Being Correct or Being Ignorant
My dad, wise as he is has very well put my dilemma into a short mnemonic – LWS. Last Word Syndrome. Today at the most unexpected of times, in the most unexpected of places the true meaning of these words hit me. As my friend Jake says, ‘I had an epiphany’. I can’t end an argument or debate or dispute or whatever you choose to call it, until I have the entire picture in my head. I can’t let something unexplained be forgotten or postponed. I need to understand the entire problem, the entire scenario. This as it seems is a perfectly admirable quality and well worth retaining. However once I have reached my panoramic point of view I must impress it on others. Like I need to make other people aware of my understanding.
This has a major drawback. I may be right, I may be wrong, that’s not the problem. The thing is, most problems in real life aren’t binary or linear in nature. They are like multivariate polynomial inequalities; they have many answers all equally right. And when you reach one conclusion it’s natural to eliminate others. This tendency has made lots of my concepts faulty. Once the human mind is sure of an outcome it automatically eliminates the others, logically or illogically. The whole justification technique kicks in and we rule out other possibilities. The contrary problem is also a fatal one. Not questioning other possible results leaves them uncertified. If we don’t question then we can not realize actual truth. We can never be certain for a 100% that an answer is correct, because we ourselves haven’t questioned it and convinced ourselves of its correctness.
Now I know this may not be for all to comprehend, so a simple analogy. You are on a trip and currently on a crossroads, many roads each leading you in different directions. Now some of the roads may actually reach the same destination, but many will not. How do you decide which is the right way without actually having gone down each path. It seems to me to be an impossible decision. Now let us assume you go down each path, but the first path you take leads you to the required destination. Hence you found the way and further disregard other paths. But maybe, just maybe one of the other paths also leads you to your destination and is shorter to take. Will you waste your life trying every path at every crossroads? Or will you find one correct path leading you to your destination and stick by it, forgetting the others?
in most crossroads like this in life, there is no absolute correct path to go by..its all relative..and there will always be good and bad whichever road you choose. i guess at any point the best you can do is go down the path that SEEMS to you like the best choice you can make after reasonably considering the other choices you can make with the knowledge you have about each of those choices. so as long as you know what you’re getting into, you cant complain later saying what if i did that back then..cos back then, you did the best you could do..by considering most of the choices you had to the best of your ability.
on the other hand, science is about finding the truth…no matter how many roads you have to take…life is a lot more complex than that….