has such a vast knowledge to draw on in composing the mails. Not every one speaks directly to me, but many do.

A couple of weeks ago there were two in succession that (for me at least) sort of explored the same sort of question about life. I shall quote some of what was said here – but bear in mind that these are excerpts which particularly spoke to me and they are, of course, excerpts that were in turn pulled into the published mail. That being said, in order to get the “whole story” it would be required to go further than just accepting what I have written here.

The midweek mail draw my attention straight away as Søren Kierkegaard was mentioned in the subject line and that attraction was strengthened by the mention of his book Either/Or which is something I was already interested in. It is slightly apt that I should post this immediately after a post which brings to mind the fact that wrong decisions simply do not exist – rather being an outcome of some missing knowledge, Here this is approached in a slightly different way – where your life path has reached some bifurcation point (simplistically, as in reality there are often more than two choices) and you are forced into an Either/Or decision.

So true – it is suggested furthermore that this is never more true than in the way in which our closest relationships – family and friends – where it is necessary to see that “any relationship on the level of the soul has elements of lover, parent, child, and friend, and suffers when subjected to either/or” as Maria says in her commentary.

The next mail from The Marginalian introduced another writer – Robert Louis Stevenson – to the narrative.

I would certainly suggest that these writings are likely to be worthwhile to many. Although, of course there will be lots of people who would simply get nothing from them – that is fine because we are individuals. The fact that we can find lots of mind expanding thoughts published – recently and hundreds of years ago – is marvellous and I am always very mindful that there is much more to learn and here we have gone full circle to my previous post about our level of knowledge.

Today I read something on X which got my brain turning – unusual since that is not a source of much inspiration in my experience so far. Someone quoted Maya Angelou

Now quite a long time ago I wrote a post – Making Mistakes – which was actually very much about the same idea. However, on reflection, perhaps the use of the word mistakes was not quite the right thing to say since I was talking about a lack of knowledge (of some sort) rather than the more common way mistake is taken to mean which is to have reached an answer that is not supported by the ‘facts’ that you know.

Elsewhere I better characterised it in the phrase that “No one ever makes a wrong decision”. Better because it sort of captures the Maya Angelou idea that learning is something that is forever incomplete and you cannot be wrong if your decision is based on the ‘best’ information that you have when you make that decision.

One thing that I need to talk a little about is whether things that you ‘should’ know, or things you have forgotten or things that you wilfully ignore or mischaracterise can actually contribute to a truly wrong decision. The use of misinformation most certainly does not make a decision wrong – unless there are reasons why the use of it should have been clearly avoided.

Going back to the original quote threw my thoughts in a slightly different direction. This was something that was brought up in various guises in the responses on X to the quote. I know that it is easy to look back at things in the past – the recent past or many years ago – and wonder why a particular decision did not turn out how you expected it to. The thing here is that there is little to be gained by getting worried or frustrated (or whatever) and berating yourself for “not knowing” – failure is a necessary part of learning in many ways – what would be wrong is not doing the learning.

(and yes at this point I am seeing a very bizarre circular argument developing where it is not wrong to have made the decision but it is wrong to not take onboard the lessons – or is that equally not wrong because you don’t understand the lessons that you need to learn )

From my previous writing you would know that I – with my systems hat on – think that it is impossible to predict every consequence of even the most simple decisions. Often the “unexpected” happens a long time after the original decision – often affecting those who have nothing to do with the original decision – perhaps in a different location. It is impossible to know – at the time – exactly what will occur and perhaps more relevantly to know what other decisions by other people at different times will bump up against the consequences of your decisions to result in some emergent consequence which not only wasn’t expected but could not be expected.

Trawling through my writing here would find many similar mentions of this sort of thing – the way in which things interact, the difficulty to know future effect and so on. Enough here that there are a few wise words on the subject which agree with my own viewpoint (OK – so Confirmation Bias is a strong attractor that we must be aware of )

I initially had finished this post at this point, but further reflection and writing the next post in this blog has caused me to think of some other relevant remarks.

I got to think about how, when we are relatively young, we make huge life defining decisions and, looking back, we were really very unprepared to make the right choices – so to some extent and in many cases to a very great extent our choices are blind and anything beneficial which comes from them are to put it bluntly just good luck.

When you choose which subjects to study at school; when you choose which university to go to and then which course you follow; when you apply for a job; who will be your friends; these are all decision points that we face with a large amount of ignorance. I think for instance of choosing that I was going to study Accountancy – I chose that mainly because I was good at maths and it seemed as though accountants earned good money . I then chose the university – I say chose, having applied for five only Strathclyde offered me a guaranteed place without any further results in my 6th year at school.

First year at uni we had do do five courses – Accountancy, of course, Business Law and Business Economics were both then mandated and I added Operational Research and Industrial Relations even though I had virtually no idea what Operational Research was . Four years later, Accountancy was gone and I had an honours degree in Operational Research which to a large extent shaped my entire career – although even then it wasn’t until quite a long time after that when its influence was felt when I joined in modelling group (more than ten years later).

Now this is just one of the strands of life defining decisions that I could go through. The next post is about the Either/Or situations – and explains that often its more complicated (like in the which subjects should I study – there was a wide choice, it could be viewed as either study it or not for each subject but there were other constraints) and more than just a binary choice.

Thing is – when you are young and making all these choices you are ill-equipped to decide what is the best option and whatever you choose is only slightly more likely to result in a beneficial outcome than just using pot luck. Yes – we all felt well informed! We could look back on all the decisions (although many we would not remember making) and wonder “what if” but that, as I have written about elsewhere, is a foolish and pointless exercise in reality. The only point of a “what if” investigation is probably to highlight any opportunities that we forfeited by making the choices that we did.

I have, in other posts examined the decision making process, this post is more to point out just how the lack of knowledge at any point in time really does influence the decisions – sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse but always by chance.

I discovered that someone else had also written about this topic – along the same lines, but with different words reflecting their own worldview – worth reading for comparison and confirmation.

This post has been a long time coming – both in terms of “since my last blog entry” and in terms of how it has stewed around in my head (and as a draft) for a long while.  There are multiple things which contributed to my thinking, however the “big” one both in terms of importance to my thinking and in terms of importance to “the world” is the war (or special operation) in Ukraine and specifically the different portrayal of the events there by the two opposing sides.

I have, it must be said, no reason to doubt that what we – in the West – are being fed by the media is in any way less accurate than what the Russian people are being told.  Something else that I have touched upon before is the fact that in today’s connected world the “old rules” and “old strategies” are often inappropriate – simply because it is much more difficult – although clearly not impossible – to avoid the facts.  It is still possible – and this is something widely used by all sorts of people, not just the Russian leadership – but with cameras everywhere and ‘instant’ information availability (to many) the “facts” are shown to the world before the spin can be applied.

Now – here is where things get complicated because “truth” and “facts” are not (for many people) the same thing.  It is difficult – though not impossible – to deny facts.  Perspective and interpretation then makes truth a much less precise thing.  Look through other posts where I have effectively been stating just that in terms of there being much less black and white in the world and much more shades of grey.

Sometimes it seems as though some people go beyond this – the so-called “big lie” in the US these days is perpetrated by many who – surely – know it is just that – a LIE – but it suits them to act as though it were not – even when the facts get in the way.  Just listen to the way that some of them argue away anything that does not fit their view – when confronted by a video of the ex-Attorney General stating that there was no material fraud in the 2020 election and that what was being put forward by the former president and his “allies” was complete nonsense the response “well someone must be paying him to say that”!

Whilst that is, as I am sure you would agree, not entirely outside the bounds of possibility – given the context and the “supporting evidence” it doesn’t seem likely that it is the case.

Unfortunately, those who are on the side of conspiracy or “fake news” are usually working on the basis of a pretty flimsy layer of information – so it is easy for them to debunk more cogent arguments by adding similarly unsound and thin arguments against them – they do not see the fact that this becomes nonsensical eventually.

Where my thinking takes me though is to something much less clearcut than simply crazy people believing nonsensical conspiracy theories, because we can all at times come up with the “what if…” sort of thinking that results in totally ridiculous conclusions.  Instead, I want to explore a little about the critical thinking side of things – how do we know that what we think is ‘right’ – how do we know that we are not simply delusional about some things.

This is a much more nuanced thing to delve into because whilst in some situations things are, indeed, clearcut – we are able to reconcile facts with truth and what we believe with reality – in other situations it can be enormously difficult to determine what is real and what is made up – perhaps the mere fact that we can consider these two possibilities is a thing that distinguishes us from the conspiracy theorists.

If something happens to us “first hand” whether we actually experience it directly or simply witness it ourselves then we can be reasonably sure that (for the most part) we know the facts and that they are true.  This needs to be caveated by the fact that most people are very unreliable witnesses and by the fact that in many cases how we ‘react’ to things is a result of our own biases and perceptions – which may, or may not, be appropriate in any given situation.

Our interpretation of what we have seen happen will inevitably be coloured by our past experiences and also by what we know (perhaps erroneously) about any of those who are contributing to the situation. It is, without doubt time that I rounded off this post since it was started several years ago now – but is, if anything, even more pertinent now. I have over recent years come to ‘know’ many of those who present ‘late night news’ on american TV. Just this week, two of them have – in different ways – tackled this matter of ‘truthfulness’.

In one case the way that they addressed the issue was by – to all intents and purposes – spreading disinformation quite deliberately – but in a humourous and most certainly unbelievable way. Although having said that I sort of suspect that there will actually be those who believe it. The format is – take a subject (the two that I have seen are “5G” and “Boat Wakes”) and create a narrative around those things that is borderline believable and continue to make nonsensical connections until a web is created which – if it weren’t so absurd – would be difficult to deny.

In the other case the format is (sort of) the reverse – so take something that has really happened and point out the absurdities until there remains little of the original narrative. It is amazing how often this is very easy to do.

In yet another – completely different – situation the comments on an article published on Substack were prime examples of how those who disagree with the narrative outlined in the article are quick to dismiss it as untrue and entirely fictitious – despite the fact that the article itself was actually talking about how something could be staged to give the appearance of something happening in order to further a particular story.

In that particular case, the majority of the article was generated by AI – so one would imagine that the logic was sound (although that is notwithstanding the fact that an AI knowledge database could be filled with falsehoods as easily as it could be filled with truths). Will the rise of AI help or exacerbate the problem of “truthfulness”? That is a whole different subject.

Where I want to end though is by ‘sort of’ answering the question in the title. Does truth matter? Throughout history there have been alternative stories being told to explain the inexplicable. Would it be reasonable to say that very few of these stories have been fully ‘true’? In Western cultures religion has played a huge part in directing the narrative. So here we seem to have belief being more important than truth. Note that here I am not saying that there is no truth in religion – rather it is seemingly clear to anyone who has thought through the subject that huge parts – perhaps an overwhelming majority of it – are, given our current understanding, simply unknowable and therefore can only be supported by belief.

The problem is not the belief systems so much as those who promote falsehoods as part of such a system. Many years ago I wrote that my belief was that no one – absolutely not one person – actually knew what the effect of Brexit might be. That did not stop those – on both sides of the argument – for putting up various ‘stories’ purporting to be ‘facts’ on which people built their belief systems about Brexit. I believe that this happens over and over again about all sorts of things.

So – yes – truth does matter, since it is imperative that our belief systems are built on truths – including the truth that there are things that we do not know. The more we make those things explicit, the better our understanding of the world.

Sort of brings it full circle to the point of the blog – feeding my ignorance – where the first step is identifying where the ignorance lies.

What is less of a surprise is the content – I am sure that we are all aware of just how much our minds, our thinking, our decision making is driven by what we hear/read/see and this is something that advertisers – and those with much less honourable intentions – make use of all the time. Much has been written about this, however, I think it is worth recounting just a few things that have come to my notice over the last few days/weeks that illustrate this phenomena in a very clear way.

The specific trigger for writing now was when I was watching a TV programme which quoted some statistics that were seemingly undeniable – but then illustrated just how ‘inaccurate’ the picture painted was. The specific topic was Trump’s much hyped “no tax on tips” policy which may – or may not – come in with the next US budget. This sounds like a real win for those who receive tips until you understand the reality which starts with the fact that most of those who rely on tips already make little enough to avoid paying taxes anyway.

A second example – and so many people look to this announcement each month – is the inflation figure – much quoted as having risen slightly this month. What does that mean exactly – well it means that prices rose more in the year from January 2024 to January 2025 than they did in the year from December 2024 to December 2025. Yes, that is something that is not to be encouraged – however the index fell from from December to January – so in the last month prices had come down. This is conveniently not mentioned by many commentators – and it means that a particularly large change a year (or more) ago can have a distorting effect on the “rate of inflation”.

To illustrate this with a very much simplified example – imagine a world where inflation was at exactly two percent and that was what was reported each month. So prices are going up in a uniform way – obviously this would never happen quite so precisely in the real world but it serves to illustrate the fallacy of taking a single inflation rate as ‘news’. In one month one thing in the bucket used to measured inflation – say the price of cars – is reduced by 10% for the month as a “special offer” before it is put back to its previous level. What is the effect on inflation? Well, in that month we would see a reduction in inflation and in the following month a return to 2%.

Are there any other consequences? Well yes – exactly one year later we will get an inflation rise for a month which – looked at in isolation – is inexplicable. However the explanation when you see the big picture is simple – this is caused by the low inflation figure which resulted from the special offer on cars. In reality there are, of course lots of things all moving the numbers around – but this illustrates that the ‘big’ numbers are not necessarily caused by a recent change in costs.

This goes to show how easy it is to find yourself receiving what is not entirely accurate or complete information. Often – as in the case particularly of the inflation figure – the issue is that the whole thing is complicated and it ‘makes sense’ (at least for many people) to have a relatively simple thing to understand. It does mean that equating the inflation rate with the “cost of living” is slightly inaccurate – indeed it would perhaps be more accurate to equate it with the index itself ignoring the rate. However that brings its own raft of difficulties as well.

There is much, as I have said, that has been written about this sort of thing by people much more ‘expert’ in the whole psychology of this than I am. The cognitive biases that we each carry around with us are many and varied and they are exploited by some to lead us to think in a particular way and others pull the ‘meaning’ out of statistics without really understanding what the numbers are representing.

Of course, it is not just the presentation of these sort of statistics that is dependent on the way it is said – any “news” outlet (and I put the news in quotes because I am not limiting this to what might be termed traditional media) will put their own ‘spin’ on what is being reported and it is always easy to find conflicting interpretations – and this goes back to my previous posts about whether ‘truth’ matters and what exactly can be termed ‘reality’.

The examples again abound, but it never ceases to astound me that there always seems to be someone who can find an explanation of something that I have seen with my own eyes that contradicts my own interpretation. Sometimes these are easily disproven, other times it can make you question whether you are right or wrong – and that in itself can be a good thing since setting yourself up to do some critical thinking like that can be helpful.

The recent rise in energy prices was touted as something bad – and by many measures it was. However, what was omitted was that the cost of energy is down from last year and down a lot from the year before. So yes – it was an unwelcome rise in costs (viewed in terms of recent prices) but overall there was a certain amount of good news that was not, perhaps, emphasised enough. Add that to the fact that the predictions are for a further fall in three months time and we get a general picture not of misinformation or disinformation but missing information.

It reminds you to avoid judging events based on your prior biases and expectations – instead to consider alternative interpretations of what you have just seen happening. Once again, there are more nuances to this in that many “news” outlets in an attempt to retain/enthuse/rile up their own followers will sensationalise the way in which the “news” is presented so even those which are delivering “news” that is compatible with your own views will need to be filtered with a generous dose of reality.

All of this together does mean that whilst we are living in a world where data is available very widely, information is more difficult to separate from falsehoods – deliberate or accidental – and knowledge can be extremely difficult to extract from that.

I originally described it as a simplified view which had its limitations (as all models do) but I now am more inclined to think that on the left hand side of the diagram it is more than ‘just’ simplified’ it is actually quite wrong in one specific respect. It purports to show all the ‘possible’ lives that had been open to you in the past but there is one – to me – significant flaw.

When it comes to any decision you have to make a choice between two or more ways forward. You will, if you are wise, think ahead about the possibilities along each path. However, there is NO way you can know what lies down any of the paths and, with one or two notable exceptions, you will never know what lay along the paths not trodden.

So – all the black branches should really only progress a little way, certainly not as far as the next decision making point unless you choose to represent your ‘expectations’ of the other path rather than what would ‘actually’ happen along that route. Then you could justify a little lengthening – but not to the extent in the diagram.

I sort of expect that this will continue to rattle around in my head for a while, so there maybe further additions.

The original tweet was by Tim Urban and this is the diagram he posted.

I have a few ‘issues’ with the diagram, but it is at the same time a useful illustration. To get to where you are now you have avoided – one way or another – many alternative routes each of which would have led you eventually to a different place now. Some of these are ‘close’ to the actual but most are quite a long way away from it.

In actuality, I think that my major ‘issue’ is that it is (perhaps necessarily) too simplistic – and because of that perhaps somewhat misleading. In fairness the original post had a quite specific purpose and I am here taking the diagram somewhat out of context. The point originally was that ‘people’ focus overmuch on the black paths that are no longer reachable and which were spurned or taken from them at some time in the past at the expense of not giving enough focus to the green paths which are, at this point, still in our control.

I empathise with that point of view – and have said similar elsewhere in this blog – yes, looking back gives us opportunities to learn, but that should only be in order to make better choices/decisions in the future when our path bifurcates.

Now, my describing the diagram as simplistic was not intended as a criticism – way back in my writing the idea of a ‘model’ was discussed a lot, although perhaps I have not used the term so frequently lately, and any model is a simplification of reality so that ‘parts’ of that reality can be understood. What is needed though is a clear statement of the simplifications and the possible effects on the uses of the model. This diagram is a model in that sense.

The first simplification is that the diagram is two dimensional – a VERY necessary simplification when using traditional ways of representation. That leads to an ‘unknown’ in viewing it – when lines cross do they actually ‘meet’ or do they simply pass by. From my worldview, I would probably argue that it is impossible to get to the same point by two different routes when considering the life journey. This is because of the fact that along the way you are gaining experiences, knowledge and behaviours that are unique to that path. So any ‘self’ you meet who has arrived there by a different path would be endowed with a different set of experiences, etc.. A multi-dimensional model would make the interpretation clearer.

A second simplification is that all of the ‘choices’ or ‘decisions’ are depicted as bifurcations – there is no example of having multiple options at a single point – which I think is often the case in real life. (although you can potentially reduce that to a series of bifurcations in some contexts).

I have become increasingly sceptical about the idea of coincidences – whilst there may be some situations where ‘real’ coincidences appear, my suspicion is that there is something more at work which leads to seemingly coincidental events – which are therefor far from coincidental. I ended that with a laugh as even as I was writing it it was clear to me that I wasn’t being particularly clear about what I was saying.

Recently I was writing in my journal about the fact that for me – and I suspect for pretty much everyone – the way in which I met my life partner was along a path strewn by possible alternative endpoints – and the diagram here pretty much sums up a lot of what I was saying in terms of the left hand side – at least when viewed from the decisions that I had to make to reach the wedding day. Was it coincidental that this diagram appeared?

However – this example “my path to my wedding day” – is incomplete because there is another, similarly complicated, diagram that led to my wife being at that same point in time and space. She had also made many decisions along the way and only the actual set that she did make would have led her to my side.

Now we have come to the crux of my personal dissatisfaction with this model – good as it is in the simplistic case. Now we have two such models – overlaid on top of each other and all of these decisions – which took place in two separate (for the most part) life timelines – need to have taken the correct path through the maze.

It gets worse many of the decisions that led to the pair of us standing side by side at the altar were made by other people. This may seem strange to you if you haven’t considered this before – but as one clear example, if I hadn’t been seen as a “suitable candidate” for a job by someone working for Plessey in Liverpool I would not have ended up in the same geographic location as my future spouse. There are so many other examples of this.

As ever we now have a model that is growing exponentially more complex and it quickly stops being useful. I do think it is worth doing the though experiment though of trying to identify the least likely person who has contributed in a meaningful way to some aspect of where (and what) you are today. (and that meaningful way could be negative as well as positive of course)

There are, basically, two reasons why I shared this diagram here – the first is what I alluded to in the title and addressed briefly above. Once you make any decision and choose a path I believe that you can never return to the path (or paths) that you have rejected. Every step along the way adds to your experience, so even if you retrace your steps and choose the other path instead you have been changed by that diversion and do not return to the point of choice in the same state as when you first encountered it.

This is far from a new idea or outlook – Heraclitus, the Greek philosopher, once said,

This is, in essence, the same as what I am saying here in a rather less poetic way. I claim no originality in this thought. However, I suspect that – for many – the idea behind the quote is not something that they would recognise as part of their normal worldview.

This brings me to the second reason for the sharing of this diagram. I suspect that, for many, the complexity of life and decision making to navigate life is seen in a much more ‘blinkered’ way. I don’t use blinkered in a critical way, rather what is happening is necessary to blank out what might otherwise be overwhelming. We all need to tailor our worldview to what we personally can cope with and understand – our models cannot be too complex to comprehend. That means that – for everyone – some potentially significant information will be ignored or unknown. This diagram brings a relatively simple view that can help widen the focus to understand that things are never that straightforward.

I should start by making clear that in this post I am not talking about the rights and wrongs about assisted dying itself – rather my focus is on whether this sort of thing should be the type of thing that legislation should be addressing at all.

I doubt that anyone would argue strongly against the general principle that taking a life is not something to be condoned, however equally there are some circumstances when – whilst still not a good thing – it could be argued that it is better than the alternatives. Thinking beyond the specifics of assisted dying there are many examples where ending a life can be considered the best option. (for a prime example of the complications around this you only have to look at the fierce debate in the US around the abortion issue in the wake of the Supreme Court striking down Roe v Wade)

The fundamental problem in issues like this is that whilst it can be agreed that there should be a “line” where one side of it is deemed OK, the other is deemed not OK. The “line” however is not a simple thing – there are multiple factors which can move a single situation to one side or the other of that “line”. For that reason it seems to me that deciding when a case of assisted dying is OK is something that cannot really be properly enshrined in legislation.

Even the outline of the “rules” that have been suggested seem to be questionable.

“Given less than six months to live” – why six months? who is capable of being that accurate? who knows what might happen in that time?

“Have capacity to make the decision” – surely those without capacity may be more “in need” of such help? going to the root of this current discussion, having capacity does not necessarily equate to being ‘informed’!

“Two independent doctors and a judge” – whilst I understand the thinking behind this is to avoid it being a single point of failure I doubt that it is necessarily a true safeguard. For instance, who chooses the doctors? how many can you try in order to find the two? is one dissenting doctor enough to veto or would that as well be a potential single point of failure.

That doesn’t even begin to address the role of the judge. Whilst the default position is that all judges are impartial there have been studies which show both noise and bias in the judgements that they lay down. (and those have been in matters which are much more objective than this e.g. the length of sentence after the suspect has been found guilty) Although the judges will, most likely, be operating in good faith the way in which they respond to these types of case will depend on their own life experiences and background and beliefs.

It can be seen that those involved – who are the most ‘informed’ by some measures – the family, the doctors, the judges – are still having to deal with some level of uncertainty. Surely those who will vote have nowhere near the level of “informed-ness” to make much more than an emotional decision. Sure, it is a free vote, not along party lines – but that does not necessarily make it a better decision. Sometimes being informed by other who “know better” can be helpful – but in cases like this knowing who actually knows better is a difficult one.

Recently I haven’t visited TED (which is one of the sources I long ago mentioned as being in my ignorance trough) often enough, but I do receive regular updates on available talks.  As soon as I saw the title “Why you think you’re right — even if you’re wrong” I could tell that I needed to visit this particular talk.

Why you think you’re right — even if you’re wrong

The idea that more people should approach the world like a ‘scout‘ rather than the almost universal ‘soldier‘ viewpoint is very apt and one that melds very well with my own philosophy.  It highlights the need to accept that you “don’t know’; that you might be “wrong”; and that you need to look for the “truth” (whatever that may look like in the circumstances) of the situation or decision.

The specific trigger for this post is the role of voting in the democratic process – however – the thinking is not limited to that.  Since this post addresses democracy it is as well to point the reader in the direction of four previous times that I have ventured into this subject area.

• Who Knows?
• More Than Politics
• Wise Paraphrase
• Democracy Is Great…

I should stress that this is not politically motivated – the flaws in the process (IMHO) affect all democratic systems and is much more about people than politics.  It is neither left nor right; red or blue; or whatever other “us and them” divide you would want to use (a search of the blog will show posts where I have argued against the use of “usandthemism” previously).

Fundamentally the issue is that each individual is knowledgeable about only a small – perhaps tiny or miniscule would be a more appropriate description – part of reality.  As you will also find in my previous writing that knowledge almost certainly comes with some untruths as well where what we “know” is actually incorrect.  Unfortunately – and here is where Dunning Kruger comes in.  The less informed you are about any subject the more you tend to believe that you know all there is about it – only as you learn do you start to realise – “oh yes – there is a lot more to it than I thought”.

The third of the links to previous posts that I have given above includes the paraphrase of the Dunning Kruger effect that was uttered by John Cleese.  He puts it a lot less “politically correct” than I ever would – but for many people it is probably more meaningful!

The rise of the availability of “information” over time has, unfortunately, been exploited by some to provide information that is less than accurate to a much greater extent than was happening in the past.  Yes, it has always been the case that unfounded rumours might spread – but that spread was naturally bounded by the limits of communication now it seems that these rumours have morphed into conspiracy theories which spread like wildfire.

So, people feel more informed than ever before – and the “bad actors” continue to ensure that they are poorly informed at best and are fed misinformation more often than not.

A connected thing (and I have written about this subject as well) is that the majority do not feel comfortable with the phrase “I don’t know”.  Such an admission is seen as a weakness and a stain on their character.  Not only have I written about this the topic is the fundamental reason for this blog – there are things I don’t know and things I am unsure about.

Turning specifically to elections and the political process I have previously admitted that I believe all currently used systems as being flawed in one way or another – nor do I have a perfect replacement – why – because of what I have written above.  As long as ‘people’ believe that they “know” there is no way to frame things differently.  Consider, for example, a referendum where the choice is “yes”, “no” and “I don’t know”.  If the question is honestly answered there will be an overwhelming majority for the third choice – showing some measure of the level of ignorance about the subject matter.

Such decisions are also mischaracterised as black and white when grey is the majority view.  Most political decisions are not simple yes/no situations – certainly something like “Brexit” should never have been characterised that way.  Being part of the EU was certainly not all bad – nor was it all good – but such balancing acts are what politicians should spend their time carefully considering.  The question could be asked “is there ANY thing that politicians concern themselves with that is truly a black/white issue”?

The election in the US has, of course, played a part in triggering this post.  Regardless of what I think of the result I find the whole process of selecting a President quite bizarre.  Even laying aside the obscene amounts of money involved and the complications of the electoral college the process by which someone becomes president (and the limited population from which they are drawn from) does not fill me with any confidence that the “right” person will end up in the White House – not, for that matter, is it clear what “right” means in this case.  One man, one vote should mean that everyone has a say – however it seems that the ‘system’ as it currently stands means that for almost all the population it doesn’t matter.

Looking from afar it also seems that there is a large proportion of the voter pool who are chronically uninformed – not just about politics.

Is this all a bit of a result of the “reality TV world” sort of view where everyone gets to vote on who is the ‘best’ dancer or singer or chef or ‘most talented’?  In all of these types of programme there is no objective discriminating factor involved and I suspect that (at least in the ‘celebrity’ version) most of the voters for any of the participants are voting for them because of factors completely removed from the actual competition.  Yes – it makes good, simple and engaging entertainment – but carry that over into real ‘reality’ and there are problems.  Someone who is a football star, for instance, will not necessarily make a great prime minister – although equally it does not disbar them from doing so.

Of course it would be folly to disenfranchise people, although it is possible to argue that those who “think” they know what or who they are voting for due to being unaware of the ‘reality’ have already been disenfranchised.  So any ‘improvement’ to the system must be inclusive whilst avoiding undue influence from those who really “don’t know”.  Increasingly over recent years (probably down to the fact that it seems that politicians are skilled at not telling the ‘whole’ truth) there have been “fact checks” appearing in the media.  Whilst this is sort of a good thing – a better thing would be for the truth to be told in the first place.

We come back to usandthemism – one of the top rules here is that anything that “they” do is wrong.  Rooting out usandthemism in all areas would allow “them” to have good ideas as well as bad.  I have many times stated that just because someone is in a different ‘group’ does not mean that I need to disagree with them all the time or avoid them or be unfriendly to them.  Again going to the recent US election – one of the things that stood out to me was the ratio that was on display between statements about how great we were and what wonderful plans we had compare to belittling them and their ideas.  Of course point out the flaws, but in the end you want to have the balance in favour of “what we will do”.

To close, I have my thoughts about the current political scene in the US but in keeping with all that I am saying here I have to come down to the fact that “I don’t know” whether a Trump presidency will be good or bad – there are simply too many variables.  Do I think that he should be president – no I do not think he is presidential material for all sorts of reasons – but looking back at US history it is seemingly true that many of their presidents had their faults.

So – there you have it – a lot of feeding my ignorance in this particular post…

This has, during the Olympic period, been brought back into focus for me by something else that causes me to think that I might be at odds with the rest of the world.  Athletics, swimming, rowing and other sports where it is one person against others in a “measurable” contest – so who is fastest or can jump highest or furthest even who can lift the heaviest weight – are without doubt sports that are deserving of Olympic status and will generate a clear winner.

Next to them are a number of sports that cover a spectrum of levels of subjectivity from “nearly measurable” right to “a matter of opinion” which I find it much harder to relate to – as sports in the olympics.  Don’t get me wrong, many of them leave me marvelling at the skill of the “competitors”, but as to – is X better than Y – I have a real problem with that.  It is very much a subjective thing as far as I can see.

One example is “artistic swimming” – yes, it is something that undoubtedly requires a lot of practice, dedication and many skills – but comparing two performances is just not feasible in any objective way – so the judge awards a mark, albeit based on some level of grading the difficulty of the performance – but it is still down to how “well” the athletes have performed.

(as an aside and whilst talking about artistic swimming – it is one of those things that makes me think “who ever thought that this was a good idea for a sport” – it just seems like one of those things that you wouldn’t do “by accident” – there must have been a conscious decision by someone to “invent” this sport)

It is not just in sport that I have this issue – music is another sphere where it is (in my view) useless to say that a Beethoven symphony is better or worse than a Mozart symphony – the statement has no meaning.  Two performances of a given piece of music can be – to a certain extent – compared – but only with regard to the precision of the performance – not to the musicality which remains subjective.

Whilst the eurovision song contest can be very entertaining – I hope no one seriously believes that the votes actually go to the ‘best’ song – except by ‘accident’.  The same is true for all other musical competitions – although most probably have a higher degree of impartial judging.

I stress again – in all of these – sport, music, art and many more – I have huge admiration for the skills of those who participate – that is not the question – my issue is with the competitive slant.  Put simply, I do not believe that you can ever ‘score’ anything this objective in a truly representative way – except by making the scoring system so complicated and obtuse that no one could understand how to win.  Just think if Michelangelo had reached the final of the painting competition and faced off against Picasso – what possible rules could determine the winner?

I have no answers to any of this – just pointing out what I see as the problem.

So to “what is my favourite ….” – the answer is impossible in most cases – there are just too many “unmeasurables”.  So – if I am asked – my best recourse is, I think, to say that “I thoroughly enjoyed….” and list a number of candidates without actually choosing any one ‘winner’.