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Geeks, falsification, and optimism
Posted by Mike Sugarbaker at 6:16 pm on 12/15/2004
Over the last year or two of political madness, I noticed a codeword that didn’t seem to get a lot of attention - “optimism.” For a while there, the right liked very much to frame those opposed to the war as “pessimists” and the president as an “optimist.” This is effective for obvious reasons, and it has the equally obvious (and just as clearly ineffective) rejoinder that the right’s definition of optimism often seems to be, “plug your ears and go LA LA LA LA LA.” But in the course of my these-days-casual investigations into geek theory, I noticed something that might run a little deeper.
It turns out that most people are apparently not so good at thinking through how their own ideas will fail - checking themselves for weaknesses. This process of auditing one’s own ideas for mistakes and hidden consequences is called falsification. Who is good at it, you ask? Well, here’s one example: chess masters (that paper is a PDF, I’m afraid). Chess adepts have been shown, in the linked study, to do what they do not just by generating ideas, but by generating them and shooting them down.
I was interested in this in a geek-theory context for two reasons: 1) computer programmers, game designers, and the like do a lot of falsification in the course of their design work, and 2) anyone who’s afraid to talk to their crush is doing too much of it. Now, as I said, I’m trying to give geek theory less of my attention these days, and these days, I’m also increasingly optimistic. Looking for facts that confirm your hopes, rather than focusing on those that confirm your fears, is clearly a good strategy on the whole if you want to meet girls, lose weight, and be successful at parties. It may be a good strategy for winning wars, if all other things are equal.
But I’d like us to think about this word in our PR-addled political context for a minute. I think the folks who do tactical language for the Bush administration want to link people who have reasonable misgivings about the war with our feelings about other people who predict defeat. Now, if you can see anything at all in my computer-programmers-and-crushes connections above, you can imagine that some others of us have also formed these connections, if only subconsciously. In fact, probably more often subconsciously. When we are feeling one way about something and someone else is feeling another, our negative reaction is instinctual. And I mean that literally; check Drs. Lewis, Amini, and Lannon’s quite readable A General Theory of Love for the complete evolutionary case. (I also found an interesting link, evolutionarily speaking, suggesting that our bodies don’t deal well with too much introspection, that close emotional cousin to falsification. The popular teens aren’t really ever the ones that have LiveJournals, are they? I might be imagining that, but I bet I’m not the only one.)
So, speaking in very broad strokes (as successful politicians do), what else do you associate with people who are awfully good at finding problems with things? Well, if you’re me, or maybe just if you’ve read Searching for Bobby Fischer (to get back to our falsifying friends, the chess heads), here are a few: Misanthropic. Irritable. Not terribly rich social skills. Overfocus on abstract topics that don’t connect with reality. Unsuccessful, arrogant, unlikeable.
This is a brutishly powerful frame to tar someone with. It doesn’t use the instinctual reaction against someone who’s weak, or effeminate (they have other ways of implying that one, like “flip-flopper”), but rather the reaction against people who are simply off. In a town like D.C., where “geek” is spelled “wonk,” it stands to reason that an administration that has, if reports from veterans are to be believed, no policy division whatsoever would draw this sort of target on the opposition’s back.
But I wonder. I wonder if we might, with enough language research, be able to put the word “wonk” back where it was during the Clinton administration, at the same time that “geek” first became a badge of pride.
Or better yet, replace “optimist” and “pessimist” with something more like “fantasist” and “realist.” I’ve come to believe that any sort of effective liberal language is going to take 30 or 40 years to get out there, but if we really organize ourselves around it inside, I think we could tie the notion of a strong, resilient morality to a clear-eyed vision of what will work.
Here’s hoping we’re still on the planet by then. Peace on Earth.
December 22nd, 2004 at 5:15 pm
Are chessplayers inherently pessimistic?
From a discussion on optimism, pessimism and the process of falsification:
It turns out that most people are apparently not so good at thinking through how their own ideas will fail - checking themselves for weaknesses.
January 8th, 2005 at 8:01 am
teach me how to speek
January 10th, 2005 at 3:56 pm
Can I teach you how to spell instead?
January 31st, 2007 at 4:55 am
Are chessplayers inherently pessimistic?
From a discussion on optimism, pessimism and the process of falsification : It turns out that most people