Why Mice Sometimes Fail to Communicate
Several decades ago I was invited to develop and teach a course to some of my peers in the infrastructure of the corporation that hired all of us. I’ve lost the outline and all the notes I prepared for that course, but I do recall one thing, a little test I wrote and used to open the course. Well, no, I don’t remember all the questions, but they weren’t as important as the lesson taught by the test results.
As such thing go, the questions were difficult, not so much individually as collectively. They were what has come to be called “trivia,” but crossed many different areas of human knowledge, so many, in fact, that it would have been miraculous if any one person answered them all correctly. There were 20 questions, each of which could be answered in one or two words. They were questions dealing with matters of fact, things like Voltaire’s real name, Babe Ruth’s birthplace, and the capital city of Estonia.
I instructed the pupils to nunber the questions, and to mark an X by the number of any question they could not answer with absolute assurance that they were right. Then I asked the questions.
After all the questions were read and answered I asked the pupils to pass their papers to anyone other than the person sitting on either side of them so they could be graded. After that was done, I told the group to circle the number of any question that was answered incorrectly with anything other than an X, and to underline the number of any question that was not correctly answered but was marked with an X. The correct answers were to be left unmarked in any way.
After all the correct answers were read, and all the marks applied (presumably correctly), I asked the people making the marks to pass the papers to anyone other than the person who gave them the paper. This instruction resulted in a bit of a hubbub, since many of the markers did not recall who had given them the paper, but eventually that part of the exercise was completed.
I then proceeded to read the answers again, asking the persons holding the test papers to raise their hands if the answer on the paper was correct. Note well: at least one hand was raised for every question; someone in the room had known the answer to every question. I then asked anyone holding a paper that had all the answers right to raise their hand. No hands were raised. I then asked for a show of hands for any who had 19 right. (No hands.) Then 18, 17, 16, and finally 15, at which time three or four hands were raised.
I then asked if any questions on the paper were answered incorrectly with something other than an X. Almost half the hands were raised. We could have spent that entire first session on that mistake alone, people wrongly believing they knew the answer, but the lesson derived from that part of the test sank in fairly easily. It was obvious to all that we might occasionally believe very strongly that we know a fact, and still be wrong.
The part of the lesson that provided the most value to the group was the fact that the collective knowledge of the group was much greater than the individual knowledge of any one member. The course was to be about the reason why, in real life situations, we often are unable to realize the full value of the collective knowledge we had just demonstrated. The remainder of the entire course involved the students in suggesting answers to that problem and working out among themselves those suggestions that seemed more nearly on target.
I must confess that while preparing the course materials I had not been caused to see as clearly as I did after the course that there is a major difference between the sorts of knowing measured by the test questions and the kinds of knowing that create true barriers to human communication. It is one thing to know that Voltaire’s name was François Arouet, and quite another to agree that Voltaire’s opinions were correct. If I had, for example, asked people to answer “yes” or “no” whether they agreed with Voltaire’s opinion that Pope Julius II was a war criminal, no matter which answer was given, it would be correct. Those who agreed with Voltaire would truthfully answer “yes,” and the others would answer, just as truthfully, “no.” Consequently, any communication on religious matters between those answering differently might be expected to be strewn with difficulties.
Concrete evidence would hardly resolve the problem. Julius II was certainly a warrior pope, but it could be argued (by the “no” voters) that some wars are righteous wars, or that even if the war was not a just war, that fact alone would not make the pope a criminal. Taken far enough, the disagreement might metastasize to include the equally argumentative definitions of “war criminal, ”just war,” and any other ambiguous word or phrase that might have crept into the discussion. Matters of opinion give birth to increasingly tangled webs of meaning.
Last month, I blogged about the different meaning a Bedouin and an American might place on the word “freedom.” The Bedouin might think it stands for nothing more than the freedom to roam the desert without political inhibition of any sort. The American might think it’s nothing less than the freedom to have a voice in deciding the laws that will, in fact, inhibit individual freedom. The difference between the Bedouin and American definitions may not be quite night and day, but is significant enough to justify questioning whether an American ought to be trying to export “freedom” to people of Bedouin (or other foreign) persuasion. We and they may have vastly different understandings of what the word means.
The more I think about that problem the more convinced I become that bringing the world together into an enduring peace will take more than mere generations. It’s going to take something like a “second coming,” a new sort of messianic transformation of the way we understand the workings of the human mind. I don’t think it’s possible that all forms of knowing can ever become of the trivia sort, unquestionable matters of fact. The human mind doesn’t work like that. We’re individually geared to seek our own best interest, and a large part of that seeking involves forming and defending individual opinions about what is good for us and what is not. So far, no one has prescribed anything that comes close to satisfying a universally acknowledged set of principles to satisfy the needs of all people. The golden rule seemed like a good idea at the time, but it doesn’t take much imagination to see that the “others” may not want done to them what we may want down to ourselves.
Perhaps, the answer lies, not so much in knowing as in the method by which we come to know. We have, in the past, put more reliance on the method called “revelation” than upon the one called “reason.” I’m not altogether sure that reason is the answer, but we’ve got enough experience with revelation – three or four millennia – to conclude fairly well that it’s not.
But then, those who put their faith in revelation will insist that it has never been given a fair chance. Could be, but then neither has reason. Want proof? Look around.
As such thing go, the questions were difficult, not so much individually as collectively. They were what has come to be called “trivia,” but crossed many different areas of human knowledge, so many, in fact, that it would have been miraculous if any one person answered them all correctly. There were 20 questions, each of which could be answered in one or two words. They were questions dealing with matters of fact, things like Voltaire’s real name, Babe Ruth’s birthplace, and the capital city of Estonia.
I instructed the pupils to nunber the questions, and to mark an X by the number of any question they could not answer with absolute assurance that they were right. Then I asked the questions.
After all the questions were read and answered I asked the pupils to pass their papers to anyone other than the person sitting on either side of them so they could be graded. After that was done, I told the group to circle the number of any question that was answered incorrectly with anything other than an X, and to underline the number of any question that was not correctly answered but was marked with an X. The correct answers were to be left unmarked in any way.
After all the correct answers were read, and all the marks applied (presumably correctly), I asked the people making the marks to pass the papers to anyone other than the person who gave them the paper. This instruction resulted in a bit of a hubbub, since many of the markers did not recall who had given them the paper, but eventually that part of the exercise was completed.
I then proceeded to read the answers again, asking the persons holding the test papers to raise their hands if the answer on the paper was correct. Note well: at least one hand was raised for every question; someone in the room had known the answer to every question. I then asked anyone holding a paper that had all the answers right to raise their hand. No hands were raised. I then asked for a show of hands for any who had 19 right. (No hands.) Then 18, 17, 16, and finally 15, at which time three or four hands were raised.
I then asked if any questions on the paper were answered incorrectly with something other than an X. Almost half the hands were raised. We could have spent that entire first session on that mistake alone, people wrongly believing they knew the answer, but the lesson derived from that part of the test sank in fairly easily. It was obvious to all that we might occasionally believe very strongly that we know a fact, and still be wrong.
The part of the lesson that provided the most value to the group was the fact that the collective knowledge of the group was much greater than the individual knowledge of any one member. The course was to be about the reason why, in real life situations, we often are unable to realize the full value of the collective knowledge we had just demonstrated. The remainder of the entire course involved the students in suggesting answers to that problem and working out among themselves those suggestions that seemed more nearly on target.
I must confess that while preparing the course materials I had not been caused to see as clearly as I did after the course that there is a major difference between the sorts of knowing measured by the test questions and the kinds of knowing that create true barriers to human communication. It is one thing to know that Voltaire’s name was François Arouet, and quite another to agree that Voltaire’s opinions were correct. If I had, for example, asked people to answer “yes” or “no” whether they agreed with Voltaire’s opinion that Pope Julius II was a war criminal, no matter which answer was given, it would be correct. Those who agreed with Voltaire would truthfully answer “yes,” and the others would answer, just as truthfully, “no.” Consequently, any communication on religious matters between those answering differently might be expected to be strewn with difficulties.
Concrete evidence would hardly resolve the problem. Julius II was certainly a warrior pope, but it could be argued (by the “no” voters) that some wars are righteous wars, or that even if the war was not a just war, that fact alone would not make the pope a criminal. Taken far enough, the disagreement might metastasize to include the equally argumentative definitions of “war criminal, ”just war,” and any other ambiguous word or phrase that might have crept into the discussion. Matters of opinion give birth to increasingly tangled webs of meaning.
Last month, I blogged about the different meaning a Bedouin and an American might place on the word “freedom.” The Bedouin might think it stands for nothing more than the freedom to roam the desert without political inhibition of any sort. The American might think it’s nothing less than the freedom to have a voice in deciding the laws that will, in fact, inhibit individual freedom. The difference between the Bedouin and American definitions may not be quite night and day, but is significant enough to justify questioning whether an American ought to be trying to export “freedom” to people of Bedouin (or other foreign) persuasion. We and they may have vastly different understandings of what the word means.
The more I think about that problem the more convinced I become that bringing the world together into an enduring peace will take more than mere generations. It’s going to take something like a “second coming,” a new sort of messianic transformation of the way we understand the workings of the human mind. I don’t think it’s possible that all forms of knowing can ever become of the trivia sort, unquestionable matters of fact. The human mind doesn’t work like that. We’re individually geared to seek our own best interest, and a large part of that seeking involves forming and defending individual opinions about what is good for us and what is not. So far, no one has prescribed anything that comes close to satisfying a universally acknowledged set of principles to satisfy the needs of all people. The golden rule seemed like a good idea at the time, but it doesn’t take much imagination to see that the “others” may not want done to them what we may want down to ourselves.
Perhaps, the answer lies, not so much in knowing as in the method by which we come to know. We have, in the past, put more reliance on the method called “revelation” than upon the one called “reason.” I’m not altogether sure that reason is the answer, but we’ve got enough experience with revelation – three or four millennia – to conclude fairly well that it’s not.
But then, those who put their faith in revelation will insist that it has never been given a fair chance. Could be, but then neither has reason. Want proof? Look around.
posted by Benedict S. at 3:47 PM
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