For your amusement…

I read this with interest, without much to say; then, yesterday, I read ‘Idea 7’ on this post at Enterprise Resilience Management Blog:

7. Living With Continuous Partial Attention… Stone argues that personal bandwidth is not up to the task and, as a result, a backlash to continuous partial attention has already started. She also worries that information overload will burn people out much more quickly as they strain to keep up with an increasing number of information sources all screaming for attention.

Sounds like static in the so-called open-source environment…

Arherring,

There are other considerations inspired by this passage besides the one about obsessive dread or confusion. The speaker admits to being driven to discover the truth behind the truths. This is potentially good, if it leads to a better understanding of the world; but this is also potentially defeating, if the speaker is being driven to ‘choose’ between competing conspiracy theories and is merely trying to find more evidence to support one over many. If evidence could be arranged so that one conspiracy/reality became clearer (transparent) during his search while the others faded back into the static, the speaker would be committed to following whatever paths his newfound understanding suggested…

the search for the central fact

Not the truth behind the truths but the central fact is what they are after. As I see it facts need context or they are useless data and not truths at all.

Looking at that from a 5GW strategy standpoint, if you can induce your opponent to see the central truth (or what they will believe is the central truth as I am constantly amazed by the ability of people to justify and rationalize virtually anything to themselves as long as it fits into their preconcieved paradigms) by presenting the facts from a particular viewpoint or in a particular context it may be significant to defining the battlefield / preparing the battlespace under 5GW terms.

or what they will believe is the central truth as I am constantly amazed by the ability of people to justify and rationalize virtually anything to themselves as long as it fits into their preconcieved paradigms

I wonder if this fits everyone. It would seem that what isn’t utterly confusing must find its place amidst preconceived notions.

On a side note, Ori Brafman, co-author of The Starfish and the Spider, linked Phatic Communion after a search of his name led him to my post there on Pyrrhonism. Maybe a Pyrrhonist could withhold judgement if he’s not as impatient as the speaker in your excerpt? But I mention Brafman now, because he made a related comment to yours, about justifying and rationalizing, in an earlier post on his site (still on the main page) called “Congruence”:

What’s even more interesting about incongruity, is that when we happen upon something incongruent, we mold the facts to fit our perception of the world. For example, if we catch our favorite employee napping on the job, rather than face the incongruity (“I thought this guy was amazing, but here he is slacking off”) we’re likely to invent a story: “He must be working SO hard that he just fell asleep from exhaustion….”

That’s the thing about the world, we see what we want to see. And when the evidence flies in the face of our perception — well, we just bend it to fit how we see the world.

Well, how’s this comment for finding incongruence/congruence? Heh. My preconceived notions may lead me to postulate the possibility that congruence, which descends from the Latin for “to agree”, and really, “to fall / rush” + “with”, might cause a group of enemies to collapse together, if handled right, or to rush down the wrong path together!