31 The Tyranny of “Clear” Thinking
Jess Mitchell
A Reflection on the Ways we Train our Brains: An Ode to our Over-fondness for Data
We live in a complex world, made up of complex systems we often don’t understand (and sometimes cannot even fathom). The complex systems that baffle us aren’t just the global ones like space exploration, global economic dynamics, weather science, or our city’s trash and recycling programs. We are equally baffled by more ‘local’ systems like the digital parking meter, the wifi router in our home, the smoke alarm in our house (How can I turn it off?! What is it trying to tell me?! Why won’t it work?! Did it work? Did it store my information for later? Did it put me at risk?). As the line between complex global and local collapses, our bafflement has deep consequences. As Donella Meadows “Thinking in Systems” tells us,
“there are no separate systems. The world is a continuum. Where to draw a boundary around a system depends on the purpose of the discussion — the questions we want to ask.”
The complexity is dizzying and the expectation that we be able to use these, digital, well-intentioned ‘intuitive’ interfaces and affordances without hesitation, fear, or difficulty, is only increasing. We are an optimistic bunch though… we believe the next iPhone or Samsung Galaxy (or the not-yet-invented-thing) will make sense of online banking and password storage, FINALLY. The next new thing will help users understand their privacy rights and risks in a way that gives them agency and puts them in charge! The next technological innovation will fundamentally transform education, business, and life! <sigh> It’s exhausting. It’s illusive. It’s always just-out-of-reach (hint, we keep moving the goalpost, thus perpetually making it out of reach). We keep running and we call it innovation and progress. As Shawn Achor says, “we’ve pushed happiness [success, completion] over the cognitive horizon,” so it will always be just out of reach. Why are we running? What are we running from? What are we running toward?
The knowable as Hot Cocoa (mm mm Predictability)
We like certainty, completeness, simplicity, we like knowing. We approach the world with a transactional, checkbook accounting expectation — if we document our inputs and note our outputs, it should all reconcile neatly in the end. If I eat a healthy diet, if I exercise, if I sleep well, if I do all the things the doctor recommended, then I should know my outcome will be good health. If I memorize all the things the professor said, then I should get a good score on the exam.
As a result, our institutions have adapted to contend with this fundamentally flawed, oversimplified causal thinking. For example, medicine contends with a patient that thinks a visit to the doctor should result in a tangible something, a new prescription, a referral, a plan; and education contends with a student who thinks that if she does everything the syllabus says, then she deserves an A (she’s done her part of