Causes are causes. Effects are effects. Causes are reasons. Effects are results. Results are caused by reasons. Everything happens for a reason. Logic is fun.
It’s almost always possible to attribute results to reasons. No one is disputing that when you got a flat tire, the pothole you hit was the reason. No one is disputing that when you got food poisoning, the poisonous food you ate was the reason. I’m well aware of how obvious this post has been so far. I’ve even written about causes and effects before (http://www.preachingsense.com/2016/09/why-things-happen-4-realms-of.html?m=0http). So let’s make this more interesting.
“Everything happens for a reason” is true in the sense that I just described. When people generally use this expression, though, this is not at all what they are talking about.
“You have to trust in something - your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever.” -Steve Jobs
Steve Jobs was a smart guy, and many people love this quote. But the quote doesn’t really have any validity. Why do you have to blindly trust in something supernatural? I suppose it could feel nice to do that. It probably does feel nice. It’s comforting. But why does that mean you have to do it?
People like comfort. They like narratives. They like when things make sense. I’m a person! I also like when things make sense! Who wouldn’t like this? Perhaps no one. But trying to make sense out of something senseless is an effort that definitely lacks common sense. Not everything has to make sense.
And now a break from annoying wordplay. And a brief return to the sciency stuff:
“The narrative fallacy addresses our limited ability to look at sequences of facts without weaving an explanation into them, or, equivalently, forcing a logical link, an arrow of relationship upon them. Explanations bind facts together. They make them all the more easily remembered; they help them make more sense. Where this propensity can go wrong is when it increases our impression of understanding.” -Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan
Understanding is good. People like to understand! But false understanding is bad. And our brains are good at giving false impressions of understanding.
The narrative fallacy is about the false impressions of understanding, and it contributes to the misleading belief that everything always happens for a predetermined reason. It implies a presumption that there is some natural order to things in the universe, or some kind of karma that knows all of our thoughts and actions and alters the outcomes based on those thoughts and actions.
Our brains like to link things together and to make stories out of sequences of events that aren’t actually bound by stories. It's a trap we all fall into. The narrative fallacy works to make us feel better about things that happen in our lives, because it provides explanations of why things have occurred, giving us a greater sense of control. Accepting that most things are largely influenced by unknown or random forces is a difficult thing for most people. To accept randomness and the unknown is to accept that we are not in control of the world.
This may all seem incredibly theoretical and useless, but it’s not. I promise. Let’s talk about why it’s not:
We’ve established that failing to account for randomness is human nature, and it makes perfect sense that human brains are distorted in this way. Our minds are able to perform day to day functions as effectively as they do largely because they employ pattern recognition, which consists of subconsciously matching external stimuli with internal memories. Past knowledge provides a baseline for what is currently happening in front of us and in most cases this is extremely useful. We have the amazing ability to piece together fragments of sight as clear pictures, even when our eyes miss part of an image. When a blur flashes in front of us too fast to see, it’s possible for our eyes to “figure out” what we saw. This is because memory helps to fill in the missing parts of a picture. Our memories help to form images in a pattern-like way, and this makes eyesight more effective.
Another example of useful pattern recognition is our ability to read and comprehend sentences. We can remember sequences of words if they are formed into sentences, but it’s more difficult if the words are jumbled and don’t create coherent thoughts. Sentence flows are essentially patterns that make words much easier to recollect. This is also why it’s so easy to recite the alphabet but fairly difficult to do it in reverse. The alphabet song is a pattern that we recognize, but the reverse alphabet is not.
At this point in the argument, you may be wondering why this concept of pattern recognition is a problem. Our brains are simply making things easier for us, right? Well, not exactly. For one, the assistance our mind gives us in remembering things can sometimes be flat out wrong. If we are relying on past visual stimuli in order to make sense of something presently in front of us, then we are sure to sometimes think that we saw something that we really didn’t. A perfect example of this phenomenon is what happens when you see a person who appears to look like someone you know. “Look its Jimmy! Oh wait nevermind. Just a homeless guy. Sad face.” For a moment you really thought it was Jimmy, but it obviously was not. Sometimes we think we see things when we don’t. Sometimes we see something that isn’t really there.
Life can make sense, but it’s also full of illusions. And the idea that the universe is ordered and full of meaning is something that many of our brains perceive as truth. People generally assume that there must be some order and meaning to our existence. But why must this be the case? Why does there need to be an overarching reason for everything? Why must we, as Steve Jobs said, trust in something? I don’t have the answer to this, and I’m certain that you don’t either.
What I am sure of though, is that the desire to believe in a grander reason for existence is real. Though irrational, the desire itself makes sense. It’s part of how our brains are built. Our brains manifest fears of sickness, death, and tragedy, and believing that this suffering means something other than just bad luck can be comforting. People often grow from their suffering. Death sometimes leads to life-saving down the road. Tragedy in the present can lead to tragedy prevention in the future. It’s possible to put a positive spin on almost anything.
Believing that everything happens for a grand or meaningful reason is essentially to put an unwarranted positive spin on life, and to be victimized by the illusoriness of the pattern recognition tendencies of the brain. The world seems like a pattern just as everything seems like a pattern. When we’re experiencing something, our pre-programmed brains go out of their way to make us think that what we are seeing is the same as something we have seen before. Life has far too much complexity to remember as a jumbled mess, so the pattern recognition part of the brain comes to the rescue and turns a headache into something more comprehensible that can be enjoyed.
To put it more bluntly, It’s not your fault that you are misconstruing the events happening in front of your eyes because that’s what your brain is supposed to do. Your brain has to dumb itself down to increase daily functioning. Increased functioning coincides with increased perceptions of understanding, but it also coincides with decreased actual understanding. It’s not my fault I’m stupid, my brain is doing it on purpose!
To clarify again, I’m talking about two separate but related problems: the narrative fallacy, and the unnecessary search for true meaning in life. On a small scale, human beings have a desire to see meaning in their own lives. On a large scale, we have a desire to see meaning in life itself. We want to put everything into a neat story-arc, because that’s currently the best way we know how to adequately understand the world. We want to believe that there is a greater purpose for our own lives, as well as a greater purpose for everyone’s lives. But the fact is, we do not know. There is almost no evidence to believe anything happens for a reason, and to do so is to contradict any logical understanding of reality.
So what is the alternative? In the absence of meaning, what are we doing here? What is the point of doing anything? I’m working on an answer and I’ll get back to you when I have one.
It’s almost always possible to attribute results to reasons. No one is disputing that when you got a flat tire, the pothole you hit was the reason. No one is disputing that when you got food poisoning, the poisonous food you ate was the reason. I’m well aware of how obvious this post has been so far. I’ve even written about causes and effects before (http://www.preachingsense.com/2016/09/why-things-happen-4-realms-of.html?m=0http). So let’s make this more interesting.
“Everything happens for a reason” is true in the sense that I just described. When people generally use this expression, though, this is not at all what they are talking about.
“You have to trust in something - your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever.” -Steve Jobs
Steve Jobs was a smart guy, and many people love this quote. But the quote doesn’t really have any validity. Why do you have to blindly trust in something supernatural? I suppose it could feel nice to do that. It probably does feel nice. It’s comforting. But why does that mean you have to do it?
People like comfort. They like narratives. They like when things make sense. I’m a person! I also like when things make sense! Who wouldn’t like this? Perhaps no one. But trying to make sense out of something senseless is an effort that definitely lacks common sense. Not everything has to make sense.
And now a break from annoying wordplay. And a brief return to the sciency stuff:
“The narrative fallacy addresses our limited ability to look at sequences of facts without weaving an explanation into them, or, equivalently, forcing a logical link, an arrow of relationship upon them. Explanations bind facts together. They make them all the more easily remembered; they help them make more sense. Where this propensity can go wrong is when it increases our impression of understanding.” -Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan
Understanding is good. People like to understand! But false understanding is bad. And our brains are good at giving false impressions of understanding.
The narrative fallacy is about the false impressions of understanding, and it contributes to the misleading belief that everything always happens for a predetermined reason. It implies a presumption that there is some natural order to things in the universe, or some kind of karma that knows all of our thoughts and actions and alters the outcomes based on those thoughts and actions.
Our brains like to link things together and to make stories out of sequences of events that aren’t actually bound by stories. It's a trap we all fall into. The narrative fallacy works to make us feel better about things that happen in our lives, because it provides explanations of why things have occurred, giving us a greater sense of control. Accepting that most things are largely influenced by unknown or random forces is a difficult thing for most people. To accept randomness and the unknown is to accept that we are not in control of the world.
This may all seem incredibly theoretical and useless, but it’s not. I promise. Let’s talk about why it’s not:
We’ve established that failing to account for randomness is human nature, and it makes perfect sense that human brains are distorted in this way. Our minds are able to perform day to day functions as effectively as they do largely because they employ pattern recognition, which consists of subconsciously matching external stimuli with internal memories. Past knowledge provides a baseline for what is currently happening in front of us and in most cases this is extremely useful. We have the amazing ability to piece together fragments of sight as clear pictures, even when our eyes miss part of an image. When a blur flashes in front of us too fast to see, it’s possible for our eyes to “figure out” what we saw. This is because memory helps to fill in the missing parts of a picture. Our memories help to form images in a pattern-like way, and this makes eyesight more effective.
Another example of useful pattern recognition is our ability to read and comprehend sentences. We can remember sequences of words if they are formed into sentences, but it’s more difficult if the words are jumbled and don’t create coherent thoughts. Sentence flows are essentially patterns that make words much easier to recollect. This is also why it’s so easy to recite the alphabet but fairly difficult to do it in reverse. The alphabet song is a pattern that we recognize, but the reverse alphabet is not.
At this point in the argument, you may be wondering why this concept of pattern recognition is a problem. Our brains are simply making things easier for us, right? Well, not exactly. For one, the assistance our mind gives us in remembering things can sometimes be flat out wrong. If we are relying on past visual stimuli in order to make sense of something presently in front of us, then we are sure to sometimes think that we saw something that we really didn’t. A perfect example of this phenomenon is what happens when you see a person who appears to look like someone you know. “Look its Jimmy! Oh wait nevermind. Just a homeless guy. Sad face.” For a moment you really thought it was Jimmy, but it obviously was not. Sometimes we think we see things when we don’t. Sometimes we see something that isn’t really there.
Life can make sense, but it’s also full of illusions. And the idea that the universe is ordered and full of meaning is something that many of our brains perceive as truth. People generally assume that there must be some order and meaning to our existence. But why must this be the case? Why does there need to be an overarching reason for everything? Why must we, as Steve Jobs said, trust in something? I don’t have the answer to this, and I’m certain that you don’t either.
What I am sure of though, is that the desire to believe in a grander reason for existence is real. Though irrational, the desire itself makes sense. It’s part of how our brains are built. Our brains manifest fears of sickness, death, and tragedy, and believing that this suffering means something other than just bad luck can be comforting. People often grow from their suffering. Death sometimes leads to life-saving down the road. Tragedy in the present can lead to tragedy prevention in the future. It’s possible to put a positive spin on almost anything.
Believing that everything happens for a grand or meaningful reason is essentially to put an unwarranted positive spin on life, and to be victimized by the illusoriness of the pattern recognition tendencies of the brain. The world seems like a pattern just as everything seems like a pattern. When we’re experiencing something, our pre-programmed brains go out of their way to make us think that what we are seeing is the same as something we have seen before. Life has far too much complexity to remember as a jumbled mess, so the pattern recognition part of the brain comes to the rescue and turns a headache into something more comprehensible that can be enjoyed.
To put it more bluntly, It’s not your fault that you are misconstruing the events happening in front of your eyes because that’s what your brain is supposed to do. Your brain has to dumb itself down to increase daily functioning. Increased functioning coincides with increased perceptions of understanding, but it also coincides with decreased actual understanding. It’s not my fault I’m stupid, my brain is doing it on purpose!
To clarify again, I’m talking about two separate but related problems: the narrative fallacy, and the unnecessary search for true meaning in life. On a small scale, human beings have a desire to see meaning in their own lives. On a large scale, we have a desire to see meaning in life itself. We want to put everything into a neat story-arc, because that’s currently the best way we know how to adequately understand the world. We want to believe that there is a greater purpose for our own lives, as well as a greater purpose for everyone’s lives. But the fact is, we do not know. There is almost no evidence to believe anything happens for a reason, and to do so is to contradict any logical understanding of reality.
So what is the alternative? In the absence of meaning, what are we doing here? What is the point of doing anything? I’m working on an answer and I’ll get back to you when I have one.