Monday, November 19, 2018

lotto balls and snap judgments

The mindfulness meditation craze has led to a few odd misconceptions about its goals. I'm convinced that imprecise wording is partly to blame. Like other subtle mental states, mindfulness can be easier to describe by emphasizing what it's not. So teachers note that it isn't analyzing any one item in depth, and it isn't reacting emotionally—positively or negatively—to any one item. They may refer to the meditator's role as "bare awareness" of the flow of present experience. Apart from re-centering attention when it becomes entangled, the only thought process is receptive observation. And the only attitude is undisturbed neutrality. Unfortunately, enthusiastic beginners may confuse these instructions' overall intent. They may jump to the conclusion that these are absolute laws for a mindful life: thinking and judging are no-nos.

But the slightest investigation into Buddhist tradition reveals that mindfulness meditation coexists with strong reverence for reasoning and morality. Obviously, wisdom and right living are values of equal or greater importance. Given this context, the proper aim can't be to extinguish every form of mental activity that supposedly falls into the vague categories of "thinking" or "judging".

As I understand it, the target of mindfulness is more specific: lotto ball thinking. A lottery's mixing machines rapidly churn masses of numbered balls until several emerge from the chaos in single file. Brains are like mixing machines, but the objects are nerve impulses that travel and combine and fizzle out along myriad pathways. A deluge of signals comes in from the senses and the body itself. It's no surprise that surprising thoughts pop out of the cerebral cortex's vortex like lotto balls, sometimes for seemingly little reason.

Meditation helps people to recognize the existence, the extent, and the nature of lotto ball thoughts. However, I for one wouldn't claim that lotto ball thoughts are inherently useless or harmful. Some are flashes of creative brilliance. Even the most distasteful could be beneficial for discovering uncomfortable truths about self-destructive thought patterns.

The point is the ongoing insight that lotto ball thoughts just happen naturally. Meditation is practice for seeing them for what they are and then responding to them deliberately and productively. Without it, lotto ball thoughts have a greater chance of pushing and pulling the thinker in various contradictory directions, prompting them to develop a sour mood, encouraging their selfishness, distracting them with trivia, etc. The tyranny of lotto ball thoughts is the enemy; thinking isn't.

Similarly, I'd argue that mindfulness has the specific target of snap judgments. Snap judgments are either instinctive or embedded by long-term associations. They follow immediately on the heels of the judged item. They're so basic that writers frequently call them attractions or aversions. They're perceived as powerful because they're raw and deeply rooted. Needless to say, they're not obligated to make much sense.

Once more, I for one wouldn't claim that the lesson to be learned is that snap judgments are inherently incorrect. (Did I mention that I'm neither a mainstream nor secular Buddhist?) Instead, meditation is for practicing the often difficult task of refusing to act on these snap judgments or to dwell/ruminate on them. Then these will gradually fade, like the electricity-saving screen of a device that's merely stared at rather than interacted with.

The effort to defang snap judgments doesn't mean pretending that pleasant experiences aren't pleasant or that awful experiences aren't awful. It doesn't mean indifference about the world and society. Arguably, it enables sophisticated and coherent judgments to take the place of error-prone gut feelings. At the same time it assists with effectively carrying out whatever principles have been chosen. High-minded ideals can hardly be followed while someone is really ruled by the whims of the moment.

I hope it's clear that mindfulness isn't an alternative to rationality or a moral center. It's an admirable tool for pursuing both!

Friday, May 18, 2018

the column of sieves

In the midst of controversial debates, it's too common for either side to demand a "smoking gun" proof from the other. They insist on an item of evidence that's easily understood, beyond all doubt, and strikingly dramatic. They need to be impressed before they'll budge an inch. (Of course, whether or not their demand is sincere is a separate question.)

The strategy works in the heat of a debate because grand indisputable tests are relatively rare. Tests that are actually workable tend to have built-in limitations. Ethical reports of such tests attach sober probabilities to the corresponding conclusions. Imperfection is normal. Tests have holes. The genuine reality could "slip through". A favorable result might still be wrong.

Nevertheless, the big picture is more hopeful. Uninformed people often fail to grasp the total value of an array of imperfect tests. Although one test has known weaknesses in isolation, combining it with other tests can make a vast difference. If one test's holes are like the holes in a sieve (...a sieve with fewer holes than a real sieve would have...), then an array of favorable tests is like a line of sieves arranged in a column. Through this arrangement, anything that slipped through one sieve's holes would probably not slip through another's as well.

The rules of probability correspond to this analogy. As long as the tests are statistically independent, i.e. running one test doesn't affect another, the likelihood is very low that all the favorable results of the array of tests are simultaneously false. That coincidence would be unlikely. One example is five successful tests, and each success had a one in six chance of being false. Having every success be false would be comparable to getting only sixes in five rolls of a die.

Unfortunately, the convincing persuasiveness of an array of tests is a much more difficult story to tell. The focus is abstract and awkward. In place of a lone heroic test to admire, there's a team of mediocrity. It's broad and messy, like reality. Sleek certainty is easier to find in fantasies.

And the situation is generally less clear than this simplified portrayal. The mathematics are more complex and the conclusions more arguable. Perhaps the test results aren't all successes. Or opponents may suggest that the probability that a test is wrong should be greater; they may assert that it's far more flawed than it was said to be. Or, if they're more subtle, they may try to claim that the tests in the array just have identical holes ("pervasive blind spots"), so multiple tests aren't an improvement over one.

Attacks on the details would be progress compared to the alternative, though. Better that than a childish sweeping rejection of tests that can't be faultless. Perhaps the usual tests are suspect, but the recommendation is to round up all these usual suspect tests anyway. Four honest approximations reached through unconcealed methods deserve more credit than an "ultimate answer" reached through methods which are unknown or secret or dictatorial or unrepeatable.

Tuesday, February 27, 2018

verifiable definitions for everybody

It's a frequent mistake to try to elevate one culture's notions into universal laws. That's why I don't mind considering the charge that the philosophical stance I encourage is a "purely Western invention".  If it had no chance at broader relevance or appeal, I'd rather know than not.

Nevertheless, at least the core principle isn't a Western-only concept. It's binding an idea's meaning and accuracy to the "shadow" it should cast on outcomes, i.e. realities which are exposed via human actions. (These actions might be mental and/or passive, such as calculating or unbiased observing.) The important instructions to follow this principle properly aren't especially Western either: to be diligent, honest, and fair throughout the tasks of gathering up and evaluating the outcomes that supposedly reveal the corresponding idea's meaning/accuracy; to be alert to any outcomes that are equally supportive, or more supportive, of competing ideas; and most difficult of all, to recognize the absence of the idea's shadow on outcomes that really should've been affected if the idea were meaningful and accurate.

The reason I think this stance is widely applicable is because of the widely occurring human problems that it was created to address. When one person is trying to narrowly determine what another person is talking about, comparing the idea to specific actions and outcomes helps. "I'm talking about the position you would reach by traveling to latitude and longitude coordinates X and Y in decimal degrees...or the position you would see on a map by finding the intersection of them." A second problem might be trying to decide whether another person is using differing ideas to express a meaning that's close to identical. A third problem might be trying to estimate an idea's overall feasibility by estimating the feasibility of the actions associated with it. A fourth problem might be trying to deflate another person's deception (or ignorant self-delusion) through noticing that their idea lacks adequate rationales that anyone can check. Wherever and whenever there are groupings of people whose symbolic communication empowers them to refer in detail to things that aren't here right now, they're empowered to carelessly refer in detail to things that aren't so.

Actually, speaking from where I sit, it's debatable how widely this stance is firmly embraced within any of the cultures that are said to have a Western heritage. It's in a continual contest with other cultural currents, some of which have the backing of social pressure and a formidable history. The effect is that people within these cultures have also long used alternative "methods" such as superstition or the opaque rulings of unchallenged authority figures. True, the exact content of the shoddy ideas changes over time, because fashions—and blind spots—change. But the mechanism is depressingly consistent. For instance, anxiety about counteracting bad spirits gives way to anxiety about counteracting bad energy (or counteracting minute quantities of bad toxins?). I'm forced to confess that even many of the members of my own culture aren't in favor of the stance I preach.

A more general truism is at work here: sorting both ideas and cultures by a single Western/non-Western split is too coarse-grained to reliably predict people's responses. There are significant differences among all the cultures which are said to have a Western heritage. The result of these differences is that my stance is more welcomed in some of them than in others. And it's more welcomed in some subcultures more than others.

Just as receptiveness varies throughout the group of Western cultures, it varies throughout non-Western cultures as well. In the same way that everybody placed on one side cannot be assumed to be completely open to it, everybody placed on the other side cannot be assumed to be completely closed to it. Despite eager attempts both to neatly assign an idea to one side and then to emphasize a rift between the sides, large numbers of people on either side have always been willing and able to absorb the bits they like from the ideas that reach them. Voluntary exchange of useful ideas has been going on for as long as the voluntary exchange of goods has. The cultural divide might be a good representation of the accidental misunderstandings that can happen so easily...but it's hardly an impassable barrier in practice.

My expectations of finding common ground don't stop there. I suspect that "they" might find that portions of the idea feel familiar. Worthy ideas have the tendency of springing up independently in several times and places, although the triggering situations and the forms of expression are of course unique. In this sense, I highly doubt that the origins of stances like mine have always been in the cultures in the Western pigeonhole. As I stated earlier, the most abstract debates about meaning and accuracy still have natural motivations. People in non-Western cultures must have developed their own versions of the triangle of ideas/actions/outcomes...though perhaps less formally or less fully. If so then their reaction will be "Oh, you're describing a view that has a few strong resemblances to ___ in my culture" instead of "You're describing a view which is entirely alien to anything that I've known before".

The risk of focusing on culture is to miss the other levels in which opposing ways of thinking clash. Clashes at the level of culture are obviously pertinent, but so are the clashes at the levels of the individual's everyday struggles with their own thoughts. The truth is that my upbringing in a Western-categorized culture wasn't sufficient to stop me from restricting the introspective reach of this "very Western stance" for years. Else it would've clashed with the unsound beliefs that I shielded from its standards. The turning point came when I aimed it at my base assumptions; I stopped treating it as an optional tool suitable solely for limited areas of knowledge. As tough as it might be to introduce a way of thinking to someone, it's not as tough as the next challenge of convincing them to value a rigorously examined, intellectually coherent life. The end goal isn't to convert every part of their culture to be more "Western" (how boring), it's to equip them to better analyze the parts of their own many-sided cultures for themselves and to free their minds if they wish. Some Westerners like I have had the same task.

Saturday, January 06, 2018

Force-curious but not Jedi?

By springing surprise after surprise on its fanatical audience, Star Wars: The Last Jedi has triggered an avalanche of differing reactions. I for one was neither passionately against or in favor of it. My personal interest in anything related to Star Wars has been lukewarm for years. I liked it enough while I was at the theater, but I didn't have the urge to go again. I'm less disturbed by its own plot twists than I am about the seemingly slim possibilities that it left for the next movie. What will the heroes do now to save themselves and defeat their foes? What mysteries remain unsolved? Perhaps the third Star Wars movie of recent years will be subtitled "The Search for Lando".

The movie managed to stun me with a few jaw-dropping scenes, though. All of these were playing with one revolutionary concept: the Jedi voluntarily becoming extinct. I need to hastily add that the dialogue pointedly clarifies, however, that the hypothetical extinction would apply to the Jedi "religion" alone. The Force itself could never become extinct. As a result, individuals who have Force awareness and/or abilities would still be around, too. Without Jedi scholarship or apprenticeship to guide them, their belief status would be Force-curious but not Jedi. They'd be non-Jedi or "Nons" for short.

A Star Wars universe of Nons offers plenty of fuel for speculation. Rather than benefit from the findings (and mistakes!) of their predecessors, each generation of them would fumble anew at understanding elementary topics and performing novice feats. They might opt to pick and choose from a hundred contradictory understandings of the Force. With their meager knowledge, they'd try to judge for themselves whether particular actions were "light-side" or "dark-side". Their ignorance of the dangers would inevitably result in a few—maybe more than a few—using the Force for selfish aims and eventually having a destructive effect on everything around them. In addition, some of them would be motivated by their loyalty to the specific groups they identify with to use the Force purely to advance the glory of their group instead of the common (galactic) good.

Their contact with the Force would be outside of time-tested paths. They wouldn't be weighed down by the irritating restrictions of petty Jedi taboos. They'd be free of the drudgery of antiquated teachings and heavy-handed institutions or councils or elders. On religion surveys they'd check the box for "no affiliation". If asked for more details, they'd say that they're spiritual but not religious. If pestered what they're spiritual about, they'd say that they can sorta sense an invisible Force of benevolence when they reach out with their feelings. And they can lift rocks or janitorial tools through telekinesis.

I suppose that this is well-aimed at the current cultural context. My guess is that many would be open to seriously considering that informal laid-back Nons going back to the basics of transcendence would be an improvement from haughty, intrusive, inflexible, child-indoctrinating Jedi who oversee big budgets and vast initiatives in a mega-Temple. Organizations, religious or otherwise, are loathed for how they can be abused to empower terrible leaders and control the members.

That's not all. In some, this attitude also operates at a deeper philosophical level. They loathe committing fully to definite statements of their own beliefs. In the spiritual realm, and almost everywhere else, it's thought to be more acceptable for everyone to be on their separate individualized journeys. Clear and verifiable thinking is devalued. Or, worse, it's purposely shunned to ensure that no opinion can ever be viewed as more accurate than another. That's why it's optional to confidently ground one's abstract beliefs in concrete actions, facts, duties, etc.

I doubt I'm spoiling the movie by revealing that, in the end, it didn't overturn one of Star Wars' core parts. It only proposes and discussed the shocking concept of a complete handover from Jedi to Nons. Nevertheless, it shows the pluses and minuses that stand out to me when I listen to the mushy words of the spiritual but not religious. If they're always able to think whatever they wish about "spirituality", then the odds are excellent that they're merely imagining a fluid external "cause" that they fill with their wholly subjective experiences. By its nature this phantom cause couldn't have an innate form or shape to take into account. But if they object to this impolite characterization and insist that their spooky spirit is as real as the Force is within the Star Wars fictional universe, then why does It exist by vaguer rules than every other real thing? Unlike those other real things, why can't they or anyone speak as conclusively about It in ways that are compatible with neutral confirmation...or disproof?