Thursday, February 22, 2007
Stuff
Perception. My greatest example of it is color - we learn to identify colors by the names we give them - different wave lengths of light causing reactions within the human eye. But how does the brain interpret these colors, how do we perceive them? And by that, I mean who's to say that the color my brain interprets as "red" is the same "red" you see? How would we know? If we reversed the number system and say 9 means 0 and 0 means 9, and do the same with 1-8, 2-7, 3-6 and 4-5, taught it to our youth and somehow reversed everyone's vocabulary... ten thousand years down the road, you would add 8 and 8 and get 5... 1984 had the same thing going on with a twist - if you can't conceive of such a notion as treason, then how can you commit it? If language denies you the ability to express a concept, then can you perceive the concept to exist?
Now that your heads are exploding, let me return to something that frustrates me more - how we perceive each other, our actions, our motivations.
I mean it happens - people misunderstand, misinterpret. Part of being human is making mistakes, right? We just have to accept that and learn to live with the ones we make... and to learn from them whenever we can.
Why do people do things? We can only assume they have some kind of motivation - if its completely random, then there's no explanation. Learning what that motivation is is hard because we can't always remove ourselves from our own bias and our own experience/personality. I'm sure psychologists have their models and their theories - which apply to most aspects of the majority of people in society, I'm sure. But every theory has its exception - and the exceptions aren't single people, they're aspects of people. Some people may fit perfectly into a theory - some may fit not at all. More likely are the people who fit some aspects of a theory and completely trash other aspects.
But one of fundamentals, I believe, is that we can't apply our own experiences to other people - we can't expect that because we'd behave in a certain way, they will too. After all, people are basically unique - why shouldn't the way they react in a given situation be unique from other people's reactions as well?
How can we judge, for example, the amount of time it takes before a person gets over a breakup? A person who's been through a number of them knows that its not the end of the road. A person who didn't develop an emotional attachment will probably be better with it. A person who has general empathy may feel the other person's pain. A person who was really deep into it may be severely affected by it. Which is right? They are all right - depending on the person, their experiences. People don't grow overnight, and while it might be frustrating for us to sit by and watch somebody go through the steps, it is (most of the time) a required process.
And now... I need to write to myself for awhile. G'night all
- Rob
Now that your heads are exploding, let me return to something that frustrates me more - how we perceive each other, our actions, our motivations.
I mean it happens - people misunderstand, misinterpret. Part of being human is making mistakes, right? We just have to accept that and learn to live with the ones we make... and to learn from them whenever we can.
Why do people do things? We can only assume they have some kind of motivation - if its completely random, then there's no explanation. Learning what that motivation is is hard because we can't always remove ourselves from our own bias and our own experience/personality. I'm sure psychologists have their models and their theories - which apply to most aspects of the majority of people in society, I'm sure. But every theory has its exception - and the exceptions aren't single people, they're aspects of people. Some people may fit perfectly into a theory - some may fit not at all. More likely are the people who fit some aspects of a theory and completely trash other aspects.
But one of fundamentals, I believe, is that we can't apply our own experiences to other people - we can't expect that because we'd behave in a certain way, they will too. After all, people are basically unique - why shouldn't the way they react in a given situation be unique from other people's reactions as well?
How can we judge, for example, the amount of time it takes before a person gets over a breakup? A person who's been through a number of them knows that its not the end of the road. A person who didn't develop an emotional attachment will probably be better with it. A person who has general empathy may feel the other person's pain. A person who was really deep into it may be severely affected by it. Which is right? They are all right - depending on the person, their experiences. People don't grow overnight, and while it might be frustrating for us to sit by and watch somebody go through the steps, it is (most of the time) a required process.
And now... I need to write to myself for awhile. G'night all
- Rob
// posted by Dep @ 10:24:00 p.m.
