Star Wars and the Lightning Problem

[lwf]

There is a natural ambiguity in particular categorical propositions compounded with an ambiguity in the English language that, when combined with how humans instinctively apprehend reality, makes us all vulnerable to manipulation from a bad actor that understands how to use it to an advantage. It is therefore important to explore and understand this phenomenon.

First: How humans instinctively apprehend reality:

Shared context seems to be the most common way, the most comfortable way, and the instinctive way, that humans perceive and understand reality. We experience life together and we compare our reactions. Experiences we share and our reactions to those experiences that we agree upon amongst our group create a shared context, which becomes reality. A person whose experiences and reactions don’t match everyone else’s is deemed deficient: Schizophrenic, psychotic, or just plain crazy.

The only thing required for a shared context-based reality is shared experience. When my friends, family, and I have an experience and we share a reaction to that experience, we have a common frame of reference for our reactions. Our reactions are reinforced with one another, and we verify then that our reactions are therefore legitimate. “It’s not just me, everyone else also agrees with me.” (Everyone who shared in this particular experience and reported a similar reaction that is.) We have that confirmation, and so it is reinforced. Our reactions to this experience are therefore assumed to be objective truth. This is selective in that it is geographically limited to interacting groups of humans. Humans in another location who have different experiences and different reactions don't necessarily share context with other groups. While objective reality and the biological similarity of all humans ensures that most of human context is shared, the very nature of individual experiences and our natural impulse of shared reaction reinforcement which allows us to learn as we go ensures that there is always going to be a gap in shared context between groups of humans. Hence, some of this shared context is selective only to my individual experiences and that of my group and is therefore subjective.

For example: My friends and I all love Star Wars. We had a shared positive reaction watching that movie, therefore our reactions must have been legitimate. It must have been because it is an objectively rad movie.

Simple shared experience is not, however, the most accurate way to determine reality. Evidence-based empirical observation, data gathering, and peer reviewed testing (or science) has proven to be better (though certainly not perfect) at determining reality than shared experience alone, as it is capable of piercing shared selective context and then spurring change in that shared context to better match empirical observation. In other words, it has corrected the failure of shared selective context to accurately apprehend reality. Two disparate groups of humans with different contexts can use this tool and bring their contexts into line with reality and with one another. Though certainly not a source of perfect knowledge, ignoring empirical data in favor of shared experience is historically a bad idea.

But there is an even greater problem with relying on shared selective context: Shared context is a vulnerability that can be exploited by those who understand how to intentionally and strategically direct attention to experiences that will evoke predictable reactions and lead to a shared context that is controlled by someone who doesn’t even necessarily share that experience. Any magician, entertainer, con artist, or politician can attest that shared context is a flawed way to apprehend reality. Reality can be distorted. Attention can be directed. This is manipulation: The ability to direct attention to a stimulus in order to evoke a predicted emotional response to that stimulus presents an opportunity to trick someone into agreeing with something that may not necessarily be true. Do it to enough people, and the collective agreement reinforces itself and the shared context becomes universal certainty in a reality that doesn’t exist. This objective reality can actually be opinion: Shakespeare is the greatest playwright whoever lived. Or it can be "fact:" The Earth is flat.

With Star Wars, that manipulation is open and intentional and done with the permission of the audience. Panning a camera around small models of imaginary vehicles on strings becomes something much more when you can direct someone’s attention to a compelling (though objectively false) narrative about an unlikely hero, well paced editing, and a sweeping, pulse pounding soundtrack. What one is left with is not a jumbled assortment of video clips of adults in costumes lying and playing with toys, but a fantastical, emotionally gripping two-hour ride through another galaxy. Right?

[Continued...]

 

[lwf]

But some people don’t like Star Wars. Why? What is wrong with them? Are they deficient in some way? Are they blind? Deaf? Didn’t they see what I saw? Didn’t they hear what I heard? Or… did they simply not fall for the manipulation?

While we can all agree that Star Wars is intentionally and harmlessly manipulative entertainment meant to evoke pleasurable reactions, this form of manipulation is far from limited to entertainment, and can be used to fool people into truly believing things that are objectively and provably false by intentionally directing their attention to stimuli that will produce a shared reaction and trigger that instinctive impulse to seek and cling to shared experience in order to develop that shared context, which then becomes what feels like “objective truth.”

One of the ways to concoct such a narrative is to use the natural ambiguity found in categorical propositions and the forced ambiguity found in conversational English.

Categorical propositions:

Universal vs. particular statements

Universal statement:
All humans are mammals

Particular statement:
Some humans are wise


Both of these are true statements that carry agreed upon information. They do not however, carry equivalent amounts of agreed upon information.

All humans are mammals means that 100% of humans are mammals. This conveys useful information about the human species. Finding even one human who isn’t a mammal would render this statement objectively and inarguably false in perpetuity for the rest of time. It would contradict the above statement, rendering it false: NOT all humans would be mammals in that case.

Some humans are wise means only that more than one human is wise. Though easily accepted as a true premise in the context of shared experience, very little actual information is conveyed. At least two humans are or have been wise. So what? This statement cannot be contradicted by finding a human that isn't wise, because it only states that SOME humans are wise, not all. The only way to render this statement untrue would be to test every single human currently alive and who has ever lived for “wisdom,” and determine that no humans are or have ever been wise, or to deliberately redefine the word "wise" in such a way that it cannot be a human trait. Obviously, this is either unfeasable or circular, and therefore doesn't really carry enough information to be that useful.

One problem with conversational English that results in ambiguity is that we are not required to use these quantifiers. It allows one to infer the quantifier from shared context. Consider:

Humans are wise.

Technically speaking, without an “all” or “some” quantifier, it is assumed that we are speaking in the particular sense, rather than the universal. By inferring from the context, we can presume that the above statement is a particular statement. While the above meaning would probably be interpreted that a contextually significant number of humans are wise (compared to other animals perhaps) the only information that it actually communicates is that more than one human is wise. While we can infer from shared context that not all humans are wise, how much context is actually shared? How many humans are wise? Few? Most? That information is not present.

But consider this statement:

Humans are mammals.

While it may be proper to consider the above a particular statement, “some humans are mammals,” we can infer from shared context that in fact this is likely not meant as a particular statement. That it is, in fact, universal. Humans ARE mammals. ALL humans are mammals. Someone without shared context could be forgiven for not inferring this and being confused and misled by the different logical connotations of both these informal statements.

Conversational English is chock full of these statements that, to someone with no shared context, are ambiguous. How many humans are wise? Your answer may be different than mine given our different experiences.

[Continued...]

 

[lwf]

Here are is another incontrovertibly true statement without a logical quantifier:

People are killed by lightning strikes


Since there is no quantifier, we assume that this is a particular statement. Not all people are killed by lightning strikes. But how many are? More than one person, but less than everyone?


The vast majority of us have a shared context on the above: Most of us don’t personally know anyone who was killed by lightning. Those of us that are unfortunate enough to personally know someone who was can still conclude through everyday experience that it is an exceedingly rare occurrence. As frightening as this is, this isn’t a fear we carry with us in life. It manifests only as increased caution when we are in a situation where we might be vulnerable.


The following is another technically true statement without a quantifier:

Catholic priests molest altar boys


Since there is no quantifier, the proper assumption is that it means that more than one catholic priest has molested an altar boy at some point.

But what is the shared context here? How many Catholic priests have molested how many altar boys? And what is the likelihood of more Catholic priests molesting more altar boys? And how do we each come to these conclusions? This one is harder. Was it only a couple of incidents? Is it more common than we think? Does it happen in my church? Is there a secret cabal of molesters hiding amongst the priesthood in every church? Does it go all the way to the Vatican?

Perspective is more difficult here because information is more scarce, and even though scarcity of evidence and information logically argues for lower numbers, it’s also possible that the numbers are higher than are suggested by the available information due to other factors such as victim shame, the perpetrator’s collective reputation, coverups by authorities, and manipulative skill.

Still, this also isn’t a fear most of us carry with us in every day life. However, it is a horror story that enrages us, and regardless of how rare it actually is, we can all agree that it is still too common. We have a shared reaction and have developed a shared context that this problem with Catholic priests molesting children is unacceptable. Something should be done about it. People who claim to have good ideas on how to prevent it or root it out are going to get our attention. The more horror stories we hear, the more justified anger we are going to feel and the more they are going to get our attention. But what affect might this have on Catholic priests that don't molest altar boys? If people become convinced that it is endemic to the Catholic Church, and that more priests are pedophiles than is actually the case, then Priests who aren't pedophiles start to be victimized. Sure, their victimization due to prejudice is incomparable to the much more severe victimization of innocent children by pedophiles, but the difference is: WE become the perpetrators who are victimizing innocent people under the excuse of protecting children from a threat we don't even have an accurate perspective on.

[Continued...]

 

[lwf]

Here are some more true statements without quantifiers of any kind and with notoriously unshared contexts:

Satanists sacrifice animals

Immigrants vote Democrat

Illegal immigrants smuggle drugs into the United States

There is voter fraud in every election

Guns kill people

Mass shootings of children happen in schools

Trans children are medically transitioning before they are old enough to consent

White police officers brutalize and murder black men

The mainstream media lies

The mainstream media reports the facts

White supremacists vote Republican

Socialists vote Democrat

Democrats are also communists

Republicans are also fascists

Making it more difficult to vote helps prevent voter fraud

Preventing voter fraud through increased security decreases voter participation

Democrats want to outlaw firearms

Republicans want to outlaw homosexuality

Transwomen have an unfair advantage in women’s sports

Walls prevent violent criminals from illegally entering a country

Republicans are Russian sympathizers

Democrats are Chinese sympathizers


Likely individuals who read the above statements of truth will view some of these statements as true, some of them as false or misleading, and some as ambiguous, and likely different individuals will disagree on which is which. Some might believe that some statements logically contradict others. But by the rules of the English language, they are ALL PROVABLY TRUE STATEMENTS and there are NO CONTRADICTIONS because they are technically assumed to be logically particular statements; So long as I can find more than one example of each statement, then they are confirmed as statements that have been proven to be true.

What do all these have in common? In addition to the fact that they are all particular statements requiring very little evidence to prove accurate, they are, to one degree or another, incomplete, suggestive horror stories, at least to some people. While they are all incontrovertibly true, because they lack quantifiers they are all subject to the natural ambiguity of such statements in the English language, and so can be easily misinterpreted. They all frighten and/or enrage at least some of us who hear them. Depending on the shared context of the person and the nature of the statement, some frighten us more than others. And since each one is incontrovertibly true, this fright and rage is, technically speaking, to some degree warranted and supported by citable evidence.

The question is: how warranted is my fear and anger? How warranted is yours? What frightens me may not frighten you. Why? What is wrong with you? Why aren’t you frightened by this clearly and legitimately horrible story that I feel fully justified in being frightened by?

One of the most effective ways to use this natural impulse we all share in order to get someone to do something they otherwise wouldn’t do is to combine the human instinct to seek the validation and comfort of others when afraid, or the validation and justification of others when angry, (shared selective context) with the ambiguity of the English language to create a believable narrative reinforced by objectively true stories that evoke anger and fear. (Remember, to be true, you only need a couple of examples. The more the better, but they certainly don’t need to be statistically significant. A few stories is enough, with a few more in reserve in case they start questioning. Their fear will inflate the importance of these examples.) Top it off by controlling who this person listens to: (convince them that anyone who tells them differently has an evil agenda and cannot be trusted) and putting all of it into the mouth of someone with confidence and charisma, and you have just successfully manipulated someone into doing something they wouldn’t otherwise do without their knowledge. Scare them enough, and they will even act against their own interests.

[Continued...]

 

[lwf]

How does one protect oneself from this Hannibal Lecter-level criminal mastermind gaslighting sorcery? This is where hard statistical data saves the day. Emprical data brings perspective. The statistical data tells us that 43 people per year are killed by lightning on average in the Untied States. That averages out to more than 3 people every month. That’s ~43 different stories each about ~43 horrible and frightening deaths that someone can use to frighten me into being afraid of being randomly struck by lightning. If you feed 3 of these horror stories per month to my friends and I and we all react in horror, then this becomes our shared context. If you convince us that you are the only reliable source of information, then what you feed us alone will inform this context, or at least it will have an outsized influence on it.


But what if I choose to do my own research and compare this data to other data about something more familiar to me? 90 people per year are killed by lawn mowers. That’s double the number killed by lightning. That’s also 90 horror stories that someone could feed me if they convinced me that I couldn’t trust anyone else to give me factual information. But I have my own context with lawn mowers. I use one weekly and have my entire adult life. I can rise above the admittedly terrifying horror stories of severed limbs and excruciating deaths I am seeing coming from the anti-lawn mower lobby and actually put my fear into perspective. I don’t fear my lawn mower because I use it with care and 90 people per year, while still too many I freely admit, is a tiny number within the context of the actual data, therefore why should I fear my lawn mower? And why should I fear being randomly struck by lightning? And, more importantly, why should I trust someone who is deliberately feeding me horror stories about something that is less of a problem statistically than something else I don’t actually fear at all? And why should I trust anyone who tells me that everyone but them is untrustworthy?


Data can tell us whether the shared visceral reaction we all have to a horror story warrants the level of importance it occupies in our shared selective context, or if the level of importance has been exaggerated and outsized by our own fears and we are metaphorically locking ourselves in our homes in order to avoid being struck by lightning. And, importantly, it can tell us if we are acting in our own best interest when we vote for a political party who likes to direct our attention to seemingly endless horrific stories about all of the people killed by lightning every year and tells us not to trust anyone who reports otherwise, based solely on their promise to protect us from being killed by lightning if we vote them into power.