Of hats and men

In Metro, the free metropolitan newspaperI read a letter from a little old lady - at least that is how I visualize her - writing something to this effect:

"Why do all the children and teenagers walk around with hats during the summer? These kids are going to run around with nothing on their heads all winter."

Yes, how quaint. Such a cute little old lady, wasting thought and breath (or stamps, at least) on writing a letter to a magazine about how children should wear something to keep their heads warm in winter, and to cool their heads in summer.

No, it is not cute. It is a logically flawed assumption. The human mind discerns what does not fit into the observed context - this is why we need camouflage to keep ships and troops hidden from the enemy. If you observe a generalized entity or unit of entities in a context and find an aberrance, you notice it. This old lady saw people wearing hats in summer, and noticed that these people were children. (Please remember that this is not about children, or hats. Not really.)

She considers this: "Children were wearing hats in the summer. What do I know about children? Oh yes, in the winter, they do not wear hats. How odd. What a funny little fact!". Except that it is no fact, it is a statistically biased observation. There is definitely a possibility that some children will do anything in direct opposition to what is recommended to them, but mostly those who wear hats in the summer will still be wearing these hats in the winter, unless the trends change. Style over function, no?

Well so what?

This is not about hats or children or winters or summers. It is about generalizations. It doesn't matter that a little old lady confuses the kids who wear hats in summer with the kids who do not wear hats in the winter, though I would prefer if she did not. What does matter is that this flaw in our observations is so rarely compensated for. This little old lady probably would not have realized her error on her own, because it is a flaw in her vision, and us humans have a very hard time finding flaws in our own perception because we use our perceptions to look for the flaws.

It is the error-tracking system tracking an error in itself, finding nothing, and thus proving that it is flawed.

It is Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. We cannot know the position AND speed of a particle because our observing it will effect it.

It is human stupidity, it is the reason mediocrity will over time die out into a new catastrophe, and it is thus Gould's punctuated equilibrium.

It's time to punctuate.

/ Per