As a kid, I loved Jurassic Park. When The Lost World came out, I was obsessed with everything that had anything to do with it. One thing that stuck with me was the soundtrack, namely the one theme that plays when they’re traveling to the island. It instilled a sense of high-spirited venturing into an unknown and dangerous wild, and that sense that stuck with me over the years. I still hum that tune to myself on occasion.

Recently, I rewatched The Lost World and was thrown for a loop. Somehow, my brain had added some additional notes to my memory that weren’t there in the original. It was quite jarring when the tune didn’t go along with what how I remembered it.

Memory is Fallible

The point is you don’t know anything. Your own memory of your favorite things isn’t something you can truly rely on. How, then, are you going to look at a situation now and tell definitively that you know exactly what each of its moving parts means? The human mind has its limitations, and I would argue that those limitations impede us from ever quite knowing what we’re looking at.

Now, you might argue that looking at something in the present is different from remembering it. That’s true. You probably can get a clearer view of a present situation than a remembered one. But I think even that is unreliable, much of the time.

Don’t Know What You’re Looking At

Here’s another example. I recently found myself in a kind of mad fervor while writing a scene for my story. My mind was aflame with visions of the action. Writing it felt like hurling lightning from my fingertips, and I thought for certain I was creating the perfect mainifestation of what this scene should be. I felt it in my bones, and it thrilled me to the core. Surely, this would be as wonderful to read as it was to write!

Then I looked at it five minutes later and saw a bunch of samey sentences strung together. Subject verb. The subject verbed. Then the subject also verbed. The other subject verbed some. Then some more verbs happened.

It was really choppy stuff that needed to be rewritten entirely.

The point is, I was in the middle of this, and I didn’t have a clear view of what was happening. Maybe it was my heightened emotional state. After all, it was a thrilling scene, and I had some pretty intense music going at the time to get the blood pumping. Even so, I was there for the event, and I had no idea what it actually looked like in the moment.

Now you may be thinking, “Well, that gets a pass. You were in a hazy fervor at the time. But what if I have evidence?”

Evidence. One of the best ways to lie to yourself is to find evidence.

Limitations of Evidence

Evidence has its limits. There’s a tendency to extrapolate certain conclusions from evidence that it doesn’t actually support. You don’t know what the helium is actually doing inside a balloon. All you know is that helium balloons float.

You’ll note that when researchers discuss their data, they don’t necessarily point to conclusions. They are very careful to limit themselves to what is shown in their measurements. The best researchers take great pains not to extend beyond the measurable data without giving a healthy dose of caveats beforehand.

For instance, in a storm, I don’t know where the lightning strikes. All I know is that it has struck. Actually, I don’t know that much. All I know is that I saw it strike. If I count the seconds between flash and thunderclap, I can gauge how far away it is. However, finding the precise location may be difficult, especially if there were many strikes during the storm. Perhaps someone else saw a spot where lightning struck, but I would be hard pressed to determine whether that spot is the same as the bolt I saw.

Often, the “independent research” people perform on the internet notes only the existence of lightning, but not the spot where it strikes. Yet they will make assumptions about the location based only on counting the seconds.

Conclusion

Be quicker to question than to assume. Be quicker to consider all the ways in which you may be mistaken than to fight against opposing views. Be quick to assume others have good, compelling, and valid reasons for their beliefs. Be slow to dismiss other views outright. Take great care to note the limitations of your evidence. If you would be rigorously honest with yourself and with others, be careful to note the gaps in your knowledge as honestly and openly as possible. And by openly, I don’t mean a token “I may be wrong, but [insert opinion here].” Rather, I mean being open to the possibility of being wrong. Welcome it, in fact.

It is for these reasons that you probably just need to chill out already.

The Astral Wanderer is brought to you by the cumulation of errors that led to the current understanding of the universe as we know it. Share this post, comment on it, or kick it into the void somewhere. You can also support this content through Patreon for a dollar a month. All proceeds go toward getting people at all points along the political spectrum to just chill out and maybe watch Jurassic Park. Really.