(Please note: The original article to which these letters respond was posted on the blog here).
Here is one:
Re “The Behavioral Revolution” (column, Oct. 28):
David Brooks gets it right: all perception (visual, psychological, intellectual) is a matter of interpretation, not fact.
We humans are often blind to anything that challenges our preconceived notions: we are predisposed to see what we already believe to be true based on a “remembered past.” As such, we are not wired to predict the future with any degree of accuracy.
The collective faith placed in Alan Greenspan over the long period that he was chairman of the Federal Reserve is a glaring example of how wishful thinking translates into perceived reality.
Mr. Greenspan should be “shocked,” but not by the failure of his predictions. He should be shocked by the strength of his conviction that so many others would see the world as he does.
Ian Hughes, New York
“we are not wired to predict the future with any degree of accuracy.”
So says the letter writer, but he is dead wrong. He has confused our handling of information with wisdom. Our heritage is – or used to be – quite the reverse. Year after year, we acquired experience in all sorts of situations. The mind, without instruction, treats these experiences inductively and draws from the accumulation a set of general principles. This set of general principles is then applied to a new situation which falls inside the parameters of the set. We extrapolate and thereby predict the future. This universal practice has been embodied in Satayana’s apothegm, now a bromide, that those who pay no attention to history are force to repeat it. This set of general principles we call – or used to call – wisdom, and it was what everyone acquired as he got older. It was this wisdom that gave elders their position in society. How well did this work?
We no longer know since we put our elders in retirement homes. But it used to be, e.g., that every new mother turned to her mother and grandmother to ask, given a new-baby problem, “Now what do I do?” And they knew. And if I wish to make hay in June, I ask the farmers who have been making hay for the last fifty years, “Can I cut hay now? And they know. 100%? Of course not. But most of us who farm have learned not to ask experts, who have “book learning” instead of real experience, but real farmers. And in the present economic crisis, if I asked my neighbor what the result would be of extended, massive credit card indebtedness, he would have told me that such people would go down in flames sooner or later. And he repairs small engines, but he also has acquired painful experience with living over one’s income.
Perception is the reception of experience. This is our sole source of knowledge. Not fact? Meaning what? Interpretation? Of course, and wisdom is the accumulation of interpretations, processed by induction and applied by deduction. Accurate? Well, this system has worked well for countless centuries but its benefits are commonly overridden by those who have something to gain by not listening.
Larry