How is a Mini-Van like a Vitamin?

The Soccer Game

Suppose there were a soccer game among 5th graders from rival schools.  The game is being held at a field near one of the schools, but the visiting team is from another part of town.  Neither school has any buses. The students all walk to school or get rides from their parents.  So the question is how you get the students from school A to the game at school B.

An obvious solution is to just have all the kids walk.  After their school gets out for the day, they could all just walk across town to the soccer field at the other school.  This could work, but these are fifth graders we are talking about.  Some of them are probably not good candidates for this plan.  You could ask all the players to walk but (for whatever reason), some of them may not make it.  One way to mitigate this would be to send enough players so that even if you lost a few enough would make it across town that you could still have a game.  Not surprisingly, this plan does not go over well with the parents.  And it's worth noting that even under the best of circumstances, the game would have to be scheduled to account for the time it took to walk across town.

So a second solution to the problem would be to have each child's parents drive him to the game.  This would solve both the time issue and the safety/distraction issue.  You would not lose any of your soccer players in transit if each one was chauffeured to the game.   But the logistics of this aren't very good either.  Not every single parent has the time to pick up his or her child and bring them to the game.  For one very important game it might be workable but it would be hard to imagine a season of games being played where each child gets his own ride to and from the game.  The cost in parents' time and the resources involved in each child being driven separately are just too high.

So enter the "soccer moms".  This is a small group of mothers who have volunteered to use their mini-vans to take the kids to each game.  Using one volunteer driver to transport 4-6 kids in each vehicle solves all of the problems while minimizing the total time and expense.  With enough volunteers, the system can work even if a soccer mom or two can not make every single event.  As long as their are three moms available for each game, all of the players can be dropped off at the field in time for the game.  (And yes, I realize that sometimes a soccer mom is really a soccer dad, but in this example, they are all moms, so that's just the way it is.)

The point is that this system allows the game to take place when at first it seemed complicated to get so many players to the right place at the right time in order to hold the event.

Enzyme: Soccer Mom Solution

The reason I have chosen this example is to show how the soccer mom is acting as an enzyme if we look at the game of soccer as an event analogous to a chemical reaction.

Let's talk about what an enzyme is and how it works.  An enzyme is a catalyst.  This means that it accelerates a chemical reaction by lowering the activation energy required for the reaction to take place.  Importantly the catalyst is NOT consumed as part of the reaction.  It can be AFFECTED by the reaction (as takes place with "coking" which is basically a coating that forms on a chemical catalyst).  An enzyme is a "bio-"catalyst.   It is an organic structure that by its design makes certain chemical processes more likely to occur.

Life would be impossible without enzymes.  As a basic and common example, the process that converts sugar into energy would take place so slowly that we would starve if not for the help of enzymes.

So an enzyme is a special kind of organic structure which aids in the chemical processes in our bodies.

Now we can talk about how the "soccer mom solution" to our problem is like an enzyme.

To begin with, there is a game you would like to have played (the reaction you want to take place) but there are inputs to that reaction, including a dozen or so fifth graders comprising the visiting team.  You need to get these molecules (er, kids) to the reaction site.  But getting the reaction to unfold in the way you want it to with all the right components for a successful conclusion (in this case enough players to have an official game), requires a lot of energy and maybe even some excess molecules to account for those who stray or otherwise become unavailable for your reaction.

An enzyme provides leverage to make it easier for a reaction to take place.  It makes it more likely that enough molecules will be where they need to be and it lowers the energy cost of the reaction.  This is very much like how the soccer moms leveraged their mini-vans and spare afternoons to ensure that the right number of kids were delivered to the game on time.

In this example, the mom with the mini-van is the enzyme.  The mom alone is not the complete enzyme because although her services as a driver are essential, the other critical ingredient is that she has a vehicle with the carrying capacity required to bring several kids at once -- which creates the efficiency we need for this reaction to take place.

The mom can be seen as the Apoenzyme -- the polypeptide or protein part of the enzyme.  The mini-van, on the other hand, is the Cofactor or non protein portion of the enzyme.  In biochemistry, these are typically derived from vitamins.  So the mini-van is essentially the vitamin part of the enzyme in our little example.

Enzymes on a Social Scale

The takeaway here is that we can use the concept of an enzyme as something that by its very structure enables something that might otherwise be complicated to take place more smoothly.  It catalyzes the process.  There is a savings in either time or energy or both because the enzyme coordinates or organizes the components in the proper way.

The Legal Enzyme

The analogy of enzymes works on a conceptual level as well.  Which is to say that concepts themselves can function as informational or intellectual enzymes.  Take the example of a law.  A law is a conceptual enzyme in the sense that it simplifies how to cope with a particular circumstance.  A law may say that a certain behavior is illegal and may even proscribe specific punishment for those who commit such an act.  So for example we have laws about speeding which suggest that you will receive a ticket and a fine for driving too fast.  The concept of "too fast" is defined by the speed limit.

Without the conceptual framework (legal enzyme) of "speeding", we would have to deal with drivers who drove too fast on a case by case basis.  There would have to be judgement calls by police officers for each and every instance of "driving too fast" and a potentially complicated process for determining how to punish violators.  The likelihood that the results would be rather arbitrary are high.  But even more importantly from our perspective, the time and energy spent on addressing the problem of "driving too fast" would be enormous.

By creating a conceptual enzyme called the legal speed limit complete with its cofactors like the "speed limit sign" and all of its proteins like the laws regarding speeding, we are able to metabolize highway safety in a timely and energy efficient way.

The efficacy of conceptual enzymes varies, of course.  We can imagine an old west town with a very crude system of justice.  Its lack of sophisticated conceptual enzymes (laws) for parsing daily life makes justice both capricious and porous.  On the other hand, complexity can have its own inefficiencies.  The US tax code is nothing if not full of concepts and definitions.  But the lack of cohesion makes for a different kind of capriciousness and porousness.  Still the analogy of how a concept can "hold information in place" and allow actions to be performed on it similar to the way that chemical processes are assisted by enzymes can be rather useful.

What is a Concept?

When I used the term "conceptual enzyme" earlier, I could have simply used the word "concept".  Because that is really what a concept is.   It is an information structure that simplifies information by organizing it so that certain associations, reactions or events are more likely.

Take for example an exotic food I have never tasted.  I may be leery of the new experience.  I don't know what to expect.

"Is it safe?"  I ask someone who has eaten the food many times.

"Yes," she assures me.

"Well, what's it taste like?"

"It is delicious," she says.  "It is sweet and tangy."

Now all of these words "safe" and "delicious" and "sweet" and "tangy" are actually concepts.  They provide me with a way to anticipate what I am about to experience.  The knowledge that the food is safe is critical, of course, because I don't want to eat something poisonous.  But beyond that I am told to expect that the food will be "delicious".  This is simply another concept.  It is a mental enzyme that gives me a ready made context for the information I am about to receive as I experience eating the food.

Context, as we have touched upon, is that complicated mental story we have written for each experience we encounter.  Well concepts -- intellectual enzymes -- are merely a special kind of information that help us build more complete context in much the same way that digestive enzymes assist us in breaking down food in order to build healthy teeth and bones.

And just as our body actually uses some of the nutrition we absorb to build its own enzymes, we can sometimes use the information we receive to build new concepts.  The enzymes our body makes go on to do their enzyme magic -- lowering the cost of chemical reactions in our body.  Similarly, the concepts we build go on to do their intellectual enzyme magic -- improving the efficiency with which we place new information into context.

The Idea of a Concept and the Concept of an Idea... Thingy

The problem with the word "concept" is that it is so over-used as to basically be a stand in for "thought thingy".  It is a very general term, as vague as the word "idea".  In its literal sense its meaning is profound, but in its usage it is rather bland.  We use the words, "thing" and "concept" and "idea" as such generic stand ins for more specific notions ("notion" is just another generic word too) that it can be hard to really appreciate the power of these words.  But in its pure sense, a "concept" is a collected set of associations with its own internal logic and set of rules.  It is an informational superstructure -- a chain of idea proteins with some thought vitamins thrown in for good measure.  Despite the generic sound of the word, when we hear the word "concept" we should try and remember that is suggests a powerful organizational structure that impacts the speed with which we can break down and absorb information.

Time to Put Context into Context

What is Context Really?

We have said that context is everything, and we have talked about frameworks and how signals take place within a context, but we have really neglected the details of what context really is.  So far it has seemed like a cheater term used to capture anything we wanted to explain but didn't have the time for.

So it's about time we took a closer look at what we mean by context and how it figures into information, perception, and action.

Context is Information

The easiest and most circular treatment we could give to the concept of context is that it is merely all the other information that surrounds any piece of information in question. Context is the "background" or "circumstances" which surround any given event or piece of data.  So viewed this way, the context for any piece of information is simply all the other information it is surrounded by.   As useless as this sounds, it is partly true, and it actually turns out to be surprisingly powerful in action.

Let's look at this through the lens of what we have already said about information theory and how the power of information relates to the surprise it delivers.

Look at this sentence, uttered by a fictitious 14 year old:

Bob is always borrowing money and never paying it back and then he lies about it later and says he never took it in the first place.  He is such a narlyball.

The first thing that jumps out at us is that there is a word we do not know.  The term "narlyball" is not in our vocabulary.  (It shouldn't be -- I made it up.)  So if we have never heard the word before, simple logic would suggest that we can't know what it means until someone defines it for us.  But within the quotation we cited (invented), there is a definition or at least a suggested definition.  The logical structure of the two sentences is a description of Bob's behavior and then a label that describes what Bob is like.  So when we marry to the two together, we know that, whatever else narlyball means,  it seems to be an uncouth person -- possibly a liar, a moocher, or just someone we don't want to be with. A loser.

But even in isolation, the word narlyball could contain some clues.  If the teenager had simply said, "Bob is a narlyball" we would probably have been given a negative impression.  Why?  Well first the term "narly" seems to suggest "gnarly" and is something tangled or challenging or nasty.  The second term "ball" would suggest a collection of "gnarly" or an objectification of a person as an inanimate object (c.f. "tool" or "knob").  So taken together "narlyball" suggests, even just by its sound, a collection of tangled things or a difficult object.

Now the problem here is that teenagers have a long history of intentional irony.  That is, to the extent that teenagers have a long history of anything (the concept of teenagers as a cultural group only goes back to the 40's which will be a blog entry for another day), they have a habit of coding their language  to make it intentionally difficult for outsiders to understand.  So in the 80's "gnarly" was actually something cool or special.  In the 70's to be "bad" was to be very good, and in the 90's to be "sick" was to be exceptional.  One could say "that jump was SICK''  or even "She has a SICK body" and despite the literal meaning of the phrase, it would be intended as high praise.

But even the potential snag in our exploration of what the context of words can mean happens to point to a greater sense of context.  For the word SICK means something else in the context of certain social groups.  But we'll get back to that.

For now we will focus on how information is given meaning by the information it is surrounded by.  Or in a specific case, words are given meaning by the words which surround them. Which is to say "text" is given meaning by the "text" it is "with".   Con-Text literally means, "with text".

Textile, Texture, Text, and Context

The latin verb Texere means "to weave".  It is where we get the words: textile, texture, and text.  "Text" are words which are "woven" or composed.  Con (with) and Text (woven) is the stuff that something is "made with", "composed of", or simply "woven with".  In other words, context is the environment surrounding something.  But in an informational sense, how can we tell what "surrounds" something.  What other information is "woven into" the information we are dealing with?

Relational Databases, Linked Data, and Associations

Beyond the words surrounding other words in a sentence or two, there is another way that information is readily associated with other information.  This is through relationships that data shares with other data we have already created context for.  In other words, each new thing we learn is woven in with all the stuff we already know.  And how it is woven in has to do with the order and patterns into which we have placed our other knowledge.  To take a crude example, when we see the Asparagus Berry, we might think of other small round redish-orange fruits like the Huckleberry.  Before we get two far with context in the sense of the human mind, though, it may be helpful to explore how computers can organize data and what they can do with that organizational scheme.

Probably the most common strategy for dealing with a lot of computerized data is the "relational database". So let's look at this for a second.  Now first of all this is a "database", which is nothing more than a bunch of data all arranged as "records".  Each record contains related information about some person or thing.  For example, if you are on a mailing list for a shoe store, there would be one record that had your name and address, an account number assigned to you by the store and probably an email address:

407987...John Doe... 123 Main St....Metropolis... New York...JohnDoe@Gmail.com

(I don't know the zip code for Metropolis, so I ignored that data.)  Now since it is a shoe store, the company database also contains entries for their inventory.  These entries contain data that describes the product by brand, size, color, name, price, or whatever, usually including a part number (or Product ID):

100456B13...Ballerz....Big Boy...Blue...Size11...$85.00

Now the magic of a "relational" database is that there is another set of data that "relates" these two other sets.  In this case, that is the purchase database, containing the Account Number of the customer (you) and the Product ID of what was purchased, as well as some other useful data like the date of the transaction:

407987...100456B13...05-20-13 

What this data structure does is allow the computer to keep track of the fact that John Doe of 123 Main St in Metropolis ordered a Size 11 of the Ballerz shoes in Blue on May 20th without having to duplicate all that data every time a sale is made.  By keeping data that is specific to each kind of record grouped together, each database can be KEYED to a certain field (e.g. Account Number) and  that field acts as a stand in for all the other data associated with that record.  So every time the Number 407987 appears in other places, such as the purchase database, it stands for "John Doe, 123 Main... etc".

This data storage strategy is fairly compact and very versatile.  Not only can it easily produce a list of all the shoes you have ever bought (by searching the purchase database for your Account Number) but it can also produce a list of all the people who ever bought Size 11 Ballerz in Blue (by searching the purchase database for the Product ID "100456B13").  It can produce a list of all the products sold on May 20th by searching the purchase database for that date.  And it can produce any number of other useful reports, such as how many people who live in Metropolis have bought shoes within the past six months.

The relational database is a powerful concept.  The example above only scratches the surface of what it can accomplish, but it does give us at least a basic idea of the concept.  We'll consider that concept now when we explore the mind.

The Mental File Cabinet

No one is actually certain exactly how the tremendous amounts of information we experience in our lives is organized in the brain.  Any simple analogy drawn on comparisons to file cabinets (for example) or even computers quickly breaks down in terms of describing real world behavior.  The brain does not simply file each piece of data into a drawer and pull it out when needed.  If it did, we would never forget anything and we would always react the same way to identical information.  In short, we'd be nothing but information storage machines.  We are certainly not that.

But the brain clearly does store information in some fashion.  And the relational database analogy applies fairly literally in some very basic ways (and it doesn't apply at all in other ways we'll get to later).

When someone says "wedding dress" to you, it is more than a simple piece of clothing worn at a ritual.  If our brains were merely mental file cabinets, all we would think when someone said "wedding dress" was what the online dictionary has to say:

A gown worn by the bride at a wedding

Probably not what you imagined.

But we take the mention of a wedding dress and imbue it with much more than that.  We may picture a dress.  We may remember a recent wedding (or our own wedding).  We may think of a bridal boutique.    We may even assess the sexual history of the bride in order to assign our imaginary color.  Think on that for a second.  Someone says two words that describe an object and we go mentally prying to the past of someone we may barely know.  That's a kind of relational thinking that goes way beyond what the shoe store database does with its data.

There is possibly an emotional component as well.  We may get excited or depressed or angry or relieved or anxious, or maybe a combination of those things, depending on what the mention of that garment means to us at that given time (again, of course, because of the "context" which is why we are talking about this to begin with).

But even though the process is complex and the associations are many, we do in fact "KEY" the concept of a wedding dress to other "records" in our brain.  If we picture a dress when we hear the word, that mental image can only be called up because we have associated it with the words.  We don't imagine a wedding dress when someone says "chocolate milkshake".  So there must be some kind of associative filing going on.

So too it is true that if we allow the mention of the dress to trigger memories of weddings or people or events or emotions, then this had to come from somewhere.  The exact way the phrase "wedding dress" is woven into our mental patchwork is never fixed and always related to our own personal experiences. But except for very few people, the words will mean more than simply their definition.

Take a moment to think about each of the following phrases or concepts.  Imagine (or recall) something for each one.  Just three or four seconds for each one:

    rusty pitchfork
    dented car door
    starving baby bird
    clumsy drunken guest
    pushy salesperson
    elephant driving a sports car down on a mountain road with the top down
    muddy bootprint
    important piece of mail
    unfinished project

No two people are going to have the exact same response to any one of these phrases, let alone all of them.  Yet each of them triggers something in our mind based on how we have organized our mental data and where "our mind has been" lately.

For example, I did not grow up on a farm.  I have probably held a rusty pitchfork in my life, but I can not really recall it.  To me the phrase conjures up a fairly stock image of a pitchfork resting against the wall of a barn near its open door.  I can see there is a white farmhouse partially in view in the distance.  Maybe this is something I saw on TV or in a movie at some time.  Maybe I am recalling a barn I saw once and inserting the pitchfork into the image because in my mind, the word "pitchfork" implies a barn.  I do not know why I picture what I do.  I only know what I see.

On the other hand, if we get to "pushy salesperson" I am brought to a specific memory.  The event was several years ago and I had not thought about it for a long time until I chose the phrase more or less randomly for my list.  I was buying something -- I don't even remember what -- and the sales clerk was trying to get me to buy the extended warranty.  The problem was that she would not take "no" for an answer.  I started to get very angry by the time I had convinced her that I was not interested.  She kept responding to my "No thanks... Not interested... I am really not interested...I do not want that..." with what she must have felt were more and more compelling arguments for why I needed the extended warranty.   The story is not important, except that it left enough of a lasting impression on me that this woman (whose face I can't even really remember) is apparently now my poster child for "pushy salesperson".

It is perhaps interesting to note that some of these phrases call up a more or less static picture with no emotional content and no noise or motion, while others have an almost video quality to them -- motion, sound, and emotional response. (I can't tell you how your mind works.  I am only saying how these things affect me.)

Dude, where's my car?

Moving down the list, we get to the elephant in a car.  Few of us will have a specific memory to draw upon here, so what do we do?  I suspect my mind draws upon stock advertising images of cars to get a mountain road with a car moving down it, and then I "CGI" in an elephant at the wheel in much the manner that it would appear in an amusing commercial -- like perhaps a commercial for auto insurance.

Individual responses will vary, but it is interesting to note that we can all react and imagine this scene if we try even though none of us has ever seen such a thing.  So our mental system of organization is more than just memory -- it allows for us to shift around ideas and images and moods and associate new things in new ways.  We may rely on memory  for the components of our imagination (if I had never seen at least an image of an elephant I would have more difficulty imagining the seen), but the act of pondering or recalling is a creative act alongside of a mechanical act of retrieval.

Now, some folks are more auditory than visual.  So I would be remiss if I did not take a few seconds to describe the amazing creative power of the mind in auditory terms.  The example will be different, but the results will be very similar to the elephant driving the car down a mountain road.

Imagine President Bush giving a speech.  Hear his voice in your mind.  The Texas drawl, the conversational nonchalance of his expressions.  Now imagine he is talking about a problem.  Imagine him saying with a shrug, "The problem is the number of purple ostriches."   Could you hear him say it?

Now switch speakers.  Imagine President Obama giving a speech.  Focus in on his abrupt staccato rhythm.  No imagine him saying the same thing.  "The problem is the number of purple ostriches."

If you were successful, you have accomplished an amazing thing.  Neither of these men has probably ever uttered this phrase and even if they have, it is very unlikely that you ever heard them say it.  And yet the incredible human mind can map speech onto words and create a kind of audio record of people saying things they never have said.  The mind can combine existing elements and extrapolate the product they would produce.  It is as if the mind is taking the ingredients of flour and eggs and sugar and baking its own hypothetical cake.

So back to the list for a second...  The last item on the list is "unfinished project".  This should mean something different to everyone and yet everyone should have something they could put into this slot.  It may be associated with guilt (if it is our own unfinished project we are imagining) or anger (if it is a project we waiting for from someone else and are frustrated about it), but it is a nearly universal concept.  That is a fascinating part of context.  The idea of an unfinished project requires no explanation and yet everyone's personal "unfinished project" will be unique to them.  The feelings associated with the project (worry about money, anxiety about a deadline, melancholy about not having more time to pursue our joy, etc.) will be special to each individual's take on the concept.  Yet the concept has nearly universal meaning to modern adults.  This means that this phrase has a high degree of shared context (or it would not resonate with everyone) and yet the specifics of the context are very different (or else we would all think of the same thing).

So it is easy enough to say, "Red means stop" and know that we are talking about signals being interpreted in shared context.  But when we get to concepts like "unfinished projects", we need to appreciate that the simple signal-context model does not encompass the whole picture.

We will get into more about what kinds of symbolism or vocabulary can take us beyond "signals", but for now we should simply note the complexity of the ideas we can all associate with a common concept.  And context can be "shared" even while it is at the same time unique to each of us.

Next Week on CSI: Context

Well we're out of time this week.  We couldn't have really expected to explain all of context in one simple blurb.  But we have scratched a bit deeper into the surface of the woven fiber of information that makes up the context our mind brings to every new perception and idea.

We have much more to consider about how we connect memories and ideas and how these connections can change over time.  But for now, we'll put our evidence on ice and pick it up later.

The Roll of Paranoia in Conspiracy Theories

PARANOIA

I wanted to be much further along by now with a consideration of signal theory and perception, and if I were, a discussion of paranoia would overlay nicely onto the concepts already presented.  But rather than wait to get caught up on all that, I thought I might jump ahead.  The consideration of paranoia may in fact lay the groundwork for some of that perception discussion later and it will certainly assist us in discussing conspiracy theories now.

So before I set out to talk about paranoia specifically, let me simply speed through some framework concepts that will help put this into context.

One way of viewing human thinking is to consider that we are each little information handling signal nodes in a complicated interconnected environment we call civilization (or “the human race”).  Our reaction to any given piece of data can be seen as a result of the context into which we place this data (this is where we are going with “information—context—action” model).  The data we react to can be an external event we witness, an external piece of information brought to our attention, or an internal thought we produce.  (This includes the thoughts we produce when we dream.  More than one person has been inclined to act differently after having a dream.  This suggests our own thoughts, including our own subconscious thoughts, can transform how we behave toward the outside world.) 

The founder of social psychology Kurt Lewin explained what we’re discussing with the formula:

        B = f(P,E) 

which translates into “Behavior is a function of the Person and the Environment”.   It’s a nice start, but we’ll go beyond that a bit to inspect how “Person” means that information processing unit we call the brain and “Environment” is really just a bunch of facts which are put into context by the mind.

So for now, let’s take it as wrote that one way we can view human thought and activity is as if we are all simply little information processing modules, taking information in, and processing it in such as way to as to produce action. 

On the most basic level, our response to threats can be seen in this context.  A mother bear will fight aggressively if she perceives the safety of her offspring is in jeopardy.  This is a very obvious example of external events giving rise to perception and that perception giving rise to a response.  It is, on some level, the primary function of a brain in the same way the primary function of a heart is to pump blood through the body.  Perceive, Comprehend, and React.  Or as I have put it, (receive) Information, (place it into) Context, (translate it into) Action.

So that’s the three cent course.  Now on to paranoia.

Paranoia is a processing mistake.  External events are seen as threatening more often for a paranoid person than for a non-paranoid person.  It is no coincidence that this condition is associated with anxiety and fear, because it is a close cousin to those concepts.  If we are anxious, we react more suspiciously to events around us, and likewise if we are in danger, we are more anxious.  So it may be hard to establish which chicken predates which egg.  Are we paranoid because we are anxious, or are we anxious because our paranoia makes us believe we are under constant threat?  There may be no way to tell.

For our purposes right now, it is sufficient to say the two forces are related and leave it at that.

For now we should simply view paranoia as a processing defect in the information module.  This is separate from a perceptual defect.  A defect in perception would involve seeing or hearing things which are not there (or failing to see or hear things which are real).  A paranoid person can usually take in the facts of the world around them perfectly well.  It is what they do with this information that is at issue.

Paranoia is by definition based on delusion.  The general belief is that others are “out to get you”.  External events are seen as related to hidden agendas.  And importantly the impact of external events on the paranoid individual is blown out of scale.  If there is a traffic jam, the paranoid individual is unable to see how this presents a major inconvenience for all the drivers on the road and instead focuses on how he is impacted.  Believing himself to play an outsized role in reality, he can easily convince himself that the cause of (or reason for) the traffic jam is specifically related to his life.  “The police created this traffic jam in order to stop me from getting to the library before it closes so that I will have to pay a late fine for my library book.”  When asked why the police would do such a thing, the paranoid person has a perfectly logical explanation which is an extension of the tracks already laid for his current train of thought.  “Maybe it’s because they know I have been doing more reading lately.  They want to make it harder for me to continue to get books from the library because they know if I continue my research I will discover what they are really up to…”

This may seem like an exaggerated example.  As someone who has had repeated contact with several clinically paranoid people, I can assure you it is not.  It is not my desire to make fun of this condition nor to rely on a stereotype of what it means to be paranoid.   In my mind this example is an honest sketch of the logical process in the mind of a paranoid person.  It may make us uncomfortable to the point of a nervous chuckle, but it is really the way some minds function.  If we are thinking about thinking as a process in the real world and not just an abstract ideal, we need to consider all engines, even ones that backfire, ping, or burn a mixture which is too thin.  It is not my intent to ridicule these defects, merely to consider how they fit into the big picture.

Now, paranoia must involve delusion, as was said above. We can only observe paranoia when we can see that the interpretation of events is out of step with reality. As the old joke goes, “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you.”   But reality is very tricky business.  It is quite possible that there is no such thing as one objective reality external to all of us.  More probably we help create reality by perceiving it.  In essence, we till the soil of information like some kind of signal processing ants.  How we interpret the outside world shapes the very world we are observing.  This is why minds are “quantum computers” and how Werner Heisenberg (and Schrödinger’s Cat) will enter the discussion before too long.  In short, when we want to say something is based on falseness, that it is “delusional”, we need to tread carefully.  Objective Truth may not exist, and even if it does, it is very hard to determine whether we have ascertained it.

But along the spectrum of reality, the wide grey band that separates black from white, there is usually a point at which we can say we are no longer in the realm of generally agreed upon truth.  I may not quibble about whether Lebron James or Kobe Bryant could have beaten Michael Jordan in his prime.  The truth about such things is hard to determine.   But if someone were to assert that his three year old son was so good on the court that he could beat Michael Jordan and Kobe and Lebron all playing against him in a three-on-one game, it is safe to say that is simply not true.  Just because true and false are separated by a thick grey line does not mean there is no such thing as true and false.  I am even willing to concede that there is one chance in some astonishingly high number that a three year old with such skills could someday exist.   But that number could be so great that we could play out the history of the human race a billion billion times and never see such an individual born into the world.  My belief that “impossible” is very dangerous medicine does not preclude me from feeling that some things are so nearly impossible as to call them impossible if only for the sake of convenience.

So the point is that even though reality itself is a greased pig we could chase around the yard all day, there are some things that are so far outside of generally accepted fact as to be rightly proclaimed false, at least until convincing evidence to the contrary is provided.

Some things are simply false.

And therein lies the root of what we can call delusion.  For delusion is the belief that something false is in fact true.  Paranoia is rooted in such an error.

But here’s a fascinating little feature of paranoia that ties in with conspiracy theories.  The explanations of a paranoid person, the minor conspiracies that they spin to explain the daily events of their lives, have at their root the same source as conspiracy theories that deal with Big Events.  They seek to create order from randomness.  Or to be more fair to all involved, they seek to reveal the hidden order behind the apparent randomness.

Remember how paranoia is linked to anxiety?  External events are perceived as more threatening because the observer is anxious, and/or the observer is anxious because of the perceived threats.  Well interestingly, the most fertile breeding ground for conspiracy arises from events which shock the community.   When JFK was assassinated, it tore the fabric of society.  It created a wound that left a permanent scar.  If personal anxiety increases the paranoia that gives rise to personal conspiracy theories, it should be no surprise that events which are wrenching to the community could give rise to the same process.  In short, the event makes people feel so unsafe that they seek an explanation that can maintain some kind of stability and meaning in their lives.  People don’t create or buy in to incredible conspiracy theories because they are stupid or gullible.  They do it because they are scared.  The scarier the event, the more appealing the tidy explanation of a conspiracy theory becomes.

Of Course We Can Predict the Future

We often hear that the future is unknown, and (in the words of Yogi Berra) "It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future."

We generally accept it on the face of it that we can't predict the future, but of course this is about as far away from the truth as we could be.  The fact is we predict the future all the time.  Our survival and our civilization depend upon it.  And we're very good at it.

Imagine you are at a park and you see a boy who has gotten his frisbee stuck in a tree.  He tries to shake the tree but it is too big and it doesn't budge.  He tries to throw things at the frisbee to knock it down, but he keeps missing.  He almost gets his baseball glove stuck as well before he decides to abandon the idea of throwing other objects into the tree.  Then he gets an idea.


The boy runs off and returns shortly with a jump-rope.  He throws one end of the rope up onto the limb of the tree and, after succeeding in getting it sufficiently stuck, he pulls hard on the tree limb to loosen his toy.  He lets go of the rope and the tree limb bounces back into the air, jump-rope dangling and swinging just above his head.  But the frisbee is really wedged in the branches and doesn't move.  The boy starts to pull hard on the jumprope.  The limb bends down and then bends some more.  It is apparent to you that the limb is near its breaking point.  But the boy keeps pulling until finally, SNAP.  The branch gives way and swings wildly toward the ground, striking the boy in the head.  He starts to cry.  You run over but by the time you get there, others have come to his aid and have determined he is not seriously hurt.

You walk back over to your bench in the park and tell your friend, "I knew that was going to happen." And the thing is, you did know what was going to happen.  From your vantage you could see the limb bending and you sensed it was about to break.  Further you could see that it was likely to swing down and strike the boy when it did.  Was this simply a blind guess or were you telling the future?

I'm not sure where Little Orphan Annie ranks in the pantheon of financial planners, but she has assured us that we can bet our bottom dollar that the sun will come out tomorrow.  Is she some sort of all seeing sorceress?  (She does have the spooky eyes for the job.) How can she possibly predict the future?

Now some folks will insist that I am playing word games or splitting hairs.  Surely the idea that the sun will rise is not telling the future, it's just science, right?  And so is the understanding that a branch pulled by a child to the breaking point will come snapping back and hit him in the face.  This is not what we mean when we talk about predicting the future is it?  And what about the chance that the branch will miss the child as it swings through the air?  Or the one in a gazillion chance that something will happen and the sun will not in fact come out tomorrow? (In which case our bottom dollar is worthless anyway, so it's still a good bet to take.)

Well, what do we mean when we talk about predicting the future?  We usually mean calling for things that will happen or are very likely to happen.  If you learned from a reliable source that you had a 99% chance of being in the path of the oncoming wild-fire, would you really think that it didn't matter because the prediction lacked 100% certainty?  Absolute certainty is clearly not a requirement for us to assess a credible threat, so it can not be a requirement in any of our predictions about what is about to happen.

So what is going on here?  How can the future be both unknowable and so readily predicted in so many ways -- in many cases to accuracy that approaches 100%? Does anything that is "too obvious" not count as predicting the future?  Are we really only concerned with our inability to predict things we don't see coming?  If that is the case, then we are simply defining the future as what we don't know, so who's playing word games now?

No, it is clear that a better assessment of the situation may be something like:

"Our long history of curiosity about our surroundings has lead us to a level of understanding that makes many things appear reasonably certain.  Highly regular events can be predicted to a great degree of accuracy, as can things in the very near future.  However, things subject to a lot of input variables (those containing many "moving parts") are harder to predict.  And events in the distant future which may be subject to the as yet undetermined outcomes of other events which we can not accurately predict become harder still."

I like Yogi Berra's quote better.

But more poetically, it is as if the future is shrouded in fog.  We can make out the details of only those things which are very close.  Further off we can make out shapes, and further still we can not see anything.  Additionally, we can make inferences about things in our environment which appear unchanging.  For example if we stood next to a long stone wall in the fog, we would not need to see it in the distance to be able to infer that it extended out in front of us.  The longer we walk along the wall, the more confident we can be that it continues in front of us -- similar to how we have as a species observed so many sunrises that we understand the almost certainty that sunrises extend into our future for as long as our mortal selves can see.

What are the specific factors that influence our ability to predict the future?  How can we know if we are predicting the future or merely think we are?

The answer to these questions and many other interesting ones lie in the nature of how we perceive information.  And as we have already discussed "perception of information" is merely another way of saying "context".  So we'll be looking at context and the role it plays in our ability to tell the future.