Heuristics and dogma

We make rules to make life simple. And rules make dogma.

Openmindedness to paradox is today’s topic.

Four observations follow.

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First Observation

One of the six virtues described in How to Know Higher Worlds (Steiner) is this willingness to continually accept new information and assess it with impartiality:

Upon hearing some information, [the student] never says to himself: “I don't believe it; it contradicts my present opinions.” He is far rather ready to test and rectify his views and opinions. He ever remains receptive for everything that confronts him, and he trusts in the efficacy of his undertakings. Timidity and skepticism are banished from his being. He harbors a faith in the power of his intentions. A hundred failures cannot rob him of this faith. This is the “faith which can move mountains.”

chapter 5

What is remarkable here is that the virtue of openmindedness is directly linked to active faith. Faith, in the four gospels, is not the watered-down wishfulness of colloquial usage, but an active force.

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Second Observation

Deep in the process of prepping for a big developmental edit, I’m again looking at the questions of:

Why do people see whatever part of the pattern they see?

Why do some people refuse to see any of it?

Because, refusal to see the pattern (aka dys-apophenia) is lack of open-mindedness.

Amongst those who see some portion of the pattern or another, we still encounter this tendency to rely on pre-established heuristics rather than novel assessment.

The alternative movements face Divide and Conquer, in part because there are divisive elements out there, and in part because it is a tendency of human groups to seek out differentiation and argumentation. Antipathy makes us feel our individuality.

For example, schisms within the alternative movements:

virus/no-virus

fundamentalist religion/ new age religion

capitalism is evil / socialism is evil

Israel/Palestine/Gaza

trust the new government/ trust no one

I learned a new word to describe this: schismogenesis, from Joshua Stylman’s fabulous essays on MKUltra.

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Third Observation

It is very clear to me that there are many extremely high IQ people on the side of the pattern recognizers, and moreover: high IQ has nothing to do with with ability to withstand brainwashing.

It also has nothing to do with wisdom.

Sometimes I wonder if being tagged as “intelligent” all one’s life makes one more susceptible to brainwashing.

This is the issue with heuristics. It is said that “conspiracy theorist” was coined as a derogative term, even though to my ears it has always sounded very pragmatic. There are conspiracies. Not theoretical to think these exist. In law school, you learn a whole portion of criminal law about “conspiracy to commit (this or that.)”

I’m not in law school, it’s a vicarious spousal experience.

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Fourth Observation

This is an excerpt from Book 2, Mercury’s Riddles.

Apophenia had seen many examples of heuristics interfacing with dogma and was familiar with the process. For the Mainstreamers, people who still gave any credence to news sources from the big six—Nytimes, MSNBC, CBS, Fox, etc—the dogma was: there are two sides. One side is evil fascists like Hitler. The other side is good. For conservatives, “good” equated to middle America Christian, with an allowance for religious morals from any mainstream religious sect. For the liberals, “good” meant humanist-post-modern-atheist, in the critical theory sense. Both heuristic-built dogmas were nearly identical in how they functioned. There were the inevitable shadings and permutations along the spectrum, but this was the basic landscape of Mainstreamites.

The core audience of The Journal for Apophenic Research was made up of people who had rejected either mainstream perspective, for any variety of reasons. For some, the triggering event was 9/11 and the details that did not add up. For others, it was the personal experience of being canceled, discredited, de-banked, or worse. Some were mothers of children who had been healthy and happy, until they got a round of shots at a routine pediatric visit.

Therefore this audience, comprised from the general set of “Rejecting the mainstream,” all found themselves together because they had, in some painful way or another, had a peek behind the curtain. The saw something out of place, and it hurt. The old heuristics could never be trusted again.

But people are rule-making creatures, and most cannot tolerate paradox. So amongst these who had rejected the mainstream could be found endless permutations. It looked more like a scatter plot, or a very complex Venn diagram, of new rules—more individualized—and new dogmas, taken up by the Rejectionists. This then led to alliances, interest groups, and small coalitions.

Amongst the Rejectionists, the brightest and most obvious line was between the religious dogmatists and the magic seekers.

The former, typically Christian, held to fundamentalist interpretations of the Bible, and often even accepted and incorporated the apocryphal texts into their belief structure. Yet: they rejected and labeled “satanist” anything that did not have the correct aesthetic of plain Protestantism and the simplicity of literal translation.

The magic seekers, the other bright spot on the scatter plot of Rejectionist beliefs, noticed the obvious patterns of synchronicity, coincidence, and human will which made clear impact on the outer world. They were intrigued by symbol, metaphor, and hidden meanings. Magic seekers were, at times, indiscriminate about the hidden beings with whom they parlayed. And the religious dogmatists rejected all hidden beings, often to the point of trading Christ for Jesus, the simple man of Nazareth.

Of this subset, Apophenia knew that nothing is ever as real as is wished, and quick to judgement is quick to false judgement.