Rational Philosophy

On letting go.

Hillary Clinton seems to have been finding it difficult to pick her campaign strategy, vacillating between a softer, less strident tone and what has come across as a somewhat nasty tactic of questioning the qualifications and sincerity of Barack Obama. People differ on whether she should have been more ruthless from the start, or less ruthless all the way through; but all seem to agree that picking one would have been better than flipping back and forth.

After conducting extensive research through carefully constructed experiments, Dr. Dan Ariely, professor of behavioral economics at MIT, has concluded, not surprisingly, that people like to keep their options open. But, more surprisingly, Dr. Ariely thinks that we like to keep them open not necessarily because we feel we need them, but because we don’t like to let go of them. Dr. Ariely found that his test subjects worked hard to keep their virtual doors from disappearing, even when they knew there was no cost to making them reappear.

No matter how carefully arrived at, the results of research can be misinterpreted. The test subjects can’t tell us why, on a fundamental level, they wanted to keep the doors from disappearing, so this becomes a matter of inference. But an incredibly valuable aspect of Dr. Ariely’s research seems to be that it gives us a tool we can use when making choices.

Once we are aware that we will be tempted to keep our options open, even when logic tells us that this is detrimental, we will be more likely to trust our logic and let go of unproductive options.

No one would accuse Hillary Clinton of being stupid. I am sure she understands objectively that it would be better, or would have been better, to pick one style of campaign and stick to it. But she was tempted to hold on to all her cards. Whereas, if she’d had the benefit of the insights from Dr. Ariely’s experiments, she may have been able to make the tough call and pick one strategy or the other. (Interestingly, this inability to let a door close seems to be the Achilles Heel of much political decision making. I wonder whether it played a role in Clinton’s initial support for and later distancing from the Iraq war?)

Another example from today’s news: The NY Times reports that after a review of treatments for prostate cancer, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality could not determine which of those treatments to recommend. The article and those interviewed describe this circumstance as “scary,” “troubling,” and “disappointing.” But, as the article points out, in the absence of a prefered treatment, practitioners tend to select the treatment that they most ascribe to or feel most comfortable with. The Agency doesn’t say that any of the treatments being employed don’t have merit. And, in the absence of better data, it seems appropriate that doctors employ techniques they’re happy with. One can’t argue that it would be better to have better treatment data, but in the absence of better data, selecting the most appealing option and letting go of the others, seems a rational choice.

As a more mundane case in point I am put in mind of grocery shopping. A trip to the supermarket for a few items can take me several times as long as a visit to the bodega around the corner, just because in the supermarket I feel obliged to weigh my options. Modern life presents us with so many choices that letting go becomes a more and more valuable technique in time management.

I would present more examples, but I have to stop somewhere…

For more rational, science-based explanations of life’s meaning and purpose, please refer to my book: LIFE! Why We Exist… And What We Must Do To Survive.

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(Or, the beauty of non-conformism.)

In one of the many magnificent set pieces of Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, Yossarian, a Second World War B52 bombadier, proposes to another character (Doc Daneeka, I think) that he should be allowed to return home. “Where would we be if everyone thought that way?” he is asked, “Then I’d be crazy not to,” Yossarian replies. A valid point.

In the world of science, examples of unorthodox thought that ultimately sweeps away a whole body of ill-formed ideas abound, as do examples of the hard road that the non-conformist must often trek — Galileo Galilei, for instance, found himself under indefinite house arrest for supporting Copernicus’s heliocentric view of the solar system. These days, a proposal that the sun revolves around the earth would be so ridiculous that it wouldn’t even draw ridicule, never mind the attention of the Inquisition.

In a lovely, scathing testament to his burning disdain for orthodoxy, Arthur Schopenhauer subtitled his essay On The Basis of Morality “not awarded a prize by the Royal Danish Society of Scientific Studies.” (His was the only entry to the competition.)

And just yesterday, MIT sued Frank Gehry’s architecture firm claiming design and construction failures in its Stata Center which has developed cracks, leaks and other problems. “These things are complicated,” Gehry said, “and they involved a lot of people, and you never quite know where they went wrong. A building goes together with seven billion pieces of connective tissue. The chances of it getting done ever without something colliding or some misstep are small.”

Many at MIT are happy with Gehry’s construction, as the NY Times reports: “It is a joy to work in this building,” said Rodney Brooks, a professor of robotics, “and I know that many of its occupants feel the same as I do about it. We asked Frank to give us a building that fostered communication, and he delivered.”

But it seems that Gehry is no stranger to disgruntled clients. Sometimes the very isolation of the lone voice speaks to the depth of its insight.

There’s an important philosophical aspect of non-conformism that I think we do well as a society and as individuals to remember. Human understanding works through three important processes:

1. Direct, immediate understanding. (A baby knows instinctively to reach for its mother’s nipple when hungry.)

2. Received understanding.  (What we know or think we know from being told or from reading or otherwise learning about how things work.)

3. Deduced, rational understanding. (What we piece together rationally from what we observe.)

The rational non-conformist then works from the third kind of understanding to debunk flawed examples of the second kind. Galileo used scientific observation to unseat the non-scientific theories of the geocentric worldview. When someone speaks out against an established understanding, then, we should ask ourselves whether that established understanding is something that we have simply accepted as fact, or whether we have arrived at it ourselves through a process of rational examination. If our answer is that we have no reason to believe it other than that everyone else seems to believe it, we should consider giving the non-conformist view our diligent attention.

This is, I think, what the Buddha had in mind when he said the following:

“Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find anything that agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.” — Siddhartha Gautama (The Buddha), 563-483 B.C.

It’s perhaps not immediately obvious how this applies to Gehry; but I think it does. Implicit in Gehry’s architecture is the debunking of our expected ideas of what a building should look like. Apart from some very creative and aesthetically adventurous designs, his work says, “you don’t need to start with four walls at right angles.”

The wonderful thing about non-conformists of course is that they break the mold not just for themselves but for all future generations. We’ll never go back to believing that the sun revolves around the earth (well, most of us won’t). And, post-Gehry, innovative architects will never be afraid to make buildings look like we don’t expect them to look.