A conclusion reached through logic should be a repeatable one. When presented with a particular problem, the correct solution will be invariably the same.
Two plus two is always four.
That’s comforting for the human mind. Our brains want there to be predictable patterns. We think more effectively and efficiently with rules because we can skip steps or ignore fine details and instead use a close-enough average to fill in the data points. It is a survival mechanism. There’s too much information coming in at all times, so our brains filter out the details because most of that too-much information is unnecessary to our survival.
This filtering is being refined constantly. Think about how quickly you become nose-blind to a smell or fast an annoying buzz retreats beneath notice. The brain seeks a pattern, judges it, and stores that away as a reference for later.
Here’s a “fun” fact: Facial recognition is so important to human survival, there is an entire section of the brain dedicated just to that function, the fusiform gyrus. If you’ve been surprised at how easily you could pick a friend’s face out of a crowd (or to use an example for my normal audience: your significant other’s face out of an orgy), that’s why! And why our minds don’t let us see inverted faces.
Because pattern recognition is so valuable, our minds seek it out. We want to believe that the world has a natural order and rhythm to it and things happen for a reason. When a situation resolves, we want to be able to follow what happened to get to that resolution, how each step built toward the next. And we want to believe that if the same situation happens again, it will lead to the same result.
Always Seeking Patterns Isn’t the Best Pattern of Behavior
Enough desire to find a pattern will cause one to emerge.
When faces resolve where no exists, that’s pareidolia, the tendency to perceive a meaningful visual interpretation where one is not intended. The man in the moon is an example, or the headlights and grill of some motor vehicles. I often see strange faces peering at me from the patterns of wood grain or tree bark.
Carl Jung coined synchronicity to describe circumstances that seem meaningfully related by random chance. The Dark Side of the Rainbow effect is a good example. I’ve never tried it, but supposedly correctly playing Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of Moon over Wizard of Oz leads to the sound effects and song lyrics syncing up to on-screen events.
These forms of apophenia (perceiving meaningful connections in unrelated chaos) isn’t a problem until meaning and value is ascribed to non-existent patterns. This could be caused by a lack of understanding creating a false connection between events, AKA correlation without causation.
Our mistrust of chaos can lead to people feeling extreme discomfort when small, random events have worldwide impact. Applying a reason and finding a pattern, no matter how complex or terrifying the reason is, soothes that discomfort. Which is what makes conspiracy theories so appealing. Despite them being logically impossible and unnecessary to pull off.
Me, Amused
I find this fascinating. Some crazy ideas are believed with absolute certainty because it’s more comforting than believing something with a global impact could occur at random. But most people aren’t comfortable with the concept that true randomness does not exist in the universe and therefore free will cannot exist.
In short, what we call random chance is actually the inability to build and compute the necessary equation that would give us the answer. If every variable was known and processed, every roll of the dice is calculable because everything happens as a result of the prior state of the universe. When we label things as unpredictable, we mean that we cannot predict them.
This doesn’t mean that they cannot be predicted, only that we lack the ability.
Completely unpredictable events are extremely rare and extraordinarily small. With complete knowledge of (a) the initial state of the universe and (b) the secondary state of the universe, finding the end point of the universe is just math. A whole fuck-ton of math, sure; it would take one hell of a processing engine. But once everything started moving, there was only a single resolution.
Math could have determined in the second moment of existence that I’d write this and you would read it. It couldn’t have happened any other way.
By this logic, logic then must be the best way to know what to do because it can predict everything until the end of time. Maybe deep down we know this truth and that’s why we so often will trust and desire logic.
But on a perceptual level, because we don’t know every variable and therefore cannot compute the equation, we cannot easily predict future states. It’s easier to just say it’s random.
Emotions and Intuition Seem Random
We cannot know for sure what others are thinking or feeling. We don’t always know why we are feeling a certain way or what might trigger a gut reaction. The lack of predictability and accountability in ourselves and others make these feel less viable and trust worthy as reasons to make decisions.
The bigger and more impactful the decision (buying a card, moving to a new location, switching careers), the less trust we have in these and the more we want to rely on logic—conscious logic, to be specific. We use pros-and-cons lists, develop spreadsheets for budgets, and run simulations to record variables, apply values, and run computations on the equation.
This makes logic feel the most valuable and useful method, right? By this logic, logic is the superior method because emotion and intuition are unpredictable. Regardless of how we feel about it, two plus two remains four all the same. Adding emotions to the mix simply introduces unnecessary elements that can only disrupt the calculation, not assist it.
But how many people actually let logic dictate their actions without taking their emotions and hunches into account? Most people can’t make the decision on a career without considering how happy they would be in that career. That’s a logical data point for the calculation.
If emotions are logical parts of logical decision making, then how can logical decisions be superior to emotional decision making?
How Many Decisions Do You Consciously Make?
Decisions are not reached in a vacuum. I posit that small choices are often decided subconsciously through any of the five methods my cat, Bard, and I presented in the main post. We make thousands of decisions every day (Bard tells me that some sources suggest that number is as high as 35,000), and many of them never enter your conscious mind. Nor could you assess which method was employed.
On my way to get a cup of water, I stop to pet my cat. Is that a conscious decision or unconscious? Did I pet him because his purs make me happy (emotion), I always pet him when I walk past him (instinct), he’s less destructive if he is pet regularly (logic), or I sense some tension between, likely a result of the shoe-pissing-spray bottling incident earlier, and this felt like the time make amends (intuition)?
Each motivation for petting my cat is tied to the method that would have used that method, but if I didn’t actively stop and think about petting my cat in the first place—I I did the think without considering if I should do the thing—how can can I figure out why I did something I don’t think I decided to do?
Mindfulness
Can we ever know why we do anything?
Maybe. With mindfulness. If we try. But it requires practice.
Mindfulness is being conscious and aware in your present. The more you focus on the Here & Now, the more you can act and react with intention rather than instinct. Our minds spend so much time elsewhere (anxious about the future, worried about the past, thinking up stories and blog posts, etc.) that our bodies just move on autopilot.
There are many ways to practice mindfulness. And you do need to practice! You don’t need to spend a lot of time practicing in the moment, but you need to spend a lot of moments practicing consistently. A daily mindful meditation or yoga routine can be as short as 5 to 10 minutes. The daily is the most important aspect if you want the practice to translate into benefit throughout your day.
Mindfulness Now or Conscious Analysis Later
Unless you are mindful in the moment you make a choice, the conscious mind has to analyze the choice, make assumptions about motivations, and come to a conclusion without all the facts. There are more pitfalls making this determination using the conscious mind over being mindful.
Mulling over why we did something to justify doing it relies on logic/reasoning method most of the time: Realizing I was sad so I petted my cat to feel happy is using logic to figure out I made that decision emotionally.
If the logical mind is used to figure out how we came to a decision, we might then assume it was the logical mind that actually came to the decision in the first place: I feel a little down. I know that petting my cat makes me feel better. Logically, I should go pet my cat.
Self-analysis allows for the perversion of truth because we can believe we used whatever method we want to use. Those who believe that emotions or intuition are less trustworthy methods are biased toward seeing our decisions from a place of logic and we will use logic to prove it.
I Can See My Logic but No One Else Is as Smart as I Am
It’s a real problem, being so damn smart and logical that I can so clearly see the Right Thing to Do. It’s much more a burden than it is a blessing. Particularly when I have to explain why I’m right because other people aren’t as smart. The same way I sometimes need to explain why I’m funny: My humor is just so humorous and smart other people don’t get it. After enough time, it becomes tiresome explaining to people why they are wrong. I can. I do! My logic is solid. The path is True. My decision is correct.
Therefore, when someone comprehend why I’m making the right choice and they are not, there are but two logical options to resolve the impasse:
- Righteously bulldoze the opposition with logic until they acquiesce to my whims (which causes harm in the process)
- Righteously deceive the opposition so that they never know a decision was made without their consent and against their wishes (which causes no harm in the present but has the potential to cause a fuck-ton if the deception is discovered)
</sarcasm>
I don’t think myself superior (that’s antithetical to how I think), but when Erin didn’t agree with my logical conclusion, I would lean into Option 1 above. I was not only sure I was right but also believed the right could be provable, I could (and did) prove it, and that she just couldn’t accept it.
What Made Me Insufferable
I had absolute belief that I had the One Right Answer. My Logic Superiority Instinct made me trust in logic and only in logic, and I believe that true logic pointed to the only answer. Therefore, what I felt was right had to be right, because I only used logic. I described this as righteous bulldozering, and that’s exactly how I behave.
Not that I did this often. Absolute trust in logic logically leads to overthinking. If there is only one right answer, then we should keep looking for it until we’ve found it. Overthinking then leads to decision paralysis when logic doesn’t compute a specific course of action because
- Many outcomes have similar values, no clear choice is apparent
- Unknowns variables create too many possible results
- The equation hit a point of emotion and doesn’t know how to move beyond that
- The logical conclusion isn’t satisfying, and so on.
Some decisions cannot and should not be made purely with logic. But when we think logic is the only appropriate way, then we have no alternatives. That’s where I got stuck.
From Here
Go to Let’s Not Talk About Other People Making Decisions for Us.
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