Knowing our measure 1

Lakefield, Qué, July 10, 2021

Greek traveler and geographer Pausanias (ca 110–ca 180 AD) wrote that the Greek aphorism "Know thyself" was the first of three maxims inscribed in the forecourt of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi. The other two: "Nothing to excess" and "Surety brings ruin." Over time, literature has attributed various meanings to that first maxim as we know it today. From early ancient Greek the phrase has been translated "Know thy measure." 3

Mosaic excavated in the convent of San Gregorio in Rome. (Picture.) 4

Some time ago, I began taking an on-line course in critical thinking.* The professor recalled the ancient Greek philosopher Socrates' aphorism "The unexamined life is not worth living" and modelled on it his own: "The unexamined thought is not worth thinking." Both of them polished overstatements, no doubt, but then my mind wandered to the late 1930s, to a time in my early teens when local deliveries were mostly made by handcarts, or bicycles with a basket hanging from the steering bar, or some horse-drawn carriages. I remember flocks of starlings alighting on steaming horse manure, pecking away. A boy enlightened me, "They still find grains of nourishment in every pile of horseshit." 5

Our biased selves 6

The first six lectures were about scientists' attempts at unravelling human biases. Consider them tools in our evolutionary survival kit. At an early stage of the evolution of our brain it adapted strategies for survival that included fear, lust, hunger, anxiety, disgust, happiness, and sadness—strategies that we by-and-large share with our fellow mammals. Our neocortex, especially the frontal lobe, can modify and control earlier evolved, more primitive parts of the brain. Climbing the evolutionary ladder our psychological needs began to include feeling safe, feeling loved, having self-esteem, and experiebing self-actualization.* Meeting our psychological needs makes us feel good, which is another emotion. A basic punishment-and-reward system is built into the hardwiring of our brain. When we do something that is likely to be evolutionarily advantageous, we feel good—we get a shot of dopamine to our reward centres. 7

The desire for self-esteem involves avoiding social embarrassment or stigma. We always want to make our behavior and beliefs seem consistent to others. We resist admitting error. 8

A desire for control, or at least for the illusion or sense of control, is another need that motivates us. We don't like to feel as if we are victims of a capricious universe, to feel helpless in the face of unseen forces or randomness. We like to think that we exert some control over ourselves, over the events that happen to us, and over our environment. That desire for control tends to develop beliefs that if we engage in a certain activity, it will protect us or enable us to succeed. Superstitious practices give us the illusion that we can exert some control over otherwise random events. 9

Another consequence is a desire for simplicity because the simpler things are, the more control we can have over them. Hence, we are motivated to oversimplify things. Stereotyping enables us to boil down a complicated set of data into some simple rule, but accepting as reality such oversimplified versions of reality leads to bigoted mindsets. 10

Psychologists have looked for ways to influence people's behavior; think of political campaigns and the world of commerce (selling goods and services, leasing ourselves). Our biases make it difficult to convince people with rational arguments. More effective is adressing people's emotions directly. One technique is social norming; for example, by telling people that other people don't drink and drive or that nine out of ten film stars use Lux soap. 11

Along with emotions playing havoc with critical reasoning, we do have have some inherent sense of logic and an inherent sense of justice. Indeed, these traits are have been found among other animals as well. 12

We want meaning in our lives and the universe at large. Meaning gives us a sense of purpose. We want to believe that things happen for a reason although reality is probably closer to events just happening. I already harbored thoughts along this line, but it is the professor teaching the course who said that, And so ... then what? 13

But, forgive me, I am human and I perceive "events just happening" as events only within human reality which would be embedded in a wider reality. That wider reality, to be sure, I do not perceive as of a spiritual or religious kind and is not likely to ever be comprehended, not even by mathematics or any form of language humans may come up with. The following paragraphs will be down to earth, so to speak. How could they be otherwise? 14

Consequences 15

Language, a many-splendored thing .... It can inform, exhort, threaten, convince, mislead, and so on; all purposefully or accidentally. Newly borns learn by surmizing within their inner punish-and-reward system as well as (by one school of thought) some inner sense of, say, grammar that are receptive to their environment. They surmize what their environments consider good and bad behaviors. But what is laudable in one environment may be frowned upon in another, all of which leaves us in the murky domains of "free will" and "justice." 16

Consider this declaration from the Canada Evidence Act (1985): "I solemnly affirm that the evidence to be given by me shall be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth." In view of what I learned about human biases this makes no sense and lawyers know that. They know that eyewitness accounts may be, if not usually are, unreliable. As for the "whole truth," it is subject of assertions made by the supposedly unbiased procecution and defense. Am I telling you anything new here? Not likely. 17