“You want me to engage in a consensual hallucination.”
This is what my friend said to one of his clients as they tried to persuade him to “fudge” the data.
My friend is a VP of Analytics for a consulting company that works with large organizations. His role is to make sure that their data and analytics systems are built in a way that provide highly accurate information. This information is really important because it helps those organizations make critical decisions.
The problem arises when – “somehow” – the information does not support the decision that someone wants to make (or continue making).
In this case, a leader in the customer organization that he was serving wanted to make a strategic change. And the data did not support that decision. But the leader believed that if my friend could manipulate the data (i.e. manipulate the facts), then that leader could use the manipulated data to create new information. Information that justified what they already wanted to do.
It would be nice to say that only unethical business people engage in this kind of behavior.
Unfortunately, we only need to look in the mirror to see how that sort of manipulation happens to us.
Just the other day, I was watching a comedian on Netflix who gave a fascinating (and hilarious) description of something that historically happened. I was shocked by some of the information and was ready to believe it because it fit the narrative I already had in my mind about a certain politician. And did I say it was funny? I had all kinds of warm, giggling emotions attached to my newfound insight.
But then I reminded myself to take 2 minutes to verify the facts before I started telling that funny story to other people. And I found that the comedian was only telling a half-truth. Barely.
And it dawned on me. I just engaged in consensual hallucination.
It was THAT easy. And in a simple way, it illustrates how selection bias grows quickly from fueling our entertainment to altering belief systems.
Whether it’s the politicians we want to criticize, the news feeds we select to read, or even the sermons we choose to reinforce our personal version of faith, every human on this planet operates with a form of selection bias.
We all pick and choose what slice of truth to base our lives on.
But I am increasingly concerned with how society has gone one step further.
Instead of simply choosing a small part of the data set to reinforce what we already want to do, we have to battle unrelenting voices that just make the data up. Fake news is a problem because, well, so many people participate in it.
However, we are now in a state that wants to challenge all competing facts. To attack them. Because they don’t fit the narrative we have made about the world we live in.
Why is this so important? For starters, our narrative of the world around us is a major anchor to how we live our daily lives. If the world is understood, we feel stable enough to keep going. But for many, if the world is not understood, that generates the unknown. That generates risk. And risk is perceived as BAD because it means we are not in control.
Which leads me to this solemn thought: Are we so addicted to the concept of control – at a societal level – that we cannot even tolerate data that sits outside of our expectations?
Does it somehow burst our collective hallucination?
I have written in the past how the phrase “information is control” is an utter myth. I believe that the control addicts amongst us seek information to (a) shrink our sense of helplessness to a level that we can accept and/or (b) validate the helplessness we are feeling so that we can justify the fear-based decision that our amygdala is screaming for us to make.
Sigh.
May I suggest that we do something RIGHT NOW to change the cycle?
May I offer that we hold off on forming an opinion until we understand whatever opposite view we are struggling against? That we pause long enough to actually allow our minds to be comfortable not “knowing the answer” until we can act with a kind of compassionate confidence (even if that means that we conclude there is no “answer”)?
Does this still feed our possible addiction to information? Yes. Yes, it does. But it starts to walk us back from the ledge of immediate outrage and fear. It slows down our instinctual rush to action. And generates dialogue. Generates empathy. Generates calm.
This, I truly and genuinely hope, will take us to a better version of ourselves.
Holomua. Onward and upward.
All the best ~ Tim
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