We don't know what we don't know until it's too late

My mind, like God, works in mysterious ways. Of course, the big difference between my mind and God is that I, along with my mind, actually can be shown to exist.

At any rate, this morning I found myself thinking along this line. If you consider that this shows I'm questionably sane, I'd be the first to agree with you.

I've made a lot of mistakes in my life. So have you, I'm confident. But from here on I'm going to use "I" to refer to myself as an example that applies to almost everybody.

The problem is, those mistakes have only been evident after the fact. Meaning, after I'd already done what, a bit or a lot later, I regretted doing. 

So at the time I did what turned out to be a mistake, my mind was feeling that I was doing the right thing.

This is obvious, because if I'd had a feeling that I was doing the wrong thing, I would have stopped and tried to figure out what needed to be done right.

Now, this shows that it is really difficult for me to not do the wrong thing, since there's no warning light in my mind that flashes when I'm heading off the right track.

My Subaru Crosstrek, on the other hand, makes a chirp when I cross the center line of the road. In that sense, my car is smarter than I am.

On the positive side -- assuming there's something positive in doing wrong -- it's hard for me to blame myself when I didn't know that I was screwing up at the time, only later.

Hard, yet not impossible, because I often do berate myself for not recognizing what I should have done differently.

I then pondered the question of what to do about this vicious circle of not knowing that I don't know what I should be doing until it is too late to do anything differently.

At first I thought it would be possible to carefully consider alternative ways of doing something before I did it, to have a better chance of doing the right thing rather than the wrong thing.

But there's several problems with this.

One is that it would take too much time, even if I only did this for new or unusual things that needed doing. Washing dishes, for example, is so habitual and familiar, I rarely mess it up. 

By contrast, last Saturday I changed the oil in our generator after it had been running for most of the day during a full week after an an ice storm caused massive power outages in Oregon. 

I got the warm oil draining into a quart yogurt container and figured I had time to change the air cleaner on the other side of the generator. When I went back to the oil change side, the container had started to overflow with oil.

I immediately thought, "That was stupid of me." Yet at the time I had no thought that taking my eye off of the draining oil was going to cause a problem. 

So is it possible to eliminate our screw-ups when we have no idea that we're doing something wrong? No. Screwing up comes with being human. I do feel, though, that focusing on doing one thing at a time reduces the chance of a screw-up.

If I'd patiently watched the oil drain into the yogurt container instead of changing the air cleaner simultaneously, I would have been able to prevent the minor oil spill onto our carport cement.

However, no matter how carefully we try to do things, frequently we'll find that we've done something wrong. In that case, compassion appears to be in order.

After all, few of us consciously set out to mess something up. Almost everybody tries to do the right thing, even if it seems clear to almost everybody else that we did the wrong thing. Thus self-compassion is as important as compassion for others. 

Often we just don't know. And we don't know that we don't know. Neither do the other people who don't know that they don't know.

If the person in the car ahead of me knew that their left-turn blinker has been on for several blocks, I'm confident they would have turned it off. So they're not trying to irritate me by pretending they're turning left, yet never do.

They, like me frequently, are just caught in the grip of not knowing that they don't know.

This, of course, gets us into the much larger question of free will. Along with many, if not most, neuroscientists, after a lot of reading about how modern science looks upon free will, I don't believe it exists.

Which doesn't stop me from getting upset when generator oil being changed overflows a yogurt container. I do, though have a more philosophical attitude when I do something that, in retrospect, I wish I hadn't done.

Comments

[um]

Nobody is ever "too late".... you are always "in time"

Nobody can do a thing "good or bad"

Things move, are moved according so called natural laws. One can initiate an law, that is the free choice but we cannot control the outcome, the effect. Given that we initiated the law, we are made responsible for the effect.

Life is like an experiment with an Galton marble board ... one can throw a marble in the board but one will never know for sure where it will end up.

And that is what happened with changing oil. You did nothing wrong but the consequences of what you did are yours.

Maybe be you remember him saying ... do whatever you can and leave the results to me. "Me" can be replaced by god, chance, nature, circumstances.

It is as simple as that! ..... we have free choice ...we can pull the bow and after the arrow has left the bow, it is on its way and we have lost all controll..... that makes it a sport, a discipline an art to enjoy.

[manjit]

Dear Brian,

I like to read your posts up until you state as obvious and evident fact something that is, in fact, obvious and evidently un-factual. So it is with great consternation I find myself not even getting to the end of your first, short paragraph:

"My mind, like God, works in mysterious ways. Of course, the big difference between my mind and God is that I, along with my mind, actually can be shown to exist."

You can show your "I" and "mind" "exist", whereas "God" cannot be shown to do so?

I find this to be curiously confused statement. And if it is true in any kind of meaningful, coherent sense, I congratulate you on your no doubt forthcoming Noble prize.

Because, prior to your making this statement, there has literally been absolutely no scientific proof that consciousness (let's skip umpteen volumes of dense philosophically writing on how we even define "I" or "mind", and get right to "consciousness" :) "exists" on any level of significance that we can distinguish from that "God exists".

It's not complicated; there is absolutely no scientific proof that there is such a "thing" as "consciousness", it is merely an inference that consciousness makes about itself. It is a SELF-EVIDENT reality, not a scientific one. In the same way some people make the inference of a "God".

It is in the minds of some, like Brian, an unquestioned and unexamined inference, one that is avoided by circular and contradictory logic; "I" or "mind" exists, because "I" infer it does, but "God" does not exist because "I" infer she doesn't exist because there is no scientific evidence she exists. Don't ask me about scientific evidence of the existence of "I" or "mind", though, because that way debilitating philosophical cognitive dissonance lies.

It is a simple case of double standards - the inference of "I" or "mind" is self-evident for most humans, seeing as they are locked within that restricting cognitive and experiential "reality tunnel". Even if science is radically unable to measure, quantify or even agree on a conceptual definition of "consciousness", "I" or "mind", it goes without question that it "exists", it is self-EVIDENT, and science be damned, as Brian here demonstrates!

The obvious point here is not that only SOME things cannot be measured in a test tube and explained by mathematical equations, but the MOST FUNDAMENTAL part of reality that nearly all of us know and experience, "consciousness" or "mind", cannot be explained by it.

And so it is with "God", to some people they have experienced as even more self-evident than their own self (think about the ontological and linguistic significance of that choice of words which I mean very literally & specifically) a dimension or aspect of "reality" for which even the word "God" is a pitiful and absurd pointer. Even more self-evident than their own self.

I think, Brian, the grand problem with your posts is the hidden grandiosity contained within them; that your intellect, and it's highly select choices of "scientific" minded authors, have cracked the mystery of the universe and being. This is like dogs howling at the moon. A truly bizarre and absurd, yet hauntingly beautiful, portrait of reality.

PS - UM, if you're reading, I've very much enjoyed reading some of your recent comments, they've been very insightful!

[um]

@ Manjit
Yes, yes... I made it to the end :-) :-)

[Spence Tepper]

We are learning beings. And these things are teaching moments. If we learn to look and learn first then act, we reduce our errors. If we can be mindful, if we can act from a place of peace, of calm, of thoughtfulness and higher awareness, then we generate fewer errors. And fewer errors don't trigger other errors.

Getting it right triggers other right things.

Errors happen when what we believe or wish or anticipate varies from what happens. Or we react and do things without consideration. But if we understand the limitations of our thinking, there are no errors. There is just continuous learning, and lessons that help improve our performance.

Center yourself, withdraw from yourself and see things more objectively. Make your task your focus, not yourself.

Then, you might have a brilliant thought! "What did the manual say?"

And finding and following the manual perfectly, we find we do new things without error. Because what seems new to us isn't new.

[🌺 /// 🌺]

"True life is lived when tiny changes occur."
— Leo Tolstoy —

[S]

These are all good comments. What I mean is I’ve enjoyed reading each person’s perspective and reaction to the post (which I actually really appreciated). People’s perspectives and responses are very telling of their approach to life in general. I don’t necessarily agree or disagree with all the comments, even if I did enjoy reading them.

But you simply cannot argue with the fact that you don’t know what you don’t know (on a conscious level).

Of course, you can always argue any point... but it’s hard not to sound silly saying something like, “I know everything I don’t know”.

And yet sometimes statements and comments are just to provoke you to think deeper. Intelligent people don’t like to tell other people HOW to think. They usually enjoy prompting others to think about something from a different angle.

Think for yourself. Draw your own conclusions.

[Karim W. Rahmaan]

Hope you are alright.

I read about a massive weather change throughout the country. My sister had just moved to Washington and is experiencing cold weather never experienced before being a Californian.

Just read an article on how rough it is in your area. Hope your power is back up and running soon.

https://www.koin.com/news/oregon/power-outages-pge-national-guard-02202021/

[271]

Manjit, nice post thanks.
Can we scientifically prove consciousness exists? Yes. The very denial of it is proof of it.

Can we prove God exists? No.
Why not? No one has the vaguest notion of what anyone else means by that word.

If we define God as Existence then our proof of Consciousness also proves God. What always is, always was, and always will be.

But the fact is no one knows what anybody else means by the word God. In fact, almost no one knows what is meant by the word "I". If we don't agree about the definitions of "I" and "you" and "God" then we are simply tilting at windmills. Always fun though.