Our limited physical bodies do not allow us to perceive reality completely objectively. Even just looking at a pencil on your desk, you're "seeing" rays of light reflected off that pencil. Those rays pass through a nonempty medium of air between the desk and your eyes, where tiny particles of dust swirl around. Finally the rays hit your eyes, where they meet a mishmash of tiny veins and tiny occular imperfections. Information about the rays is transmitted across nerves toward your brain, where various algorithms are used to filter and parse the data. There are many steps along the way, many opportunities for the pencil's information to be obscured. This is repeated an incomprehendable, mind-shattering number of times per second.
If you could actually look at the raw, un-parsed, un-filtered, un-processed data that you receive through your senses, it would be a horrific, meaningless soup of numbers. One second worth of this data-soup would probably take more hard-drive space than an uncompressed high-quality two-hour movie file. And even that's just the data which actually reaches you, after its treacherous journey through the swirling atmosphere of your environment.
Since objective reality is impossible to see with absolute precision, it's silly to be so obsessed with approximating it in the way we think of the world. When you think of your mother, do you think of a bazillion tiny atoms spinning furiously around eachother? Because according to objective science, that's what your mother is (that, or quantum particles, or whatever). Of course, you think of her as a "person", whatever that is.
It's impractical to think of your mom in terms of a bunch of atoms and chemicals and ingredients. For all practical intents and purposes, it's more practical to think of her as a "person".
That's an example of a very low-level model of reality. An example of a higher-level model of reality is Newtonian Physics. Newtonian Physics, the physics used by engineers and architects, fails to take into account the Theory of Relativity, and so it's technically wrong. But the error is so small that it only really matters to astronomers or theoretical physicists. Conversely, if you asked some engineers to account for Theory of Relativity while computing an elevator's maximum capacity, it would put a massive unnecessary burden on them, without really improving the accuracy of their calculations.
Another example of a model of reality: grammar. A grammarian creates grammar rules not to define a language, but to approximate the language. Thus, if a native speaker "violates" the rules of grammar, it's not the speaker who's wrong, it's the grammar which is wrong. But, grammarians know they're only approximating the language, and that it's futile to try to get the approximation "perfect" (even if they could, the language would change within a week). The grammar is technically wrong, but it's still useful for studying the language from a bird's eye view: for example, to compare one language with another. It's also useful for teaching the language to a non-native speaker.
Since we have to use some kind of model of reality anyway (you don't really think of your mom as a bunch of atoms), we should acknowledge this fact and crank as much power out of it as we can. In other words, we may as well choose whichever model is most useful.
For example, generally speaking, a salesman will do better if he approaches more potential buyers. Therefore, it's in the salesman's best interest to assume everyone wants to buy his product. This is very far from objectively true, but by making the assumption-- even though it's dead wrong-- it can make the man a better salesman.
My Mirror Model of Social Interaction states that whatever you feel in a social situation, the other person will feel the same-- they'll "mirror" it. Thus if you feel happy, they'll feel happy, if you feel miserable, they'll feel miserable. Obviously this is very far from the truth, however, it's useful. If, for example, you want someone to be happy, then most likely they also want you to be happy, so the best way for you to make them happy is to be happy yourself.
People learning a second language should discard the commonly held belief that "learning a second language fluently is impossible after puberty". This belief may or may not be scientifically true (it's a very complicated question), but even if it is true, what good will it do to the language learner? It'll just discourage them. Far better to believe that languages can be learned at any age. Even if it's not true, it'll be much more encouraging, which will help with the language learning to whatever extent it is possible.
There are also self-fulfilling prophecies. People who have higher self-esteem are generally more attractive, and attractiveness is very important for self-esteem, so in a very real sense, people who believe they are more attractive, are more attractive. The belief creates the reality. Someone who believes he's terrible at math, can never hope to get much good, even though realistically speaking it's very unlikely he actually has some brain defect that objectively makes him bad at math. (Math is not magical or special, and is objectively no "harder" to learn than learning how to drive)
Religion, philosophy, and political ideology also filter our view through models of reality. In the U.S., a hardcore Democrat will actually see politics differently than a hardcore Republican. As in, they can both read the same news article and come away with very different conclusions. Certainly, a True Christian sees reality through a different lens than an atheist.
What models of reality do you see through? How could you change your models of reality to make them more useful?
Here are some other articles I wrote. My model of reality says these articles are gonna change your life!
Unconditional Thanksgiving
Introduction To Lucid Dreaming
The Social Rule Of Assumptions
Words Break My Bones, But Sticks And Stones Won't Hurt Me
The Golden Rule Of Language Learning
If you could actually look at the raw, un-parsed, un-filtered, un-processed data that you receive through your senses, it would be a horrific, meaningless soup of numbers. One second worth of this data-soup would probably take more hard-drive space than an uncompressed high-quality two-hour movie file. And even that's just the data which actually reaches you, after its treacherous journey through the swirling atmosphere of your environment.
Since objective reality is impossible to see with absolute precision, it's silly to be so obsessed with approximating it in the way we think of the world. When you think of your mother, do you think of a bazillion tiny atoms spinning furiously around eachother? Because according to objective science, that's what your mother is (that, or quantum particles, or whatever). Of course, you think of her as a "person", whatever that is.
It's impractical to think of your mom in terms of a bunch of atoms and chemicals and ingredients. For all practical intents and purposes, it's more practical to think of her as a "person".
That's an example of a very low-level model of reality. An example of a higher-level model of reality is Newtonian Physics. Newtonian Physics, the physics used by engineers and architects, fails to take into account the Theory of Relativity, and so it's technically wrong. But the error is so small that it only really matters to astronomers or theoretical physicists. Conversely, if you asked some engineers to account for Theory of Relativity while computing an elevator's maximum capacity, it would put a massive unnecessary burden on them, without really improving the accuracy of their calculations.
Another example of a model of reality: grammar. A grammarian creates grammar rules not to define a language, but to approximate the language. Thus, if a native speaker "violates" the rules of grammar, it's not the speaker who's wrong, it's the grammar which is wrong. But, grammarians know they're only approximating the language, and that it's futile to try to get the approximation "perfect" (even if they could, the language would change within a week). The grammar is technically wrong, but it's still useful for studying the language from a bird's eye view: for example, to compare one language with another. It's also useful for teaching the language to a non-native speaker.
Since we have to use some kind of model of reality anyway (you don't really think of your mom as a bunch of atoms), we should acknowledge this fact and crank as much power out of it as we can. In other words, we may as well choose whichever model is most useful.
For example, generally speaking, a salesman will do better if he approaches more potential buyers. Therefore, it's in the salesman's best interest to assume everyone wants to buy his product. This is very far from objectively true, but by making the assumption-- even though it's dead wrong-- it can make the man a better salesman.
My Mirror Model of Social Interaction states that whatever you feel in a social situation, the other person will feel the same-- they'll "mirror" it. Thus if you feel happy, they'll feel happy, if you feel miserable, they'll feel miserable. Obviously this is very far from the truth, however, it's useful. If, for example, you want someone to be happy, then most likely they also want you to be happy, so the best way for you to make them happy is to be happy yourself.
People learning a second language should discard the commonly held belief that "learning a second language fluently is impossible after puberty". This belief may or may not be scientifically true (it's a very complicated question), but even if it is true, what good will it do to the language learner? It'll just discourage them. Far better to believe that languages can be learned at any age. Even if it's not true, it'll be much more encouraging, which will help with the language learning to whatever extent it is possible.
There are also self-fulfilling prophecies. People who have higher self-esteem are generally more attractive, and attractiveness is very important for self-esteem, so in a very real sense, people who believe they are more attractive, are more attractive. The belief creates the reality. Someone who believes he's terrible at math, can never hope to get much good, even though realistically speaking it's very unlikely he actually has some brain defect that objectively makes him bad at math. (Math is not magical or special, and is objectively no "harder" to learn than learning how to drive)
Religion, philosophy, and political ideology also filter our view through models of reality. In the U.S., a hardcore Democrat will actually see politics differently than a hardcore Republican. As in, they can both read the same news article and come away with very different conclusions. Certainly, a True Christian sees reality through a different lens than an atheist.
What models of reality do you see through? How could you change your models of reality to make them more useful?
Here are some other articles I wrote. My model of reality says these articles are gonna change your life!
Unconditional Thanksgiving
Introduction To Lucid Dreaming
The Social Rule Of Assumptions
Words Break My Bones, But Sticks And Stones Won't Hurt Me
The Golden Rule Of Language Learning
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